Understanding temporary residential mobility during urban renewal: Insights from a structured community survey and machine learning analysis

Existing studies on urban renewal have primarily focused on the final effects of urban redevelopment, while often overlooked the social costs incurred during the temporary displacement phase. This gap is significant, as many residents must vacate their homes for an average of 3–5 years during Shantytown redevelopment, which brings about challenges of renting houses and the associated negative impacts on their well-being before returning to their resettled homes. Therefore, this study focuses on examining the temporary residence arising during Shantytown redevelopment while awaiting resettlement. We selected Heze city as our case study area, which has been through China's most intensive redevelopment between 2016 and 2018 that affected about 1.2 million population. A structured community survey was conducted, and 1035 valid samples were collected. We then applied spatiotemporal analysis and the Random Forest model to examine stability, direction, and distance of temporary residence mobility, along with its influencing factors. Findings reveal that 92.4% of households move just once or twice during the temporary phase, indicating the preference for stable residence. Regarding moving direction, households seek life service centers rather than city centers, and prefer familiar community environments. Furthermore, 74.8% of households resettled within 2.5 km of their original residence, indicating a preference for nearby temporary housing. The built environment emerged as the most critical factor influencing the mobility, followed by family socioeconomic status, while housing costs, surprisingly, having the minimal impact. This study highlights the importance of considering the interim social costs in urban renewal projects and provides valuable insights for housing market regulation and urban planning to mitigate these effects.