Neighborhood design and sense of community: Comparing suburban neighborhoods in Houston Texas

This paper examines the impact of neighborhood design on sense of community. The United States continues to grow and the urban infrastructure ages, creating pressure for new neighborhoods with a meaningful sense of community. This research seeks to better understand the relationship between the neighborhood design and the sense of community by comparing four suburban neighborhoods in the metropolitan Houston area. Each of these neighborhoods was developed in 1998 or 1999 near Houston, Texas; each is comprised about 100 single-family homes valued at between $150,000 and $260,000. Two of the neighborhoods share design-features to connect residents to the environment and each other, while the other two are typical suburban neighborhoods. Analysis of 210 mail-back surveys of residents in these four neighborhoods indicate that the designed neighborhoods have a greater sense of community than typical suburban neighborhoods: however, the mechanisms that impact sense of community reported in the literature were mot significantly influenced by neighborhood design. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.