(cc) Cornell University

Bullet points, sans synthesis:

• Some venture to say that the phrase, “the wrong side of the tracks,” has its origins in the pollution generated by early locomotive technology. The prevailing winds blew the pollution on to the “wrong side,” resulting in lower real estate values. This affected what was built where, and, consequently, who lived on either side. That is, lower real estate values, attracts lower class residents, which means the presence of the “wrong” or criminal element. This chain of causation seems much too simple. Fallacious logic, though it could be part of the story.
• Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart, contends that we tend to self-sort—pinpointing a tipping point in such activity as Americans moved away from traditional social institutions around 1965. I’m sure this is the same kind of finger pointing that Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone accomplishes by pointing the decline in civic engagement. That is, engagement in these traditional social institutions. Other theses I’ve seen on this take up the rural to urban transition from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries—that the rise in these institutions provided social structures once found in the relatively homogeneity of small town life.
• I’ve blogged about Putnam’s hunkering thesis:

New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture,” Scandinavian Political Studies.

• Researchers Ann Bowman and Michael Pagano take up Kevin Lynch’s concept of the edge in discussing geographic barriers and vacant land

[T]he boundaries and barriers created by vacant land can serve the same kinds of ends that are considered problematic to both the fragmentationists and the consolidationists with respect to political boundaries. That is to say, individuals choose residential locations to maximize their own personal or familial needs, in many cases, the schooling needs of their children. In the process, however, segregation by income and race results. Terra Incognita: Vacant Land and Urban Strategies (p93)

They discuss the formation of microcommunities and neighborhoods by these barriers. Some delineations are productive in non-offensive ways by grouping certain types of land uses; others seem unpalatably racist.

The list continues tomorrow.

Yesterday, I got a bit too academic in talking about Putnam’s “hunkering thesis.” So today, you’re getting a picture and a simple question:

“The Strength of Weak Ties,” Mark Granovetter (1971)What’s so important about contact, especially the kind that could take place on sidewalks?

Considering the amount of prejudice and fear that accompany discrimination and bolster it, overcoming residential discrimination is just that much harder if people feel unsafe on their sidewalks anyway. Overcoming residential discrimination comes hard where people have no means of keeping a civilized public life on a basically dignified public footing, and their private lives on a private footing. “The uses of sidewalks: contact” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p72)

You might have strong ties with close friends. These are the people you’re inviting in on this “private footing.” Human nature leads us to select people similar to us. These people might have similar jobs, beliefs, and have made similar choices in life.

However, these weak ties are more important than you might think. The network is wider and more diverse. The classic case is of a job seeker who finds a job through these ties. Strong ties form a smaller network. These people are more likely to know each other. It might be more insular. A couple degrees out on the weak ties and you’re forging much new territory.

Also, despite the fact that it works against human nature, assuming like attracts like, having others around you who have different life experiences, have made different choices, and have different ideas and perspectives forces you to reflect differently. There’s plenty of sociology to dig through here even stopping short of biological analogies to ecosystem diversity.

Might sidewalks really help us “hunker” less?

Sorry in advance for all the academic-y name dropping.

Robert Putnam’s research and publications are now synonymous with the concepts of social capital and civic disengagement. We are now Bowling Alone, according to Putnam, and are disengaged from the same level of community participation forged by previous generations.

My friend Jessie and I are presenting case studies contradicting these claims at a conference at the end of June

Anyway, Putnam’s “hunkering thesis” is a product of his subsequent research:

New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture,” Scandinavian Political Studies.

I’ve red-marked my copy to high heaven. I have a couple problems with what Putnam infers from his data. But the issue I want to focus on today is his place-agnostic research method.

Putnam marshals a national sample size of nearly 30,000, with the ability to drill down within 41 subsamples of 350 to 1500 for areas ranging in size from neighborhood to county. You might think that would be plenty place-specific.

Putnam recognizes that the community-level data lacks “contextual effect,” yet the only context he then provides comes from the US Census (tract-level). The only factors he includes are socioeconomic, despite the housing data available for the same census geography.Does the giant, disembodied head of Ferdinand Tönnies make you hunker down?

Ideally, I’d want to know more about the place than census reveals. I am an urban planner (though I shy away from complete environmental determinism). The data about the physical form of the place is much, much harder to come by. Get out your tape measure.

And this is the roundabout way we end up back at what Jane Jacobs has to say about contact with each other and sidewalks:

When an area of a city lacks a sidewalk life, the people of the place must enlarge their private lives if they are to have anything approaching equivalent contact with their neighbors. They must settle for some form of ‘togetherness,’ in which more is shared with one another than in the life of sidewalks, or else they must settle for lack of contact. Inevitably the outcome is one or the other; it has to be; and either has distressing results. “The uses of sidewalks: contact,” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p62-63)

How wide are the sidewalks where these folks “hunker down?” Do they go anywhere? Is there physical diversity? In other words: Are there sidewalks and do people use them?

When we were rural, other social ties, norms, and institutions governed our level of contact - Gemeinschaft. Gesellschaft (a la Tönnies or Wirth) relies on secondary contacts, or “weak ties.” More tomorrow.