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This paper assesses and synthesizes the cumulative results of a new “neighborhood-effects” literature that examines social processes related to problem behaviors and health-related outcomes. Our review identified over 40 relevant studies published in peer-reviewed journals from the mid-1990s to 2001, the take-off point for an increasing level of interest in neighborhood effects. Moving beyond traditional characteristics such as concentrated poverty, we evaluate the salience of social-interactional and institutional mechanisms hypothesized to account for neighborhood-level variations in a variety of phenomena (e.g., delinquency, violence, depression, high-risk behavior), especially among adolescents. We highlight neighborhood ties, social control, mutual trust, institutional resources, disorder, and routine activity patterns. We also discuss a set of thorny methodological problems that plague the study of neighborhood effects, with special attention to selection bias. We conclude with promising strategies and directions for future research, including experimental designs, taking spatial and temporal dynamics seriously, systematic observational approaches, and benchmark data on neighborhood social processes.

Residents in a neighborhood view physical disorders as a potential incubator for negative incidents. Even though the disorders may not directly bring serious crime to the neighborhood, the poor physical conditions may affect residents in other ways, including increases in perceived physical disorder and fear of crime and decreases in neighborhood satisfaction. Focusing on the effects of physical disorder, this study examined the underlying associations between the actual upkeep, perceived upkeep, and neighborhood satisfaction using a structural equation model. The findings confirmed interrelationships be- tween factors; confirmed that as some categories of actual upkeep improved, perceived upkeep and neighborhood satisfaction improved; confirmed that as perceived upkeep improved, perceived safety from crime and neighborhood satisfaction improved; and confirmed that as perceived safety from crime improved, neighborhood satisfaction improved. The structural equation model showed that actual physical upkeep factors each had indirect effects on perceived upkeep, safety from crime, and neighborhood satisfaction.

This study investigated influences of residential street layout on neighboring. The study design was quasi-experimental with one pretest and two posttest measurements in an intervention group and two control groups. Data were collected using a recently developed questionnaire (MMN) and through field observations. The intervention implemented in this study was a transformation of three sections of residential streets into street parks, entailing considerable changes in street floor and spatial layout, provisions of street furniture like benches, planting of trees and flower beds, installation of play equipment, and prohibition of traffic and parked vehicles. Supportive acts of neighboring, neighbor annoyance, and children's play showed an overall increase in the intervention streets, interpreted as a sign of increased involvement in the neighborhood. Weak social ties and neighborhood attachment showed more complex patterns of changes, depending on demographic factors. It is suggested that symbolic effects of the changes may be more significant than functional effects, and thus that a change of neighborhood identity is an important mechanism.

Despite the fact that virtual environments are increasingly deployed to study the relation between urban planning, physical and social disorder, and fear of crime, their ecological validity for this type of research has not been established. This study compares the effects of similar signs of public disorder (litter, warning signs, cameras, signs of vandalism and car burglary) in an urban neighborhood and in its virtual counterpart on the subjective perception of safety and livability of the neighborhood. Participants made a walking tour through either the real or the virtual neighborhood, which was either in an orderly (baseline) state or adorned with numerous signs of public disorder. During their tour they reported the signs of disorder they noticed and the degree to which each of these affected their emotional state and feelings of personal safety. After finishing their tour they appraised the perceived safety and livability of the environment. Both in the real and in the simulated urban neighborhood, signs of disorder evoked associations with social disorder. In all conditions, neglected greenery was spontaneously reported as a sign of disorder. Disorder did not inspire concern for personal safety in reality and in the virtual environment with a realistic soundscape. However, in the absence of sound disorder compromised perceived personal safety in the virtual environment. Signs of disorder were associated with negative emotions more frequently in the virtual environment than in its real-world counterpart, particularly in the absence of sound. Also, signs of disorder degraded the perceived livability of the virtual, but not of the real neighborhood. Hence, it appears that people focus more on details in a virtual environment than in reality. We conclude that both a correction for this focusing effect and realistic soundscapes are required to make virtual environments an appropriate medium for both etiological (e.g. the effects of signs of disorder on fear of crime) and intervention (e.g. CPTED) research.

Creating “community” has long been a goal of urban planners. Although such rhetoric abounds in planning circles, what it all means is unclear. In this article, the authors review the community psychology and urban plan- ning literature, defining sense of community within the context of how the built environment might facilitate or impede it. They then present their research, which tests the effects of “main street” on sense of community in four San Francisco neighborhoods. Results indicate that respondents in neighborhoods exhibiting characteristics of a main street town (Bernal Heights and West Portal) have significantly higher sense of community than do respondents from a high-density neighborhood (Nob Hill) and from a more suburban-style city neighborhood (Sunset).

Drawing on the social disorganization tradition and the social ecological perspective of Jane Jacobs, the authors hypothesize that neighborhoods composed of residents who intersect in space more frequently as a result of routine activities will exhibit higher levels of collective efficacy, intergenerational closure, and social network interaction and exchange. They develop this approach employing the concept of ecological networks—two-mode networks that indirectly link residents through spatial overlap in routine activities. Using data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, they find evidence that econetwork extensity (the average proportion of households in the neighborhood to which a given household is tied through any location) and intensity (the degree to which household dyads are characterized by ties through multiple locations) are positively related to changes in social organization between 2000–2001 and 2006–2008. These findings demonstrate the relevance of econetwork characteristics—heretofore neglected in research on urban neighborhoods—for consequential dimensions of neighborhood social organization.

A number of recent studies have used surveys of neighborhood informants and direct observation of city streets to assess aspects of community life such as collective efficacy, the density of kin networks, and social disorder. Raudenbush and Sampson (1999a) have coined the term “ecometrics” to denote the study of the reliability and validity of such assessments. Random errors of measurement will attenuate the associations between these assessments and key outcomes. To address this problem, some studies have used empirical Bayes methods to reduce such biases, while assuming that neighborhood random effects are statistically independent. In this paper we show that the precision and validity of ecometric measures can be considerably improved by exploiting the spatial dependence of neighborhood social processes within the framework of empirical Bayes shrinkage. We compare three estimators of a neighborhood social process: the ordinary least squares estimator (OLS), an empirical Bayes estimator based on the independence assumption (EBE), and an empirical Bayes estimator that exploits spatial dependence (EBS). Under our model assumptions, EBS performs better than EBE and OLS in terms of expected mean squared error loss. The benefits of EBS relative to EBE and OLS depend on the magnitude of spatial dependence, the degree of neighborhood heterogeneity, as well as neighborhood's sample size. A cross-validation study using the original 1995 data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and a replication of that survey in 2002 show that the empirical benefits of EBS approximate those expected under our model assumptions; EBS is more internally consistent and temporally stable and demonstrates higher concurrent and predictive validity. A fully Bayes approach has the same properties as does the empirical Bayes approach, but it is preferable when the number of neighborhoods is small.

Most theoretical perspectives on neighborhood effects on youth assume that neighborhood context serves as a source of socialization. The exact sources and processes underlying adolescent socialization in disadvantaged neighborhoods, however, are largely unspecified and unelaborated. This article proposes that cross-cohort socialization by older neighborhood peers is one source of socialization for adolescent boys. Data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey suggest that adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to spend time with older individuals. I analyze qualitative interview data from 60 adolescent boys in three neighborhoods in Boston to understand the causes and consequences of these interactions and relationships. Some of the strategies these adolescents employ to cope with violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods promote interaction with older peers, particularly those who are most disadvantaged. Furthermore, such interactions can expose adolescents to local, unconventional, or alternative cultural models.

Latino immigrant presence in urban neighborhoods has been linked with reduced neighborhood cohesion in social disorganization-based ethnic heterogeneity hypotheses and enhanced cohesion in immigration revitalization approaches. Using the 2000–2002 Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and the 1994–1995 Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods Community Survey, we explore the association between Latino immigrant concentration and both levels of, and agreement about, neighborhood collective efficacy. Findings from multilevel models with heteroskedastic variance indicate that Latino immigrant concentration exhibits a nonlinear association with collective efficacy. At low levels, increases in Latino immigrant concentration diminish collective efficacy, consistent with a heterogeneity hypothesis. The negative association between Latino immigrant concentration and collective efficacy declines in magnitude as immigrant concentration increases and, particularly in LA, becomes positive beyond a threshold, consistent with an immigration revitalization effect. We also find an inverse nonlinear pattern of association with the variance of collective efficacy. At low levels, increasing Latino immigrant concentration increases the variance of collective efficacy (reflecting more disagreement), but beyond a threshold, this association becomes negative (reflecting increasing agreement). This pattern is observed in both LA and Chicago. The prevalence of social interaction and reciprocated exchange within neighborhoods explains a modest proportion of the Latino immigrant concentration effect on mean levels of collective efficacy in Chicago, but does little to explain effects on the mean in LA or effects on the variance in either LA or Chicago. These findings offer insight into the complex role Latino immigrant presence plays in shaping neighborhood social climate.

This research examines the relationship between the perception and fear of crime on the one hand and neighborhood cohesion, social activity, and affect for the community on the other, using survey data collected from interviews with a sample of residents of a western Canadian city. The hypotheses that the perception of increased crime and the fear of crime would be inversely related to neighborhood cohesion and social activity were not supported. But as hypothesized, the fear of crime was negatively related to affect for the community. And the prediction that the experience of actual victimization would not affect these hypothesized relationships was supported. When various social and residential variables were included with fear of crime in a multiple regression to predict community affect, low fear and older age were found to result in greater affect both for the neighborhood and the city. In addition, females and the less well-educated had more affect for the city. An exploration of possible interaction effects between fear of crime and the social and residential variables did not yield any significant results.

Critics have long denounced the design of suburban communities for fostering political apathy. We disaggregate the concept of suburban design into four distinct attributes of neighborhoods. We then use tract-level Census data, the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, and multilevel models to measure the relationship between these design features and political participation. Certain design aspects common in suburban neighborhoods are powerful predictors of reduced political activity, illustrating a potential link between neighborhood design and politics. Yet low-density environments appear to facilitate some types of participation. Suburban designs vary, and so do their likely impacts on political participation.

This article assesses the sources and consequences of public disorder. Based on the videotaping and systematic rating of more than 23,000 street segments in Chicago, highly reliable scales of social and physical disorder for 196 neighborhoods are constructed. Census data, police records, and an independent survey of more than 3,500 residents are then integrated to test a theory of collective efficacy and structural constraints. Defined as cohesion among residents combined with shared expectations for the social control of public space, collective efficacy explains lower rates of crime and observed disorder after controlling neighborhood structural characteristics. Collective efficacy is also linked to lower rates of violent crime after accounting for disorder and the reciprocal effects of violence. Contrary to the “broken windows” theory, however, the relationship between public disorder and crime is spurious except perhaps for robbery.

Recent critiques of conventional poverty research have highlighted the need to move beyond the conceptual limitations of “neighborhood effects” models and the use of the tropes of “adaptation” or “resistance” to explain the behaviors and actions of the urban poor. We use ethnographic field observations and interviews with public-housing residents to address these limitations in the poverty literature, assess competing explanations of poor people’s agency, and provide insight into the importance of space as a mediating link between macrostructural constraints and locally situated behaviors. We theorize agency and identity as spatial phenomena—with spatial attributes and spatial influences—and examine how different spatial meanings and locations enable or constrain particular forms of social action and behavior. Our ethnographic and interview data depict several strategies by which residents “use space” to provide a measure of security and protection, to designate and avoid areas of criminality and drug activity, and to challenge or support the redevelopment of public housing. From these data we show that urban space is not a residual phenomenon in which social action occurs, but a constitutive dimension of social life that shapes life experiences, social conflict, and action.

The social integration of a city depends on the extent to which people from different neighborhoods have the opportunity to interact with one another, but most prior work has not developed formal ways of conceptualizing and measuring this kind of connectedness. In this article, we develop original, network-based measures of what we call “structural connectedness” based on the everyday travel of people across neighborhoods. Our principal index captures the extent to which residents in each neighborhood of a city travel to all other neighborhoods in equal proportion. Our secondary index captures the extent to which travels within a city are concentrated in a handful of receiving neighborhoods. We illustrate the value of our indices for the 50 largest American cities based on hundreds of millions of geotagged tweets over 18 months. We uncover important features of major American cities, including the extent to which their connectedness depends on a few neighborhood hubs, and the fact that in several cities, contact between some neighborhoods is all but nonexistent. We also show that cities with greater population densities, more cosmopolitanism, and less racial segregation have higher levels of structural connectedness. Our indices can be applied to data at any spatial scale, and our measures pave the way for more powerful and precise analyses of structural connectedness and its effects across a broad array of social phenomena.

Epidemiology, sociology, and geography have been successful in re-establishing interest in the role of place in shaping health and health inequalities. However, some of the relevant empirical research has relied on rather conventional conceptions of space and place and focused on isolating the ‘‘independent’’ contribution of place-level and individual-level factors. This approach may have resulted in an underestimate of the contribution of ‘place’ to disease risk. In this paper we argue the case for extensive (quantitative) as well as intensive (qualitative) empirical, as well as theoretical, research on health variation that incorporates ‘relational’, views of space and place. Specifically, we argue that research in place and health should avoid the false dualism of context and composition by recognising that there is a mutually reinforcing and reciprocal relationship between people and place. We explore in the discussion how these theoretical perspectives are beginning to influence empirical research. We argue that these approaches to understanding how place relates to health are important in order to deliver effective, ‘contextually sensitive’ policy interventions. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Streets have become dangerous, unlivable environments, yet most people live on them. Streets need to be redefined as sanctuaries; as livable places; as communities; as resident territory; as places for play, greenery, and local history. Neighborhoods should be protected, though not to the point of being exclusionary. The neighborhood unit, the environmental area and the Woonerf are examined as models for the protected neighborhood. The criteria for a protected neighborhood depend on acceptable speeds, volumes, noise levels, reduction of accidents, and rights-of-way for pedestrians.

The climate of a city influences the ways in which its outdoor spaces are used. Especially public spaces intended for use by pedestrians and cyclists, such as parks, squares, residential and shopping streets, and foot- and cycle-paths will be used and enjoyed more frequently when they have a comfortable and healthy climate. Due to a predicted global temperature rise, the climate is likely to be more uncomfortable in the Netherlands, especially in summer, when an increase in heat stress is expected. As the phenomenon of urban heat islands (UHI) aggravates heat stresses, the effects will be more severe in urban environments. Since the spatial characteristics of a city influence its climate, urban design can be deployed to mitigate the combined effects of climate change and UHI’s. This paper explores these effects and tries to provide tools for urban design and strategies for implementation. Consequently, the applicability of the design tools is tested in a design for two existing Dutch neighbourhoods.

In recent years, a greater emphasis on user analysis and public participation in park planning has resulted in a greater scrutiny of the standards and guidelines used to establish and/or develop park areas within a community. The insensitivity of past "service area" approaches to meet the needs of neighborhood constituencies has created a demand to examine alternative approaches to defining neighborhood boundaries and the subsequent location of neighborhood parks. Two techniques that have been useful in accurately defining neighborhood boundaries and predicting use and nonuse of existing park facilities are examined.

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.

This article examines park use in relation to neighborhood social (safety and poverty) and urban form (pedestrian infrastructure and street network pattern) characteristics among youth and adult subpopulations defined by age and gender. We utilized System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) and Geographic Information Systems to objectively measure park use and park and neighborhood characteristics in 20 neighborhood parks. Heterogeneous negative binomial regression models indicated that the relationship between park use and types of activity settings, and park use and neighborhood attributes vary by age and gender. In general, the study found that park and activity setting size; activity settings such as playgrounds, basketball courts, pool and water features, shelters, and picnic areas; and availability of sidewalks and intersections in the park’s neighborhood were positively associated with park use, whereas crime, poverty, and racial heterogeneity of the surrounding neighborhood were negatively associated with park use.