Social Capital and Community Design
Social capital is broadly defined as the resources that individuals can access through their connections to a social group. Examples of such resources include exchange of social support and the ability to undertake collective action for mutual benefit. Th
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troduction During a qualitative study on neighborhood environments and health in a middle-income neighborhood in Oakland, California, a participant in a focus group commented: “I feel that my neighborhood contributes to my health, and it does so in many ways. . . . [If] something . . . [like] an accident happens and I break my leg in my house I know my neighbors will come to my aid. . . . [But] I think that over time an even greater impact is having a sense of belonging and a sense of neighbors that I trust around me helps reduce anxiety and it’s good for my mental well being” [Altschuler, Somkin, and Adler 2004, 1226]. A.L. Dannenberg et al. (eds.), Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-036-1_8, © Island Press 2011
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THE IMPACT OF COMMUNITY DESIGN ON HEALTH
What Is Social Capital? What the Oakland resident was describing in her neighborhood is the characteristic that researchers have labeled social capital. It has been the subject of commentaries on American life for more than a century. More recent interest in the concept can be traced to the work of sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman. Bourdieu (1986) defined social capital as network-based resources, or “the aggregate of actual or potential resources linked to possession of a durable network.” Coleman (1990) presented a more functionalist approach, citing the different forms that social capital could take, including (a) trustworthiness of social environment, which makes possible reciprocity exchanges; (b) information channels; (c) norms and effective sanctions; and (d) appropriable social organizations, or associations that are established for a specific purpose (for example, a neighborhood group established to fight crime) but can later be appropriated for broader uses. The concept of social capital was further popularized by the political scientist Robert Putnam, who defined social capital as “the features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions” (Putnam 1993). According to Putnam, social capital can be both a private good and a public good, so the meaning and consequences of social investment are different in the individual and collective realms (Putnam 2000). An individual who participates in a crime watch group experiences the psychological benefit of reduced fear of crime; yet the neighborhood crime watch group benefits the community as a whole because even members of the community who are unaware of the group meetings may reap the benefits of a collective, watchful eye. In this chapter, to distinguish the effects of social capital from related individual-level constructs such as social support, we remain consistent with most of the public health literature on social capital and focus on community-level social capital, or social capital as a public good. Another important distinction in considering social capital is the one between bonding social capital and bridging socia
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