Sense of Community and Built Environment: How Can Built Environment, Social Economic Conditions and History of Place Shape Our Sense of Community?

Abstract

Sense of community is a concept in community and social psychology and has been investigated in several researches. The sense of community level changes towards many independent variables and it is related to the quality of the built form. This research aims at investigating the relationship between the sense of community and some determinants such as; the physical environment, the historical background and the socio economic conditions in selected neighborhoods. Furthermore, this research examines the social interaction as it has an important role in measuring the sense of community. To achieve that, the authors propose a methodology composed mainly of two major tools; the first, a survey formed of sense of community indices, as well as other social and psychological factors according to Kim and Kaplan theory. The second tool is based on the observation of physical attributes of the neighborhood. The adopted methodology is applied on two neighborhoods in Alexandria city, Egypt. By analyzing the survey results and the researcher's observation of physical attributes in the selected neighborhood, it was found that there is a strong correlation between the sense of community and several independent variables such as the built environment, the socio economic conditions, some demographic factors like age, monthly income, length of residence and the importance of pedestrian factors on measuring sense of community.