TY - JOUR
T1 - Fertile ground for community
T2 - Inner-city neighborhood common spaces
AU - Kuo, Frances E.
AU - Sullivan, William C
AU - Coley, Rebekah Levine
AU - Brunson, Liesette
N1 - Funding Information:
1The data for this study were drawn from the Coping with Poverty archive, a multi-study research effort supported by a grant from the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council (F. E. Kuo and W. C. Sullivan, Principal Investigators) and housed at the Human-Environment Research Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This work was also supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Project No. ILLU-65-0387. A portion of these data were presented in a poster entitled "The Influence of Nature on Neighbor Relations in Urban Public Housing" (Coley, R. L., Kuo, F. E., & Sullivan, W. C.) at the 27th annual conference of the Environmental Design Research Association, June 1996, Salt Lake City, Utah. We thank the resident interviewers, Esther Davis, Doris Gayles, and Denise Harbor, as well as the resident management and residents of Ida B. Wells and Robert Taylor Homes. 2All correspondence should be addressed to Frances E. Kuo, Human-Environment Research Laboratory, University of Illinois, 1103 S. Dorner Drive, Urbana, Illinois 61801; e-mail: [email protected].
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1998
Y1 - 1998
N2 - Research suggests that the formation of neighborhood social ties (NSTs) may substantially depend on the informal social contact which occurs in neighborhood common spaces, and that in inner-city neighborhoods where common spaces are often barren no-man's lands, the presence of trees and grass supports common space use and informal social contact among neighbors. We found that for 145 urban public housing residents randomly assigned to 18 architecturally identical buildings, levels of vegetation in common spaces predict both use of common spaces and NSTs; further, use of common spaces mediated the relationship between vegetation and NSTs. In addition, vegetation and NSTs were significantly related to residents' senses of safety and adjustment. These findings suggest that the use and characteristics of common spaces may play a vital role in the natural growth of community, and that improving common spaces may be an especially productive focus for community organizing efforts in inner-city neighborhoods.
AB - Research suggests that the formation of neighborhood social ties (NSTs) may substantially depend on the informal social contact which occurs in neighborhood common spaces, and that in inner-city neighborhoods where common spaces are often barren no-man's lands, the presence of trees and grass supports common space use and informal social contact among neighbors. We found that for 145 urban public housing residents randomly assigned to 18 architecturally identical buildings, levels of vegetation in common spaces predict both use of common spaces and NSTs; further, use of common spaces mediated the relationship between vegetation and NSTs. In addition, vegetation and NSTs were significantly related to residents' senses of safety and adjustment. These findings suggest that the use and characteristics of common spaces may play a vital role in the natural growth of community, and that improving common spaces may be an especially productive focus for community organizing efforts in inner-city neighborhoods.
KW - Environmental variables
KW - Neighborhood social ties
KW - Neighboring
KW - Sense of community
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U2 - 10.1023/A:1022294028903
DO - 10.1023/A:1022294028903
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0001082118
SN - 0091-0562
VL - 26
SP - 823
EP - 851
JO - American journal of community psychology
JF - American journal of community psychology
IS - 6
ER -