Environmental infrastructure and urban residents’ well-being: a system dynamics approach

The continuous expansion of environmental infrastructure systems plays a crucial role in urban sustainable development. While bringing significant environmental benefits, it also has negative impacts on the improvement of residents’ well-being (such as the ‘not in my backyard’ phenomenon). In this study, the system dynamics (SD) methodology is used to dissect the complex interactions between environmental infrastructure and urban residents’ well-being. Using Vensim modeling software and Chinese data from 2014–2019, this study designs basic and extended scenarios to discover urban environmental infrastructure development measures that effectively contribute to residents’ well-being. The simulation results reveal that, in the basic scenarios, the pattern focusing on environmental protection and resource-saving development is effective, while the collaborative development may have more long-term value. In comparison, in the extended scenarios, developing energy supply and pollution treatment facilities can effectively improve urban residents’ subjective well-being. But there are more factors to consider when planning urban green infrastructure.