Strollers Widen the Gateway - Proven That Depicting Families with Strollers in Redevelopment Renderings Enhances City Attractiveness

One factor in achieving sustainability in urban redevelopment is creating spaces that appeal to diverse populations and make them want to visit. Municipalities and related companies undertaking redevelopment depict towns in architectural renderings (perspectives) to broadcast their appeal to many people. However, discussions regarding the content of these renderings often center heavily around spatial components like buildings and facilities. Therefore, this study analyzed differences in city attractiveness based on the depiction of the people spending time there. The element focused on here was the baby stroller. The presence of children and child-rearing families brings vitality to a town and is expected to lower psychological barriers to entry, much like family restaurants do. As a result of verifying the difference in the town's attractiveness with and without baby strollers via a randomized controlled trial, it became clear that depictions with baby strollers receive significantly higher evaluations. This effect was valid regardless of gender or age. These findings can be utilized not only for appeals in renderings but also for the institutional design of a town. By creating spaces that are easy for strollers to enter, the attractiveness of the city is expected to increase for a diverse range of people. This research outcome, a joint study by NEC Corporation and Associate Professor Takumi Kato of the School of Commerce at Meiji University, was accepted at the 2026 International Conference on Management, Tourism and Technologies and will be published in Business and Economics (Springer).

Key Points of this Research
- Cities around the world are engaged in fierce competition to acquire residents, making urban branding an important policy tool for municipalities and urban developers. Parks are positioned as symbols in urban branding. As represented by Hyde Park in London and Central Park in New York, greenery functions as a city symbol. Furthermore, because greenery plays an important role from the perspective of enhancing sustainability, parks and greenery are utilized in many redevelopments.
- Sustainability requires not only consideration for the environment but also the simultaneous revitalization of the local economy by gathering diverse groups of people. Thus, municipalities and companies handling redevelopment depict towns in renderings (completed conceptual drawings) to communicate their appeal to the masses.
- Discussions on the content of renderings tend to lean toward buildings and equipment, and sufficient knowledge had not been accumulated regarding what kind of impact the depicted "people" have. Considering that in general marketing communications, consumers tend to focus more on the characters using the products/services than the products themselves, the depiction of people in the town is assumed to be important in renderings as well.
- In this study, we prepared an image without a stroller (control group, Figure 1) and an image with a stroller (treatment group, Figure 2) as redevelopment renderings of an urban park. Participants were randomly assigned and shown one of the images. Afterwards, they were asked to evaluate the attractiveness of this town. As a result, while 64.4% in the control group felt the town was attractive, 74.1% in the treatment group felt it was attractive, showing a significant difference of about 10 points.
- The effect of the stroller was confirmed regardless of gender and age. An improvement of 11 points (68.2% -> 79.2%) was seen in women, and 7.9 points (61.0% -> 68.9%) in men. By age, an improvement of 10.7 points was confirmed in the 20-44 age group, and 8.4 points in the 45-69 age group. Furthermore, the effect was significant even among those with low attitudinal involvement with parks, showing a 13.0 point increase (37.7% -> 50.7%), and a 14.0 point increase (61.0% -> 75.0%) among those with low park usage frequency.