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To date, research into the subjective aspects of high density has focused mainly on the negative consequences of overcrowding. This study, in contrast, outlines some of the positive aspects of high density in neighborhoods, exploring the physical-spatial environment of two neighborhoods in the city of Haifa, Israel. It was found that while the relatively high residential density was similar in both neighborhoods (40 housing units per acre), this was more positively evaluated in one neighborhood as compared to the other. This can be attributed to some specific environmental and planning features. In particular, where physical planning enabled the potential advantages of high density to be realized, this was positively perceived and evaluated by local residents. Such advantages mainly comprised accessibility to a variety of services, more frequent public transportation, and access to open spaces within walking distance. Particularly advantageous were the increased opportunities for social gathering. At the same time, however, high density did not foster social relationships at the neighborhood level. The study further identified the gender and age groups that benefited most from the high density. Thus, women evaluated high density more positively than men. Young families with children and senior citizens (over 65) were also more likely to benefit, and to evaluate the high density environment more positively than other social groups.

This study tests the crime impact of the Boston South-west Corridor parkland, a 5-mile transit and linear park, on its adjoining neighbourhoods 15 years after its completion in the early 1980s. The study responds to concerns of local neighbour- hoods during the time of planning and construction, and to evidence of general public uneasiness about the dangers of linear parks to communities. In an analysis of two residential neighbourhoods adjoining the corridor, the study searched ®rst for evidence of crime spill-over from the corridor, and secondly for neighbours’ perceptions of corridor safety. To test crime spill-over, police calls from houses adjacent to the corridor were compared with calls from houses further away; interviews with residents investigated perceptions of the corridor’s safety. Findings revealed that though police calls were marginally more frequent from houses next to the corridor, these were considerably less frequent than calls from houses next to commercial streets. Interviews with residents revealed generally positive estimates of park safety by day, with low estimates of night-time safety and mixed estimates of its safety during twilight hours. Interviews also revealed heavy reliance on the corridor by the elderly and people with small children. The study concludes with recommendations for the future design of linear parks in cities.

The 'fear of crime' has been at the centre of political and policy debate for some time. The purpose of this paper is to examine critically the continued relevance of that debate in the light of findings from an in-depth two and a half year research project. The findings from that project suggest that the relation people have with crime, criminal victimization, and the fear of crime is mediated by the relevance of their relationship with their local community and their structural position within that community. Understanding the nature of these relationships suggests the question of trust is of greater value in highlighting who is and who is not afraid of crime.

Results from an inner-city teen focus group on parks and urban green space in Los Angeles, California and responses to parallel questions posed to adults from the same area show striking differences. While adults focused on activities and cited a need for additional recreation-oriented parks for teens, teenagers themselves focused on greened spaces suitable for socializing and relaxing. Teens were also keenly interested in local parks, aware of maintenance issues, and concerned about personal safety.

Definitions of environmental child friendliness offer broad criteria that are not easy to study or assess. We suggest that due to this broadness, these definitions have produced surprisingly few attempts to evaluate how child-friendly various types of physical environments are. The purpose of this study is to analyse how the structure of the built environment contributes to environmental child friendliness. We define child friendliness by two central criteria: children’s possibilities for independent mobility and their opportunities to actualize environmental affordances. We study how built environment qualities condition environmental child friendliness in place-based ways by asking children and youth in Turku, Finland, to tell about their meaningful places and their mobility to these. The data consists of over 12,000 affordances, localized by the respondents. This experiential and behavioural place-based knowledge is combined with objectively measured data on residential and building density, and quantity of green structures. Moderate urban density seems to have child-friendly characteristics such as an ability to promote independent access to meaningful places and the diversity of affordances. We find that affordances situated on residential areas are likely to be reached alone, whereas access to affordances situated in densely built urban cores is less independent. The proportion of green structures is not associated with independent access. The diversity of affordances is highest in areas that are densely populated and not very green. Green areas are important settings for doing things, and green structures around emotional affordances increase the likelihood of liking the place significantly. Combining children’s place-based experiences with information derived from objective measurable qualities of the physical environment provides a valuable methodological contribution to studies on environmental child friendliness, and the two proposed criteria of child friendliness are supported by this study. There is no one environment that is child-friendly, but different environments have different uses and meanings.

Leisure preferences and open space needs were explored within a discrete, homogeneous ethnic community: the Chinese Americans of Chicago's Chinatown. Face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions were used to identify outdoor leisure patterns and preferences, in general, and with respect to new park development being planned for the community. Findings show that although some popular activities are no different from what might be expected for the mainstream Anglo American population, the meaning and significance of these activities have clear and unique ties to Chinese culture. Preferences for the new Chinatown park development mirror activity preferences, emphasizing facilities that enhance the natural environment for passive activities. Notable differences in activity preferences were found within the sample of respondents according to age, generational status, and other factors. Park planning considerations and future research needs are identified.

The current debate on the tourism-development nexus has a rather static and narrow focus on the impact of tourism and overlooks that tourism has become strongly dependent on links between different localities. This article eschews these place-bounded approaches and focuses on linkages and the interplay between the social and the spatial within tourism developments. Drawing on the empirical case of street vendors in the tourist centre of Cusco, it explores how social capital and the way street vendors manoeuvre themselves in and through global and local environments offer new opportunities for tourism to contribute to poverty alleviation. It is maintained that social capital and interconnectivity are of fundamental importance in gaining a better understanding of the development potential of tourism.

This article makes the case for shadowing as ethnographic methodology: focusing attention on what occurs as interlocutors move among settings and situations. Whereas ethnographers often zoom in on one principal set of situations or site, we argue that intersituational variation broadens and deepens the researcher’s ethnographic account as well as affording important correctives to some common inferential pitfalls. We provide four warrants for shadowing: (a) buttressing intersituational claims, (b) deepening ethnographers’ ability to trace meaning making by showing how meanings shift as they travel and how such shifts may affect interlocutors’ understandings, (c) gaining leverage on the structure of subjects’ social worlds, and (d) helping the ethnographer make larger causal arguments. We show the use value of these considerations through an analysis of violence and informal networks in an ethnography of immigrant Latinos who met to socialize and play soccer in a Los Angeles park.

In this article, we extend research on neighborhood social isolation by (1) examining residents of disadvantaged and advantaged communities and (2) considering the character of neighborhoods where people conduct routine activities away from home. We contend that social isolation is experienced by residents of both highly disadvantaged and highly advantaged neighborhoods because the two groups spend time in largely nonoverlapping parts of the city. Individual and neighborhood race-ethnic dynamics exacerbate such social isolation. Data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey show that social isolation is experienced by residents of all areas of the city, whether highly disadvantaged or advantaged. African Americans, Latinos and residents of areas with many Latinos suffer additional penalties in the social isolation of disadvantage in where they conduct routine activities.

This article discusses how street design and traffic affect social relations in urban neighbourhoods. Three street types in the city of Basel, Switzerland were studied: a 50km/h street, a 30km/h street and three encounter zones (20km/h and pedestrian priority, also known as woonerven or home zones). The effects were measured in terms of neighbourhood interactions, use of public space and the personal feelings of belonging of residents. The study, standing in the tradition of Donald Appleyard’s liveable street research in the early 1970s, was carried out in the framework programme ‘Social Inclusion and Social Exclusion’ financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and by the Swiss Federal Office of Sports. The results show that urban neighbourhoods are (still) very lively social places, despite their often lamented anonymity and individualisation. Streets with slow moving traffic, limited space for parking and good environmental qualities offer a large potential for personal development, contentment and social integration. Neighbourhood contacts in such streets are more frequent and more intensive and the separation effects are substantially smaller. Liveable streets in urban neighbourhoods can be great places for public life and social inclusion.

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.