On Nov 22, 2006, at 5:35 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> "Burbs not so bad after all
>
> "Shannon Proudfoot, CanWest News Service
> Published: Saturday, November 11, 2006
>
> "A new study says that people who live in sprawling suburban areas
> have more friends, better community involvement and more frequent
> contact with their neighbours than urbanites who are wedged in side-
> by-side. ...
>
> "The study, released by the University of California at Irvine,
> found that for every 10 per cent decrease in population density,
> the chances of people talking to their neighbours weekly increases
> by 10 per cent, and the likelihood they belong to hobby-based clubs
> jumps by 15 per cent.
> "We found that interaction goes down as population density goes up.
> So, turning it around, it says that interaction is higher where
> densities are lower," says Jan Brueckner, an economics professor at
> UC Irvine who led the study. "What that means is suburban living
> promotes more interaction than living in the central city." "
Since it's Thanksgiving weekend, I've been hanging out with my uncle- in-law, the sociologist Christopher Jencks. I asked him to take a look at this paper (original at URL below). His conclusion: the authors don't prove what they set out to prove. That doesn't mean they're wrong, but their model just isn't finely specified enough to draw the conclusions they want to draw.
Something that struck me was that it doesn't say much that people who live in cities don't have their friends over as often as those who live in dense areas. In New York we live in small spaces and meet in public areas like bars and restaurants. But that's a separate question.
Original paper: <http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkbrueck/socinteract.pdf>.
Doug