Strollers Broaden Horizons: Demonstrating that Including Families with Strollers in Urban Redevelopment Renderings Enhances City Appeal

One factor in achieving sustainability in urban redevelopment is creating spaces that diverse groups of people find attractive and want to visit. Local governments and related companies responsible for redevelopment projects use renderings (perspective drawings) to depict the town and communicate its appeal to many people. However, discussions regarding the content of these renderings often focus primarily on spatial elements such as buildings and facilities. Therefore, this study analyzed how the depiction of people spending time in these spaces affects the perceived appeal of the city. The element focused on here is the stroller. The presence of children and families raising children is expected to bring vitality to a city and, much like family restaurants, lower psychological barriers to entry. A randomized controlled trial verifying the difference in city appeal based on the presence or absence of strollers revealed that renderings featuring strollers received significantly higher ratings. This effect was valid regardless of gender or age. These findings can be utilized not only for promotional appeals in renderings but also in the institutional design of cities. By creating spaces that are easy for strollers to access, it is expected that the city's appeal will increase for a diverse range of people. The results of this research were accepted for the 2026 International Conference on Management, Tourism and Technologies and will be published in *Business and Economics* (Springer) as a joint study between NEC Corporation and Associate Professor Takumi Kato of the Meiji University School of Commerce.

Key Points of This Research:

* Cities around the world are engaged in fierce competition to attract residents, making city branding an important policy tool for local governments and urban developers. Parks are positioned as symbols in city branding. As represented by Hyde Park in London and Central Park in New York, greenery functions as a symbol of a city. Furthermore, because greenery plays an important role from the perspective of enhancing sustainability, parks and green spaces are utilized in many redevelopment projects.

* Sustainability requires not only environmental consideration but also the revitalization of the local economy through the gathering of diverse people. Therefore, local governments and related companies responsible for redevelopment use renderings to depict the town and communicate its appeal to many people.

* Discussions regarding the content of renderings tend to lean toward buildings and facilities, and sufficient knowledge has not been accumulated regarding the impact of the "people" depicted. Given that in general marketing communications, consumers tend to focus more on the characters using a product or service than on the product or service itself, it is assumed that the depiction of people in city renderings is also important.

* In this study, we prepared images of urban park redevelopment without strollers (control group, Figure 1) and with strollers (treatment group, Figure 2), and randomly assigned participants to view one or the other. Afterward, we asked them to evaluate the appeal of the city. As a result, while 64.4% of the control group found the city appealing, 74.1% of the treatment group found it appealing, showing a significant difference of approximately 10 percentage points.

* The effect of strollers was confirmed regardless of gender or age. An improvement of 11 points was seen in women (68.2% → 79.2%) and 7.9 points in men (61.0% → 68.9%). By age group, an improvement of 10.7 points was confirmed for those aged 20–44, and 8.4 points for those aged 45–69. Furthermore, the effect was even greater among those with low attitudinal involvement with parks (13.0 points; 37.7% → 50.7%) and those with low park usage frequency (14.0 points; 61.0% → 75.0%). In other words, strollers function as a factor that attracts segments previously uninterested in parks, demonstrating that they contribute to expanding the city's potential participant base.

* This research extends the knowledge of city branding into the realm of marketing communication and provides valuable evidence regarding the value of strollers in renderings. The finding that the presence of children and families raising children symbolizes city vitality and lowers psychological barriers to entry can be directly applied to future urban development and town-making practices. By creating spaces that are easy for strollers to access, it is expected that the city's appeal will increase for a diverse range of people.

Figure 1. Depiction of a city without strollers Figure 2. Depiction of a city with strollers Figure 3. Results of the randomized controlled trial

Pages related to this article: NEC GX (Green Transformation): https://jpn.nec.com/energy/gx-solution/index.html Associate Professor Takumi Kato Website: https://takumi-kato.com/