Sense of Community and Neighbourhood Form: An Assessment of the Social Doctrine of New Urbanism

Abstract

New urbanism, an umbrella term which encompasses 'neotraditional development' as well as 'traditional neighbourhood design', lives by an unswerving belief in the ability of the built environment to create a 'sense of community'. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the social doctrine of new urbanism can be successfully supported or at least integrated with the social science literature which deals with the question of community formation. Towards this goal, the paper first delineates the social doctrine of new urbanism, and then discusses the conceptual frameworks and empirical findings that either support or contradict the idea that a sense of community will follow the physical form of cities and neighbourhoods generally and new urbanist principles specifically. After laying this groundwork, the remainder of the paper presents an assessment of whether a reconciliation between research and doctrine may be possible, in light of various apparent contradictions between the social claims of new urbanists and the results of research by social scientists. It is concluded that new urbanists need to clarify the meaning of sense of community as it pertains to physical design. Further, it is maintained that while some research supports the idea that resident interaction and sense of community are related to environmental factors, the effectuation of this goal is usually only achieved via some intermediate variable. This latter point leaves open the question of whether any number of other design creeds could produce the same result via a different design philosophy. The need for further research is stressed; this should be focused on investigating the issue more directly.

Assessing the social and environmental achievements of New Urbanism: evidence from Portland, Oregon

“…See Talen (1999Talen ( , 2002 for discussions of the social interactions that new urbanist 6 communities are meant to encourage, and the complications that sometimes emerge in attaining these goals.…”

Being closer in the remoteness. The emergence of living environments in an urban periphery

“…Como ha señalado Emily Talen (1999Talen ( , p. 1367, la ausencia de un territorio concreto y compartido puede determinar la inexistencia de relaciones y la aparición de un vacío social. En determinados fraccionamientos del Área Metropolitana de Guadalajara, el vacío y la lejanía urbanos son seguidos, así, por un vacío y lejanía sociales.…”

“…(Entrevistado Nº 27, entrevista personal, mujer ama de Casa, 50 años, Cabecera Municipal de El Salto, 3 de noviembre de 2014) De una forma orgánica o espontánea, los centros de población de El Verde, El Castillo, Las Pintas, El Quince o la Cabecera Municipal de El Salto han acaparado todas las características que, de manera premeditada, están caracterizando a los intentos más recientes del urbanismo por recuperar contextos vecinales de proximidad. Aquí encontramos usos del suelo mixtos (Moavenzadeh y Markow, 2007, p. 103;Tait, 2003, p. 38), el comercio de proximidad (Marquet y Miralles-Guasch, 2015, p. 263), una gran riqueza de dotación del entorno (Hull, 2011, p. 40), o la conservación de los usos peatonales y de socialización de las calles (Leyden, 2003(Leyden, , p. 1546Talen, 1999Talen, , p. 1364. Como se ha consignado en la literatura especializada (Lewis y Baldassare, 2010 o, 231;Marquet y Miralles-Guash, 2014, p. 215), este tipo de entorno es especialmente provechoso para las clases sociales pobres y desfavorecidas.…”

Evaluating the Impact of Density on Access to Local Facilities in Urban Neighbourhoods

“…Bramley et al (2010, p. 111) stated that "there are reasons to expect access to services to be better in denser urban forms, while the quality of neighbourhood environment, community and social interaction may be less good in denser areas". It was also claimed that higher density would promote commercial viability and therefore revived public realm (Talen, 1999). Similarly, Dempsey et.al (2012) also claimed that residential density impacts several aspects of social sustainability and positive influence on the use of local services and facilities is the most obvious.…”