Sense of community and neighbourhood form: An assessment of the social doctrine of new urbanism

New urbanism, an umbrella term which encompasses 'neotraditional developmen t' as well as 'traditional neighbourhood design', lives by an unswerving be lief in the ability of the built environment to create a 'sense of communit y'. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the social doctrine of n ew urbanism can be successfully supported or at least integrated with the s ocial science literature which deals with the question of community formati on. Towards this goal, the paper first delineates the social doctrine off n ew urbanism, and then discusses the conceptual frameworks and empirical fin dings that either support or contradict the idea that a sense of community will follow the physical form of cities and neighbourhoods generally and ne w urbanist principles specifically. After laying this groundwork, the remai nder of the paper presents an assessment of whether a reconciliation betwee n research and doctrine may be possible, in light of various apparent contr adictions between the social claims of new urbanists and the results of res earch by social scientists. It is concluded that new urbanists need to clar ify the meaning of sense of community as it pertains to physical design. Fu rther, it is maintained that while some research supports the idea that res ident interaction and sense of community are related to environmental facto rs, the effectuation of this goal is usually only achieved via some interme diate variable. This latter point leaves open the question of whether any n umber of other design creeds could produce the same result via a different design philosophy. The need for further research is stressed; this should b e focused on investigating the issue more directly.