Horowitz: Neighborhood Gathering Places Build Trust & Social Connection

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Rob Horowitz

As we all spend more of our time online, increasingly isolated from even the people that live in our neighborhood, the need for community gathering places that promote the regular interactions that build trust and social connection has become substantially more pronounced. That is the over-arching conclusion of a national study recently released by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

This important new study finds that living near “community-oriented public and commercial spaces” such as parks, libraries, restaurants, coffee shops, food markets, and theaters is associated with a number of strikingly positive benefits even after controlling for other variables such as social class, race and gender as well as whether someone resides in a city, suburb or small town. Americans who live close to these amenities are markedly less lonely and more trusting of others. Additionally, Americans who live in amenity-rich areas are much more likely to say that ‘their community is an excellent place to live, that they feel safer walking around their neighborhood at night, and to report greater interest in neighborhood goings-on.”

People who live in amenity-rich neighborhoods also have more trust in local government and more confidence in their own power to influence political decisions. More specifically, the study finds, for example, that, “Americans living closer to neighborhood restaurants, bars, parks, and libraries are about twice as likely as those living in places where these things are largely absent to say they trust local government (39 percent vs. 22 percent).”

Driving these findings--which build on, reinforce and amplify a growing body of research on the benefits of near-by community gathering places-- is the fact that Americans who live in neighborhoods rich in amenities are “twice as likely to talk daily with their neighbors as those whose neighborhoods have few amenities” and correspondingly much less likely to feel socially isolated. In suburban areas, for example, fewer than 1-in-3 people living in amenity-rich neighborhoods report feeling socially isolated as compared to 55% of people living in areas where amenities are sparse.

And most American neighborhoods need substantially more community-gathering spaces. Only 23 % of Americans reside in high-amenity communities, while 33% live in low-amenity communities. The remaining 44 % reside in moderate-amenity communities.

Fortunately, there will be plentiful opportunities to boost the number of Americans who live in amenity-rich neighborhoods, since cities and towns throughout the nation regularly update their masterplans, launch redevelopment initiatives and approve new development. Ensuring that when these initiatives are undertaken that a sufficient number of places where people can bump into each other and have old-fashioned conversations are mixed in may be the single most important thing we can do to increase trust and decrease loneliness. As the new AEI study finds, in today’s world--where we are all increasingly online-- consciously creating these community-gathering places can make all the difference.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.