The Built Environment of Communities and Social Capital

Abstract

This chapter discusses how the people organize their communities affects one's connections to each other and to the places they live. It also defines the built environment and introduce important characteristics that can differentiate communities from each other. The chapter describes social capital and highlights the changing social patterns that began during the second half of the 20th Century. This social capital literature offers important clues to suggest the possibility that aspects of the built environment in communities can affect individual and community-level social capital. The built environment of a community is the result of policy decisions and planning laws made by political and economic actors. Aspects of the built environment have been found to predict outcomes as important as air and water quality, physical activity and health, car-accidents, and mental illness. Policy-makers and researchers need to think far more about the effects of good land-use and transportation planning on people and their sense of community.

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