Sense of Community and Its Association With the Neighborhood Built Environment

Abstract

We investigated the influence of neighborhood built form on sense of community in Perth, Western Australia. It was hypothesized that sense of community would be stronger in individuals living in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. Multivariate linear regression models explored associations between walking and sense of community, with progressive adjustment for objective and perceived neighborhood characteristics. Sense of community was positively associated with walking for transport and positive perceptions of neighborhood quality, and negatively associated with residential density. The findings highlight the influence of local area perceptions on sense of community that appeared to be more important than objective environment characteristics. However, the latter may influence perceptions, and this requires investigation.

Neighborhood Built Environments Affecting Social Capital and Social Sustainability in Seoul, Korea

“…Most have focused on density as an important neighborhood built environment factor related to social sustainability [43,44,46,47]. The density, disorder or maintenance of a neighborhood [48], the quality of the perceived environment [45] and parks [49] are suggested to be related to social sustainability.…”

“…Perceived environment variables are measured by the survey respondents' perceptions. Neighborhood perceived environment quality showed a relationship with social capital [71][72][73], and it can be relevant to social sustainability [47,65]. Other studies also used perceived environment variables, such as the existence of green space, safety and maintenance [44,74].…”

“…Land use diversity has a high proportion of commercial use and business use with a high value of land use mix (LUM) [76]. It has been emphasized that this is related to social capital or social sustainability [44,45,47,51,53,65]. The second variable is the characteristics of residential areas, where an area with a high proportion of single-family houses and row/multi-family houses, narrow roads and many intersections (small blocks) can be interpreted as similar to a neighborhood type [41,50,71,73].…”

Built Landscapes of Metropolitan Regions: An International Typology

“…Among these are Patrick Condon's (2010) vision of highly connected, grid-like, dense, mixeduse urban patterns and Douglas Farr's (2008) proposals for compact urban neighborhoods with green buildings and district energy systems. Fraker (2013) has analyzed existing ecological neighborhoods in several countries, emphasizing the importance of thinking at the neighborhood scale to meet sustainability goals.…”

“…In addition to qualitative analysis pioneered by Lynch and other environmental design researchers, quantitative researchers in recent years have correlated built form with public health and active living (e.g., Frumkin, 2002;Saelens, Sallis, & Frank, 2003), motor vehicle use (e.g., Ewing & Cervero, 2010), urban heat island effects (e.g., Stone & Rogers, 2001), energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Ewing, Bartholomew, Winkelman, Walters, & Anderson, 2008;Ewing & Rong, 2008), and sense of community (e.g., French et al, 2014). Researchers have found statistically valid relationships for most of these effects, although performance variables for urban form are often highly multidetermined (affected by many other spatial and socioeconomic factors) and statistical analyses are diffi cult.…”