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Breaking Down Barriers to Community Life: Social Contact, Local Travel, and Community Sentiment and Cohesion in Suburban Neighborhoods Author: Hollie M Person Lund Dissertation School: Portland State University Pages: 298 Publication Date: September 2001 Availability: Access Number: 10738 Abstract: The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the ways in which the public realm of neighborhoods encourage or inhibit daily travel behaviors, social behaviors, lifestyles, and community sentiments of neighborhood residents. This issue is of particular importance right now, as new urbanists attempt to enhance community life, accommodate lifestyle diversity, and improve local self-sufficiency through the physical environment-by returning to the designs of traditional ‘streetcar suburbs’—without an adequate base of empirical research which reveals the intricacies of neighborhood life and the needs and desires of individuals. This study will evaluate and compare the behaviors, attitudes and lifestyles of residents from eight suburban neighborhoods within the Portland, Oregon metropolitan region. These neighborhoods will represent four variations of public space, with public spaces defined for the purposes of this study as the sidewalks, parks, and retail. At one extreme will be neighborhoods with a pedestrian-oriented environment but no access to local amenities. At the other extreme will be neighborhoods with a pedestrian-oriented environment and local access to both a park and retail activity. In-between will be neighborhoods with access to just one amenity or the other. This structure will help to differentiate between the influence of pedestrian environments, park accessibility, and retail accessibility—all of which are elements of the public realm being advocated by new urbanism. In addition, due to the limited number of new urbanism developments, their lack of time to develop, and their replication of traditional neighborhood designs, the study will include a mix of new and more established neighborhoods. Household surveys will be used to gather quantitative and qualitative data in the following areas: community satisfaction; walking trip frequencies and motivation; perceptions of the local environment; trip frequencies for other travel modes; neighborhood-based social behavior of adults and children; neighborhood attachment; residential choice; lifestyles and shopping patterns within and outside the neighborhood; and relevant sociodemographic characteristics. A variety of regression and ANOVA analyses will be conducted at both the individual and neighborhood level. The research proposed here will improve upon the existing base of empirical evidence in three important ways. First, it will provide a bridge between the fields of psychology and sociology and the fields of transportation, planning and urban design. Second, it will provide a more comprehensive view of the daily happenings within a range of neighborhood typologies. Third, by drawing from past research designs, it will provide a basis for comparisons and add to the credibility of existing survey tools. |
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