In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argues that the decline of social capital in the U.S. can be attributed partly to urban form. In other words, according to Putnam, sprawl is at least partly to blame for the present derth of bowling leagues. But is it really?
Putnam's arguments (summarized at the end of Chapter 12) are threefold.
- "Sprawl takes time": more time alone in a car and less for civic engagement.
- "Sprawl is associated with increasing social segregation," and that segregation has led to less community participation.
- "Sprawl disrupts community 'boundedness'," and that physical fragmentation reduces social involvement.
Although Putnam's claim -- that sprawl erodes social capital -- is widely referenced, my survey of the evidence makes me suspicious. My objections are threefold.
First, sprawl does not absorb more commuting time than urbanization. Data from the National Household Transportation Survey shows astonishingly similar travel times across residential densities. Actually, residents of high densities spend the most time traveling. (Caveat: the NHTS is for "travel time" not specifically "commuting time," which Putnam is interested in, though commuting only accounts for about 1/4 of all personal trips.)
In fairness, high-density households spend about 1/3 less time driving and proportionately more time walking, busing, or biking. So it's possible that urbanites use that extra 20 minutes per day to form social networks on public transit, but it seems equally possible that suburbanites form social networks while carpooling. In any case, no matter what the residential density, households sink roughly the same large chunk of time into commuting (74 to 79 minutes/day, most of which, even at high densities, is driving).
Putnam asserts a rough formula for measuring the effects of commuting: "each additional 10 minutes in daily commuting time cuts involvement in community affairs by 10 percent." Still, I can't see why sprawl is the culprit here. Instead, the culprit seems to be something like congestion, or perhaps the sheer physical size of cities (admittedly related to sprawl), or perhaps even the population size of cities, which necessitates physical breadth. If sprawl is irrelevant here, it may help explain a point that Putnam apparently takes to be puzzling: that both suburban and urban residents in big metro regions have less social capital than their small town counterparts.
Second, sprawl may be associated with social segregation, but the evidence that this erodes social capital is not conclusive, at least as far as I'm aware. Putnam does cite a couple of interesting studies here, but there are many more he bypasses. In a more comprehensive survey of the evidence, "The Effects of Sprawl on Neighborhood Social Ties," Lance Freeman finds that "the existing evidence is not conclusive" and that moreover very high densities may actually be corrosive of social capital.
Freeman's study goes on to find that residential density is unrelated to neighborhood social ties, but is strongly related to automobile dependence. As car dependence is generally a feature of sprawl, it may be that Freeman's study supports Putnam's conclusions. Still, both Freeman's survey of the literature and his data analysis should serve as a cautionary tale for imputing too much explanatory power to low residential density, which is often treated as the defining characteristic of sprawl.
Third, the importance of community "boundedness" is, as far as I can tell, based on only one study that's now more than 30 years old. Admittedly, it was something of a classic, but it's rather hard to imagine that the cultural and geographic forces in play in 1972 are the same ones that now impede social capital. To take just one example, city center populations have been growing again, rather than hollowing out as they were in the 1970s.
I'd like to see more evidence on this subject. It could be that Putnam is basically right and I'm just nitpicking, but for the time being I'm suspending judgment on the social effects of sprawl.
Comments
View as Flat
bhurley Posted 1:53 am
16 Aug 2005
With services widely available to anyone who can afford them, we don't really need our neighbors and community members anymore. We can take care of ourselves on our own. In the past people needed to build relationships with their neighbors and the wider community to help with barn-raisings, the harvest, etc.; now we just hire a contractor or go to the grocery store. The relationship most of us have with the larger community is now one-way: it provides services, we use them. I don't think sprawl has anything to do with that.
Television and the internet engage people's time after work, and for families the extracurricular activities of their kids (soccer, theater, etc.) engage their time on weekends. Who has time to get involved in their community? It's just not a priority anymore, mainly because of point number 1 above.
Permalink
Avidities Posted 4:43 am
16 Aug 2005
Since Putnam's groundbreaking work, researchers have continued to document the scope and depth of the disengagement trend, they have been cautious to offer any explanations. The explanations that have been offered mainly rely on the observation (rather than empirical assessment) of other trends and patterns that have occurred concurrently with the civic disengagement trend. Busyness and time pressures; economic hard times; the movement of women into the workforce and two career families; suburbanization, sprawl and increased residential mobility; changes to the structure and scale of the American economy; disruptions to the family unit from divorce and single parent homes; growth in the welfare state; social movements like the civil rights revolution; and incidents like the Vietnam War, Watergate and the cultural revolution against authority have all been offered as possible reasons to declining social capital.
While Putnam himself offers some possible explanation into this phenomenon to be empirically examined, in no way did he offer them as conclusions. (as a side note, its important to point out that Putnam's primary theory in both his book and his 1995 article in PS: Political Science & Politics, is that television is the greatest cause for declining social networking.)
Michael,
http://www.care2.com
Permalink
Payton Chung Posted 6:37 am
14 Oct 2005
Sprawl is indeed perhaps more a correlative symptom than a cause of civic disengagement: the apotheosis of the socially isolated affluent society. So many daily exchanges which, in cities, take place in public space, or semi-public spaces with ancillary market functions -- particularly shopping, recreation, transportation, and entertainment -- have, in suburbia, been privatized and cordoned off into pervasively monetized, professionally and privately (i.e., undemocratically) managed, profit centers.
Yesteryear's urban semi-public spaces, like Pike Place Market or Coney Island or Main Street, were much less sophisticated in their ability to separate fools and money than their modern equivalents: Super Target, Six Flags, and the Galleria Towne Centre. Indeed, people with no market business were allowed in the former, but not the latter. Cities have strong public spaces and vestiges of semi-public spaces left; suburbs have none, and this may explain the link between social capital and sprawl.
.pc
Permalink