Beyond greenery: exploring non-linear dynamics between socio-spatial integration and youth life satisfaction in community renewal

Urban renewal initiatives grapple with a tripartite crisis in the community: resource allocation disparities, youth exclusion in participatory planning, and socio-spatial service degradation, all depressing life satisfaction among young residents. Despite extensive research on urban renewal and socio-spatial integration, the non-linear dynamics between these factors and life satisfaction, particularly in youth-oriented community renewal, remain underexplored, hindering effective decision-making. Furthermore, limited attention has been given to the combination of subjective perceptions and objective spatial metrics in assessing socio-spatial factors. This necessitates a move beyond simplistic analyses of singular urban amenities like greenery to a more comprehensive understanding of integrated socio-spatial dynamics. This study bridges these gaps by employing Gradient Boosting Decision Trees (GBDT) and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) models for non-linear exploration and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression for subjective perception and objective spatial comparison, to explore how social and spatial factors influence youth life satisfaction in Suzhou, China. The results indicate that both subjective and objective factors significantly influence youth life satisfaction. GBDT prioritized Social Interaction and Commuting Environment as paramount. Subjective-objective comparative results revealed consistent positive linear impacts from both perceived and objective environmental and facilities accessibility factors. Crucially, XGBoost results indicate that Educational facilities density’s contribution value sharply rises from ~-0.005 to ~0.02 as density increases from ~-0.5 to ~0.5, and Medical facilities density’s contribution value turns negative at higher densities. The findings not only advance socio-spatial integration theory but also contribute to the development of youth-oriented urban renewal strategies and governance mechanisms, aiming to enhance youth life satisfaction by holistically addressing the complex interplay of diverse socio-spatial elements, moving beyond a singular focus on green spaces to achieve balanced environmental quality and social equity.