Black Neighborhood Attachment and the Built Environment of Social Capital & Collective Action

Background:Historically African American neighborhoods preserve cultural memories, foment group identities, and motivate corrective collective action. Neighbors, particularly in historic African American neighborhoods, need effective social capital relationships to act collectively upon community-level concerns such as crime, housing, and the welfare of youth. Urban neighborhoods confront many challenges in creating and maintaining a sense of cohesion among neighbors. These can inhibit residents, most especially black and minority poor residents, from building the social capital and neighborhood attachments necessary for collective action. Yet African American attachments to their neighborhoods are undergoing dramatic changes due to the built environment – gentrification, economic development, transportation networks, and urban sprawl – that impact social ties. Geographic inequalities such as the spatial mismatch between affordable housing and qualified jobs, and the maldistribution of services lessen the opportunities for neighbor interaction and thereby decrease neighborhood attachment to the detriment of social and economic development. Little research has examined if spatial factors related to the built environment impact collective action in neighborhoods. Our study contributes to the literature by testing the association between the spatial distance to social capital generation sites, neighborhood social capital, and collective action. This is important to social workers who engage, assess, and intervene at the neighborhood level to increase well-being.

 Methods: Data are from telephone survey of African American adults in Atlanta (n=402). The statistically representative, stratified random sample was drawn from 20,000 landline and cellphone numbers of adult African American residents from fourteen zip codes within downtown Atlanta. We measured neighborhood attachment with a single item; we measured built environment by asking miles driven to locations of social capital generation; and we measured neighborhood social capital with three items on trust and cooperation. We used OLS regression with robust standard errors to estimate the associations.

 Results: Men, particularly in high-poverty zip codes, are more likely to report stronger neighborhood attachment (b = -.083, p < .05) as are residents who trust their neighbors (b = .221, p < .005) and believe neighbors will help each other (b = .290, p < .001). Residents who travel further to church (b = -.011, p < .005) or to participate in civic organizations (b = -.003, p < .005) have lower neighborhood attachment. Men are more likely to cooperate with neighbors to solve problems (b = -.216, p < .001), or to demonstrate higher neighborhood social capital; distance traveled to civic organizations decreases collective action (b = -.009, p < .05).

 Implications: The built environment impacts neighborhood-level social capital and neighborhood attachment among African Americans. As urban sprawl pushes individual-level social capital generation sites away from neighborhoods and commute times to work increase, neighborhood attachment decreases. This lowers willingness to address neighborhood problems collectively. Social work researchers should consider that trade-offs in social capital impact a neighborhood’s ability to address social and economic problems. Distances traveled to work and sites of civic engagement and social capital creation draw resources out of urban neighborhoods. Practitioners need to intervene in multiple social spaces to impact neighborhood outcomes.