In spite of explicit formulatins in planning laws the call for including the needs of the residents is hardly implemented in planning practice. Essentially, this has to do with the nature of humans' needs which are to a wide extent socially and individually constructed and thus not easily accessible to measurement. For a need-oriented planning two informations are insufficiently available: a) knowledge about the residents' objective requirements regarding their immediate surroundings and b) insights about the conditions under which residents are prepared to express their requests and ideas of enhancing their residential environment. Our empirical investigations addressing these issues in different study areas revealed that there is in fact a general cluster of relevant objective requirements regarding the residential environment. Striking within these results was in particular that requirements referring to social exchange appeared to be perceived as less important than the ones referring to social withdrawal. Moreover, with the increase of urbanisation the significance of most of the measured requirements – and therewith the significance of the residential environment for need satisfaction – decreased. Findings on individual participation behaviour, however, suggest that introducing adeaquate communicative instruments might be a promising means to re-enhance the need satisfaction in residential environments. Steps as to how to achieve a need-oriented planning are described.