Social Network Analysis and the Measurement of Neighborhoods

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Chapter Title Social Network Analysis and the Measurement of Neighborhoods

Copyright Year 2014

Copyright Holder Springer Science+Business Media New York

Corresponding Author Family Name Grannis

Particle

Given Name Rick

Suffix

Organization/University UCLA Sociology

City

Country

Email [email protected]

Email [email protected]

Comp. by: RJothi Stage: Galleys Chapter No.: 236 Title Name: ECCJDate:11/4/13 Time:18:32:34 Page Number: 1

1 S

2 Social Network Analysis and the3 Measurement of Neighborhoods

4Au1 Rick Grannis

5 UCLA Sociology,

6 Synonyms

7 Neighborhood effects; Neighborhoods; Neigh-

8 boring; Social networks

9 Overview

10 Neighborhoods shape a variety of outcomes for

11 children, families, and residents in general,

12 influencing behavior, attitudes, and values as

13 well. While some neighborhoods foster continu-

14 ous patterns of criminal activity, others develop

15 collective efficacy, the shared understanding that

16 their constituent members have social capital

17 resources which they are mutually able and will-

18 ing to use to achieve collective outcomes. Neigh-

19 borhoods cluster outcomes, some of which

20 cannot be accounted for in terms of the charac-

21 teristics of the individuals or households cur-

22 rently residing in them; they prove to be real

23 communities with enduring characteristic pat-

24 terns that survive the replacement of their con-

25 stituent members. A useful neighborhood

26 definition would be one that helped us better

27 understand these neighborhood communities

28 and their effects. These neighborhood

29communities are not only geographically mean-

30ingful but geographically identifiable as well

31because the networks of interactions among

32neighboring residents which produce them,

33which translate neighboring interactions into

34neighborhood communities and their effects, are

35constrained by predictable urban geographic sub-

36strates. New research has proposed behaviorally

37oriented definitions of neighborhoods, defining

38them in terms of their potential for interaction

39among residents. Defining neighborhoods in this

40way provides a lens to focus more closely on

41neighborhoods as effect-generating communities

42emerging from the networked interactions of

43their constituent residents.

44Fundamentals/Key Issues

45Why Neighborhoods Matter in the Twenty-

46First Century: The Continual Emergence of

47Neighborhood Effects

48Neighborhoods: Social Capital, Collective Effi-

49cacy, and Crime There appears to be

50a continually increasing interest in the role of

51neighborhoods in shaping a variety of outcomes

52for children, families, and neighborhood resi-

53dents in general (for an overview, see Brooks-

54Gunn et al. 1997a, b). These “effects” have

55included a vast array of phenomena ranging

56from child and adolescent development (e.g.,

57abuse and maltreatment, school completion and

58achievement, drug use, deviant peer affiliation,

59delinquency and gangs, adolescent sexual

G.J.N. Bruinsma, D.L. Weisburd (eds.), Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice,DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

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60 activity and pregnancy and childbearing, parent-

61 ing behaviors) to concentrated disadvantage and

62 its many corollaries (economic attainment and

63 labor market success, crime and violence, physi-

64 cal disorder, the perpetuation of racism, to name

65 just a few). An overwhelming conclusion reached

66 by all of these studies of neighborhood effects is

67 that neighborhoods influence our behavior, atti-

68 tudes, and values. They shape the types of people

69 we will become and expose us to or shield us

70 from early hazards that would seriously restrict

71 the opportunities available to us later in life. After

72 our homes, and in conjunction with them, they

73 are where we first learn whether the world is safe

74 and cooperative or inchoate and menacing.

75 Not all neighborhoods are alike, however.

76 Some neighborhoods are characterized by high

77 levels of effective community. They clearly offer

78 social capital to their residents, a social organiza-

79 tion which facilitates and coordinates cooperative

80 action for mutual benefit, which allows residents

81 to deal with daily life, seize opportunities, reduce

82 uncertainties, and achieve ends that would not

83 otherwise have been possible. This social organi-

84 zation is a resource which is not individually

85 attainable because social capital is not

86 a characteristic of individuals; it is a supra-

87 individual property of social structure and it

88 seems to be particularly well grounded in neigh-

89 borhood communities. These sources of social

90 capital tied to the neighborhood community con-

91 text are analytically distinct from and as conse-

92 quential as the more proximate family processes

93 and relationships occurring in the home. Some

94 neighborhoods develop a further layer, mutual

95 trust and shared norms, values, and expectations,

96 beyond the resource potential of neighbor net-

97 works, which allows them to utilize these net-

98 works to achieve desired outcomes. Collective

99 efficacy occurs when members of a collectivity,

100 with social capital resources, believe they are

101 mutually able and willing to use these resources

102 to achieve an intended outcome (Morenoff et al.

103 2001). The distinction is a subtle, but important,

104 one. A neighborhood may have social capital

105 resources available for its constituent members

106 to utilize but they may not trust the willingness or

107 ability of their fellow residents to use these

108networked resources for the collective good or

109they may not even be certain that they agree as to

110what the collective good might be.

111From a less positive perspective, neighbor-

112hoods show remarkable continuities in patterns

113of criminal activity as well. For decades, crimi-

114nological research in the ecological tradition has

115confirmed the concentration of interpersonal vio-

116lence in certain neighborhoods, especially those

117characterized by poverty, the racial segregation

118of minority groups, and the concentration of

119single-parent families. Even in neighborhoods

120with less socioeconomic or racial isolation,

121crime rates persist despite the demographic

122replacement of neighborhood populations

123(Brantingham and Brantingham 1993). In addi-

124tion, neighborhoods determine not only one’s

125exposure to crime and violence but also a host

126of less tangible deleterious factors which contrib-

127ute to the development of an urban underclass,

128signs of social disorder which lead residents to

129perceive their neighbors as threats rather than as

130sources of support or assistance (Massey and

131Denton 1993).

132Neighborhoods: Geography and (Potential)

133Effects These neighborhood effects, both the

134community enhancing and the community

135degrading effects, necessarily involve

136a geographic context. Thus, to analyze and under-

137stand them, they necessarily require a geographic

138equivalent of a neighborhood and a geographic

139definition of one. Researchers have utilized

140a variety of such definitions. In fact, they have

141used so many that Galster (2001, p. 2111) argued

142that “urban social scientists have treated ‘neigh-

143borhood’ in much the same way as courts of law

144have treated pornography: a term that is hard to

145define precisely, but everyone knows it when

146they see it.” Apparently, however, researchers

147often don’t know it when they see it. The modi-

148fiable area unit problem (MAUP) is a statistical

149bias affecting areal unit summary values (e.g.,

150totals, rates, proportions) when they prove “arbi-

151trary, modifiable, and subject to the whims and

152fancies of whoever is doing, or did, the aggregat-

153ing” (Openshaw 1984, p. 3). Miller’s (1999) sur-

154vey suggests that, when the spatial units used to

155study a phenomenon are not clearly defined by

S 2 Social Network Analysis and the Measurement of Neighborhoods


156 theory, any conclusions derived about the studied

157 phenomenon may be hopelessly prejudiced by

158 the arbitrary, at least from a theoretical perspec-

159 tive, choice of spatial unit.

160 While many statistical techniques and error

161 modeling approaches have been used to try and

162 counteract, reduce, or remove the effects of

163 MAUP, Miller perceives that the ultimate solu-

164 tion has to involve a more behavioral-oriented

165 definition of neighborhood. One needs better

166 intuitions about the general nature of neighbor-

167 hoods, not better statistical methods. The very

168 existence of the modifiable areal unit problem

169 (MAUP) evidences that theory has taken a back

170 seat. Researchers who have developed methods

171 for creating optimal analytic units with respect to

172 predefined objective functions note correctly that

173 MAUP would be irrelevant if neighborhood

174 equivalents were chosen for theoretical reasons

175 rather than administrative convenience

176 (Alvanides et al. 2001).

177 Despite this, however, when a geographic

178 definition of neighborhood is required for the

179 purpose of quantitative analysis, “most social

180 scientists and virtually all studies of neighbor-

181 hoods . . . rely on geographic boundaries defined

182 by the Census Bureau or other administrative

183 agencies. . . [which] offer imperfect operational

184 definitions of neighborhoods for research and

185 policy” (Sampson et al. 2002, p.445). Adminis-

186 tratively defined units such as census tracts and

187 block groups do not directly measure, nor were

188 they designed to measure, the potential for inter-

189 action among resident members, the primary pro-

190 cess hypothesized to produce neighborhood

191 communities and their effects. For example, the

192 Census Bureau appears to theoretically focus on

193 segregation type effects, defining tracts as “rela-

194 tively homogeneous units with respect to popula-

195 tion characteristics, economic status, and living

196 conditions.” In most cases, however, the sheer

197 ubiquity of data gathered by the Census Bureau

198 or other administrative agencies (e.g., school dis-

199 tricts, police districts) proves to be an over-

200 whelming temptation for most researchers.

201 Theory succumbs to the preponderance of data.

202 The very existence of the modifiable area unit

203 problem (MAUP), however, evidences that

204census geography is not measuring what

205researchers are studying.

206Undoubtedly, neighborhood effects involve

207a geographic context. Neighborhood effects,

208however, are not produced by neighborhood

209geography. Neither are neighborhood effects, at

210least not a lot of them, merely a by-product or

211spurious confound of the geographic co-location

212of residents with particular demographic charac-

213teristics or psychological profiles. Neighborhood

214effects hypothesize that there exists a thing,

215a social entity, a neighborhood community,

216which has effects. Neighborhood effects are the

217product of these neighborhood communities.

218Neighborhood communities and their effects

219emerge from neighboring interactions among

220their constituent members. Neighborhood com-

221munities are geographically constrained because

222the interactions which produce them are geo-

223graphically constrained. Neighborhood commu-

224nities are both geographically identifiable and

225have effects which persist through the replace-

226ment of their residents because the networks of

227interactions which produce them, which translate

228neighboring interactions into neighborhood com-

229munities, are constrained by predictable urban

230geographic substrates.

231When we think about geography having an

232effect on community, it is because we believe

233that something about physical space affects

234something about how individuals interact within

235that space. Neighborhoods are more than colored

236boxes on a map or sets of geo-referenced vari-

237ables for use in a geographic information system

238(GIS). A focus on maps, especially maps based

239on census or administrative geography, empha-

240sizes those aspects of neighborhoods and their

241residents which can be effectively displayed or

242referenced to administratively defined polygons

243and ignores those which cannot. To understand

244the social-interactional aspect of neighborhoods,

245we may not necessarily have to think outside the

246box, but we do have to think about what’s inside

247of it, residents potentially interacting with each

248other as neighbors.

249Neighboring and Geographic Neighbor-

250hoods While it may seem obvious, it is worth

251highlighting that, at its most fundamental level,

Social Network Analysis and the Measurement of Neighborhoods 3 S


252 neighboring is a proximity-dependent relation.

253 When we say that someone is our neighbor, we

254 are making a statement about them being proxi-

255 mal to us. Neighbors must, by definition, live

256 close to each other; but what constitutes the geo-

257 graphic proximity or availability that defines

258 neighboring?

259 Many studies have called attention to the

260 strong role of extremely short distances in neigh-

261 borly contacts. At least from an individual house-

262 hold’s perspective, the distances associated with

263 neighboring are often effectively measured in

264 feet and yards (Festinger et al. 1950). Residential

265 propinquity’s influence on social interaction is

266 typically limited to those who live within a few

267 households away. What is most important is who

268 lives next door, not who lives in the same census

269 tract; who lives a few houses away, not who lives

270 a few blocks away. Neighbors have also been

271 defined to be people who live within walking

272 distance (Grannis 2009). Walking distance, of

273 course, varies by person, being much greater for

274 some than others due to their age and physical

275 fitness and even changing seasonally in some

276 areas. No matter how far walking distance is,

277 however, for any particular person, the probabil-

278 ity that someone will be identified as a neighbor

279 declines rapidly with increased distance from

280 one’s home.

281 Because neighboring is so close at hand, it

282 depends upon very subtle geographic features.

283 Besides focusing on the number of houses or

284 yards separating two households, a natural divi-

285 sion, in both cognition and behavior, occurs at the

286 face block. The face block includes all of the

287 dwellings that front on the same street and are

288 situated between only two cross streets (an excep-

289 tion would be cul-de-sacs which are face blocks

290 delimited by only one cross street). The face

291 block has been found to be an important socio-

292 spatial unit (Suttles 1972). At one level, the face

293 block includes virtually all neighbors who live

294 either next door to each other or directly across

295 the street from each other and most of those who

296 live within a few house lengths; therefore, it

297 could be viewed as simply a reflection of the

298 more general effects of proximity. However,

299 studies have shown that residents have more

300interaction with those on the same face block

301than they do with residents beyond an intersec-

302tion, even if they were spatially closer to the latter

303group (Greenbaum 1982).

304Not all face blocks, however, are oriented

305towards the pedestrian nature of neighboring.

306Some front on large arterial streets devoted to

307providing access for travelers while others front

308on smaller streets more devoted to local living

309space. Studies of peoples’ perceptions of street

310life reveal that residents clearly perceive the dif-

311ference between heavy traffic face blocks contin-

312uously filled with strangers which are used solely

313as thoroughfares and corridors between the local

314neighborhood and the outside world on the one

315hand and light traffic face blocks which form the

316basis of lively, close-knit communities where

317everyone knows each other and residents con-

318sider the boundaries between house and street

319space to be quite permeable on the other hand

320(Appleyard and Lintell 1986). A tertiary face

321block has been specifically designed and

322maintained by governing authorities to promote

323local and pedestrian traffic. The tertiary

324face block is a more or less “natural” unit of

325face-to-face neighborly interaction (Suttles

3261972). Tertiary face blocks are both oriented

327towards pedestrian travel and local residents,

328rather than outsiders who arrive by automobile

329or mass transit. Thus, tertiary face blocks are the

330types of face blocks most likely to give rise to

331social interactions (Rabin 1987). Tertiary face

332blocks provide a meeting place for neighbors

333(de Jong 1986). People use them for a host of

334activities including walking pets, riding bicycles,

335and chatting with neighbors. Shared tertiary face

336blocks provide a “permeable boundary” between

337households’ private spaces. Tertiary face-block

338neighbors are “used for easy sociability and

339assistance when quick physical accessibility is

340an important consideration.”

341Face blocks terminate at intersections. An

342alternative way of thinking about this, of course,

343is that intersections connect face blocks with each

344other. The important question then becomes: Do

345they also connect neighbors and do neighbor net-

346works terminate at intersections or do they bridge

347them to form larger structures? Intersections form



348 a different metric than face blocks for measuring

349 functional distance. Just as different types of

350 streets differentially induce or fail to induce

351 neighborly relations, different types of intersec-

352 tions may induce or inhibit neighborly relations

353 from bridging them. Fortunately, the intersec-

354 tions of streets can also be operationally defined

355 in a convenient and meaningful way. When

356 streets of different classifications intersect, plan-

357 ners consider the intersection to be of the higher

358 classification. For example, if a larger street inter-

359 sects a tertiary street, planners would consider the

360 intersection to be part of the larger street, but not

361 part of the tertiary street. This makes intuitive

362 sense because the inhibiting effects of the larger

363 street will dominate. The nature of intersections

364 either facilitates or impedes pedestrian-based

365 neighborly interaction; therefore, an intersection

366 is a tertiary intersection if all of the face blocks,

367 however many, contiguous with it are tertiary

368 face blocks. A non-tertiary intersection, in con-

369 trast, is an intersection such that at least one of the

370 face blocks contiguous with it is a non-tertiary

371 face block.

372 Studies have shown that tertiary intersections

373 combined with tertiary face blocks can serve as

374 a “pedestrian circulation system.” Sidewalks pro-

375 vide access between residence and parks,

376 churches, and neighborhood shops. Neighborly

377 relations bridging face blocks occur “through

378 the routes people take in meeting an average

379 day’s basic needs and desires. The newsstand

380 where one buys the Sunday paper, the store one

381 runs to for a quart of milk, and the streets one

382 travels on to visit a friend” (Anderson 1992,

383 p. 46). People come to envision their neighbor-

384 hoods as networks of paths and channels along

385 which they move (Lynch 1960). Tertiary inter-

386 sections guide this “natural movement” (Hillier

387 1996) within a city.

388 Potential Neighbor Networks and Actual

389 Neighbor Networks Individual neighbor net-

390 works evolve into neighborhood networks

391 through the process of concatenation. Residents

392 have relations with their neighbors who interact

393 with other neighbors, and so on. These neigh-

394 borly relations concatenate and consolidate

395 neighbor-to-neighbor-to-neighbor. There are

396several important corollaries of this fact. First,

397the resultant network is as far reaching as its

398most extensive ramification. Relations concate-

399nate to form a network typically larger, both

400relationally and geographically, than any individ-

401ual’s relations. Thus, relatively micro-level rela-

402tions can result in a macro-level structure.

403Second, the resultant network is as fragile as its

404weakest link. Anything which can cause

405a relation to not form, no matter how trivial,

406breaks the network. In contrast to the first corol-

407lary, micro-level fragilities can destroy a macro-

408level structure. Third, the characteristics of the

409resultant network are not readily predictable from

410the characteristics of the local networks which

411concatenate to form it. Only as sets of individual

412networks concatenate do the characteristics of

413this aggregated network emerge. Finally, because

414a neighboring relation cannot exist unless resi-

415dents are geographically available to each other,

416the network of potential neighbors cannot tran-

417scend the network of geographic availability; it is

418logically impossible. While individuals’ life-

419styles and habits may prevent them from having

420contacts and interactions with those who are geo-

421graphically available to them, they cannot cause

422them to have contacts with those who are

423unavailable.

424To study efficacious neighborhood communi-

425ties emerging from neighbor networks, therefore,

426we need a definition of a neighborhood commu-

427nity whose importance is derived from the poten-

428tial for neighbor networks to concatenate within

429it. Grannis (2009) defined this geographic avail-

430ability in terms of shared walking arenas which

431mediate, guide, and constrain potential neigh-

432borly encounters. Building on this, the

433concatenated network of overlapping neighborly

434contacts can be no larger than the concatenated

435network of walking arenas; conversely, the net-

436work of potential neighborly relations, based on

437concatenated interactions, is a subset of the con-

438catenation of these walking arenas. Grannis

439argued that tertiary block faces effectively

440proxy walking arenas in urban areas and thus

441the maximal concatenation of contiguous tertiary

442block faces, of walking arenas, represents the



443 maximal consolidation of individual residents’

444 potential to access each other.

445 Such a neighborhood equivalent would signify

446 internal access. All residents within it would have

447 a potential for neighborly relations using walking

448 arenas. While it is unlikely that all, or even any,

449 residents would traverse the entirety of this

450 neighborhood equivalent, this internal contiguity

451 would allow residents to interact with their neigh-

452 bors down the street who interact with other

453 neighbors further down the street, and so on

454 throughout the network. Such a neighborhood

455 equivalent would also signify constraint. To the

456 extent to which the potential for neighboring

457 relations depends upon walking arenas, it would

458 constrain their concatenation. Based on these

459 criteria, Grannis (2009) defined two types of

460 neighborhood equivalents, t-communities and

461 islands, one connecting tertiary block faces

462 using only tertiary intersections and the other

463 connecting tertiary block faces using all intersec-

464 tions. A t-community is a maximal contiguous

465 network of tertiary block faces and tertiary inter-

466 sections, while an island is a maximal contiguous

467 network of tertiary face blocks and any intersec-

468 tions. The label “t-community” is short for “ter-

469 tiary street communities” indicating that these

470 neighborhood equivalents are connected by ter-

471 tiary streets (Grannis 2009). A pair of neighbor-

472 hoods would be geographically unreachable if

473 they could only reach each other by crossing

474 water; Grannis (2009) analogously label these

475 discontinuous networks of tertiary block faces

476 as “islands” since it is impossible for households

477 in two different islands to access each other using

478 tertiary block faces, even if they use non-tertiary

479 intersections. Since islands are maximal net-

480 works of tertiary block faces and any intersec-

481 tions while t-communities are maximal networks

482 of tertiary block faces and tertiary intersections, t-

483 communities are necessarily subsets (although

484 not necessarily proper subsets) of islands.

485 Selection vs. Influence These t-communities

486 and islands, these walking arenas, interact with

487 two different social forces to create neighborhood

488 communities and their effects. First, neighbor-

489 hoods are more than just neighbors residing

490 nearby each other. They are vital entities, or at

491least they have the potential to be. Even when it

492appears static, neighborhood social life generally

493is not; it is a stable equilibrium reached amidst the

494strife of social flows. The vibrant, living part of

495neighborhoods consists of the flow and exchange,

496both spoken and silently modeled, of norms,

497values, identities, symbols, ideas, affect, senti-

498ment, and other social and cultural goods and

499resources among neighbors along the conduits

500provided by neighbor networks. This flow pres-

501sures neighbors towards conformity.

502This certainly happens verbally, through the

503exchange of personal information, life histories,

504and stories, as well as through establishing and

505enforcing rules for neighborhood children; how-

506ever, it happens even more nonverbally. Commu-

507nity members model and enforce “appropriate

508behaviors” in their daily interactions with each

509other, especially with children (Coleman 1990).

510In addition to modeling appropriate behaviors,

511neighbors may use rewards to encourage norma-

512tive behaviors or sanctions to discourage behav-

513iors not compliant with social or personal norms.

514The degree of these sanctions or rewards varies

515greatly with the nature of the society; for exam-

516ple, in communities that emphasize social control

517and social cohesiveness, sanctions may be

518enforced by direct social pressure for conformity

519(Hogan and Kitagawa 1985). As norms, values,

520ideas, and other social goods and resources tra-

521verse and commingle along neighbor networks,

522they have the potential to engender a sense of

523community and identity, social capital, mutual

524trust, social control, collective efficacy, and

525many other important facets of neighborhood

526life social researchers interest themselves in.

527The collectively efficacious community network

528which emerges, or which fails to emerge, how-

529ever, is embedded in the network of neighborly

530interactions which is embedded in the network of

531potential neighborly interactions which is embed-

532ded in the network of geographic availability.

533Second, locational choice and homophily may

534certainly account for some of the effects of neigh-

535borhoods but numerous studies have shown that

536neighborhoods with similar population demo-

537graphics, in terms of race, socioeconomic status,

538family structure, and a host of other



539 characteristics, often yield different outcomes for

540 their constituent members. Market explanations,

541 while intuitively appealing, have failed to

542 account for the richness and complexity of effects

543 correlating to neighborhoods.

544 Locational-based neighborhood effects such

545 as residential differentiation and segregation cor-

546 respond to the influence-based neighborhood

547 effects such as social capital and collective effi-

548 cacy because in choosing to move away from

549 dissimilar households, residents are implicitly

550 choosing to segregate their networks of potential

551 neighborly interactions as well. Since contact is

552 a necessary prerequisite for interaction, if house-

553 holds settle in such a way that their immediate

554 neighbors are similar to themselves, then they

555 have settled in such a way as to not have neigh-

556 borly interactions with those different from them-

557 selves. Neighborhood communities result from

558 both the concatenation of homophilous locational

559 choices and the flow and exchange of norms,

560 values, and beliefs among neighbors. Their cor-

561 respondence is not additive, as in a regression

562 model, but rather sequential. Relocation, which

563 is responsible for residential differentiation and

564 segregation, determines geographic availability

565 and the potential for neighborly interactions and

566 thus, of necessity, the actualized neighborly inter-

567 actions which influence works upon to create

568 social capital, collective efficacy, and other

569 important neighborhood effects.

570 Children and Their Families Neighborhoods

571 are especially important for households with chil-

572 dren because children are much less mobile, and

573 thus more geographically dependent, than adults.

574 Children and their playful interactions depend

575 upon proximity much more than adults and their

576 interactions do. Since children cannot drive and

577 have little, if any, voice in relocation decisions,

578 they are forced to share lives with neighboring

579 children even more than are their parents. For

580 children, the street in front of their home is “the

581 mediator between the wider community and

582 the private world of the family” (Appleyard

583 1981, p. 4). This is where children first learn

584 about the world. They often play games in the

585 middle of these streets, use them to walk pets and

586 to ride bicycles, and the majority of their

587recreational activity occurs there

588(Brower 1977). Sidewalks provide access

589between residence and schools and parks. As

590a result, the relationships children form will pri-

591marily depend upon the opportunities to interact

592provided by walking arenas immediately sur-

593rounding them (Appleyard and Lintell 1986).

594Especially for young children, neighboring chil-

595dren are the most likely to become their play-

596mates (Hillier 1996). Thus, the networks of

597relationships they formwill bemuchmore depen-

598dent upon the network of geographic availability.

599Unlike children, adults have many venues for

600social relationships beyond their neighborhood

601including work and voluntary activities.

602School-age children may have some of these to

603the extent their parents allow. Preschool children,

604however, have few, if any, of these alternative

605venues for social opportunities. Their lives are

606tightly bound by geography.

607“The micro-ecology of pedestrian streets

608bears directly on patterns of interaction that

609involve children and families. Parents are gener-

610ally concerned with demarcating territory outside

611of which their children should not wander unac-

612companied by an adult, to ensure that their chil-

613dren stay in areas that are safe for play and

614conducive to adult monitoring. To the extent

615that these limited spaces of children’s daily activ-

616ities usually do not cross major thoroughfares,

617defining tertiary communities may provide

618a foundation for constructing neighborhood indi-

619cators of child well-being and social processes

620more generally ” (Sampson et al. 2002).

621Not only are your neighbors’ children

622predisposed to become your children’s friends,

623but they also determine the character of your

624children’s playmates (Cochran 1994) and the

625kinds of role models they emulate (Massey and

626Mullen 1984). The flow of norms and values

627discussed above acts not only on children but

628their families as well. “For example, when par-

629ents know the parents of their children’s friends,

630they have the potential to observe the child’s

631actions in different circumstances, talk to each

632other about the child, compare notes, and estab-

633lish norms. Such intergenerational closure of

634local networks provides the child with social



635 capital of a collective nature” (Sampson 2001: 9).

636 As a result, households with children are far more

637 influenced by the norms and values of surround-

638 ing households with children than households in

639 general are influenced by the norms and values of

640 their surrounding neighbors.

641 Neighboring parents may become intimately

642 involved in the socialization of each other’s chil-

643 dren. Neighbors rear children side by side and

644 together have the potential to co-create a safe

645 and value-laden environment. Parents monitor

646 their own children as well as those of their neigh-

647 bors (Sampson et al. 1999Au2 ). Some neighborhoods

648 expect that residents share values and are willing

649 and able to intervene on the behalf of children.

650 They expect that residents will actively engage

651 themselves in the support and social control of

652 children (Bandura 1997) and that the community

653 will work together to successfully support and

654 control children. Parents get to know the parents

655 and families of their children’s friends; they

656 observe children’s actions, both their own and

657 their neighbors’, in a variety of circumstances;

658 they talk with other parents about their children;

659 and they establish norms (Coleman 1990). Such

660 structural and normative adult-child closure gives

661 children social support, provides parents with

662 information, and facilitates control (Sandefur

663 and Laumann 1998). The choice to live in

664 a neighborhood is to some extent a choice to

665 rear children together with one’s neighbors. Ulti-

666 mately, a community of parents may develop

667 around the community of children, mirroring it.

668 People whose children play together form friend-

669 ship relations based in part on that fact (Abu-

670 Gazzeh 1999; Grannis 2009). While it is the

671 children who are immobile and thus confined to

672 neighborhoods that are most immediately

673 impacted by neighborhoods, children’s geo-

674 graphic dependence encumbers their parents

675 as well.

676 The Menu of Neighborhood Equivalents

677 Altogether, for both children and adults, through

678 influence and selection, neighborhoods cluster

679 outcomes which cannot be accounted for in

680 terms of the characteristics of the individuals or

681 households currently residing in them. It is as if

682 neighborhoods have personalities, enduring

683characteristic patterns that survive the replace-

684ment of their constituent members. Neighbor-

685hood communities are geographically

686constrained because the interactions which pro-

687duce them are geographically constrained.

688Neighborhood communities are both geographi-

689cally identifiable and have effects which persist

690through the replacement of their residents

691because the networks of interactions which pro-

692duce them, which translate neighboring interac-

693tions into neighborhood communities, are

694constrained by predictable urban geographic sub-

695strates. To study efficacious neighborhood com-

696munities emerging from neighbor networks,

697therefore, we need a definition of

698a neighborhood community whose importance

699is derived from the potential for neighbor net-

700works to concatenate within it.

701Grannis (2009) defined this geographic avail-

702ability in terms of shared walking arenas which

703mediate, guide, and constrain encounters. What

704do neighborhoods such as t-communities and

705islands, defined and measured by their potential

706for interactions, offer us that traditional neigh-

707borhood equivalents do not? They provide us

708with a lens to focus more closely on neighbor-

709hoods as communities emerging from the inter-

710actions of their constituent residents. They use an

711entirely different metric than census geography,

712one based precisely on the potential for commu-

713nity generating neighborly relations. In contrast,

714administrative geography often focuses on neigh-

715borhoods as statistical abstractions, perhaps

716reflecting segregation but agnostic to any poten-

717tial for community, for interaction, for neighbor-

718ing. While both types of neighborhood

719equivalents have their uses, researchers need to

720use care as to which one they choose and perhaps

721use both to disentangle different mechanisms that

722are at work in neighborhood communities, one

723mechanism provided by the concatenation of

724neighboring relations into neighbor networks

725and another provided by service areas, such as

726those offered by schools or marketplaces or

727police which unite residents around similar

728needs and opportunities. T-communities pre-

729cisely measure the first. Neighborhood equiva-

730lents, defined solely by their boundaries,



731 measure the second to the extent their boundaries

732 coincide with the service areas. A careful use of

733 both t-communities and neighborhood equiva-

734 lents defined by their boundaries could tease

735 apart the different mechanisms at work (Grannis

736 2009).

737 Related Entries

738 ▶Neighborhood Effects and Social Networks

739 ▶ Social Network Analysis of Urban Street

740 Gangs

741 ▶ Spatial Models and Network Analysis

742 Recommended Reading and References

743 Abu-Gazzeh TM (1999) Housing layout, social interac-

744 tion, and the place of contact in Abu-Nuseir, Jordan.

745 J Environ Psychol 19:41–73

746 Alvanides A, Openshaw S, Macgill J (2001) Zone design

747 as a spatial analysis tool. In: Tate NJ, Atkinson PM

748 (eds) Modeling scale in geographical information

749 science. Wiley, Chichester, Chapter 8

750 Anderson E (1992) Streetwise: race, class, and change in

751 an urban community. University of Chicago Press,

752 Chicago

753 Appleyard D, Lintell M (1986) The environmental quality

754 of city streets: the residents’ viewpoint. In: de Boer

755 E (ed) Transport sociology: social aspects of transport

756 planning. Pergamon, Oxford, pp 93–120

757 Appleyard D (1981) Livable streets. University of

758 California, Berkeley

759 Bandura A (1997) Self-efficacy: the exercise of control.

760 Freeman, New York

761 Brantingham PL, Brantingham PJ (1993) Nodes, paths,

762 and edges: considerations on the complexity of crime

763 and the physical environment. J Environ Psychol

764 13:3–28

765 Brooks-Gunn J, Duncan GJ, Aber JL (eds) (1997a) Neigh-

766 borhood poverty, vol I, Context and consequences for

767 children. Russell Sage, New York

768 Brooks-Gunn J, Duncan GJ, Aber JL (eds) (1997b) Neigh-

769 borhood poverty, vol II, Policy implications in study-

770 ing neighborhoods. Russell Sage, New York

771 Brower SN (1977) Streetfronts and backyards: two ways

772 of looking at neighborhood open spaces. Department

773 of Planning, Baltimore

774 Cochran S (1994) Understanding and enhancing

775 neighbourhood sense of community. J Plann Literat

776 9(1):92–99

777Coleman JS (1990) Foundations of social theory. Harvard

778University Press, Cambridge

779de Jong R (1986) The recapture of the street? In: de Boer

780E (ed) Transport sociology: social aspects of transport

781planning. Pergamon, Oxford, pp 77–91

782Festinger L, Schachter S, Back K (1950) Social Pressures

783in informal groups: a study of human factors in hous-

784ing. Harper and Row, New York

785Galster GC (2001) On the nature of neighborhood. Urban

786Stud 38(12):2111–2124

787Grannis R (2009) From the ground up: how the layered

788stages of neighbor networks translate geography into

789neighborhood effects. Princeton University Press,

790Princeton

791Greenbaum S (1982) Bridging ties at the neighborhood

792level. Soc Networks 4:367–384

793Hillier B (1996) Space is the machine. Cambridge Uni-

794versity Press, Cambridge

795Hogan DP, Kitagawa EM (1985) The impact of social

796status, family structure, and neighborhood on the fer-

797tility of black adolescents. Am J Sociol 90:825–852

798 Au3Lynch K (1971) (1960) The image of the city. MIT Press,

799Cambridge

800Massey DS, Mullen B (1984) Processes of hispanic and

801black spatial assimilation. Am J Sociol 89:836–873

802Massey DS, Denton NA (1993) American apartheid: seg-

803regation and the making of the underclass. Harvard

804University, Cambridge

805Miller H (1999) Potential contributions of spatial analysis

806to geographic information systems for transportation.

807Geogr Anal 31:373–399

808Morenoff JD, Sampson RJ, Raudenbush SW

809(2001) Neighborhood inequality, collective efficacy,

810and the spatial dynamics of urban violence. Criminol-

811ogy 39(3):517–560

812Openshaw S (1984) The modifiable areal unit problem.

813Geo Books, Norwich

814Rabin Y (1987) The roots of segregation in the eighties:

815the role of local government actions. In: Tobin GA (ed)

816Divided neighborhoods: changing patterns of racial

817segregation. Sage, Newbury Park, pp 208–226

818Sampson RJ (2001) How do communities undergird or

819undermine human development? Relevant contexts

820and social mechanisms. In: Booth A, Crouter N (eds)

821Does it take a village? Community effects on children,

822adolescents, and families. L Erlbaum, Mahwah,

823pp 3–30

824Sampson RJ, Morenoff JD, Gannon-Rowley T (2002)

825Assessing “neighborhood effects”: Social processes

826and new directions in research. Ann Rev Sociol

82728:443–478

828Sandefur RL, Laumann EO (1998) A paradigm for social

829capital. Rational Soc 10:481–501

830Suttles G (1972) The social construction of communities.

831University of Chicago Press, Chicago


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Social Network Analysis and the Measurement of Neighborhoods