Examining the Social Porosity of Environmental Features on Neighborhood Sociability and Attachment

Abstract

The local neighborhood forms an integral part of our lives. It provides the context through which social networks are nurtured and the foundation from which a sense of attachment and cohesion with fellow residents can be established. Whereas much of the previous research has examined the role of social and demographic characteristic in relation to the level of neighboring and cohesion, this paper explores whether particular environmental features in the neighborhood affect social porosity. We define social porosity as the degree to which social ties flow over the surface of a neighborhood. The focus of our paper is to examine the extent to which a neighborhood's environmental features impede the level of social porosity present among residents. To do this, we integrate data from the census, topographic databases and a 2010 survey of 4,351 residents from 146 neighborhoods in Australia. The study introduces the concepts of wedges and social holes. The presence of two sources of wedges is measured: rivers and highways. The presence of two sources of social holes is measured: parks and industrial areas. Borrowing from the geography literature, several measures are constructed to capture how these features collectively carve up the physical environment of neighborhoods. We then consider how this influences residents' neighboring behavior, their level of attachment to the neighborhood and their sense of neighborhood cohesion. We find that the distance of a neighborhood to one form of social hole–industrial areas–has a particularly strong negative effect on all three dependent variables. The presence of the other form of social hole–parks–has a weaker negative effect. Neighborhood wedges also impact social interaction. Both the length of a river and the number of highway fragments in a neighborhood has a consistent negative effect on neighboring, attachment and cohesion.

Frontiers in Residential Segregation: Understanding Neighbourhood Boundaries and Their Impacts

“…Planning decisions to locate migrants in particular housing schemes, physical obstacles, infrastructure or environmental objects or features – such as railway tracks, highways, rivers, green spaces – that happen to divide communities and reduce interaction, can all provide unintended starting conditions for segregation (Hipp et al . ). Path dependencies emerge as community identity forms around these spatial features.…”

Police Legitimacy and the Norm to Cooperate: Using a Mixed Effects Location-Scale Model to Estimate the Strength of Social Norms at a Small Spatial Scale

“…They were also tailored so they would consider natural (e.g., river dividing communities) and artificial (e.g., train-tracks going through a certain neighborhood) boundaries. Hipp et al (2014) referred to these physical dividing lines as 'wedges', which normally reduce social interactions in a neighborhood and negatively impact the perception of neighborhood attachment, perceived neighborhood cohesion, and engagement in neighboring behaviors. Similarly, Wickes et al (2019) derived their neighborhood fragmentation index based on the presence of 'social wedges' (railways, motorways, rivers), features that conceivably reduce the propensity of social interactions in a given neighborhood.…”

Parks as crime inhibitors or generators: Examining parks and the role of their nearby context

“…First, parks can create a physical barrier between residents, and thus the geography of parks and the area nearby them (not simply the park itself) may hinder the formation of local social ties by creating 'social wedges' (Corcoran et al 2017;Hipp et al 2014). Accordingly, even if a park may help to strengthen ties among some residents due to their ability to provide a space for interaction (i.e., what Hipp and colleagues term 'social conduits'), they can simultaneously hinder the formation of local ties to other residents beyond the local area.…”

“…A second possibility is that parks create 'social holes' where parks hinder the process associated with forming new ties due to their lack of population (Corcoran et al 2017;Hipp et al 2014). When examining aerial maps of cities, it is evident that parks and green spaces provide gaps in the socio-spatial structure of the city (i.e., a break in the population density of the area).…”