Neighborhood Disorder and Individual Community Capacity: How Incivilities Inform Three Domains of Psychosocial Assessment

• NCJ Number: 236696
• Journal: Sociological Spectrum Volume: 31 Issue: 5 Dated: September-October 2011 Pages: 579-605
• Author(s): Townsand Price-Spratlen
• Date Published: October 2011
• Length: 27 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Ohio State University Research Foundation Seed Grant Program
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article examines contextual models to bring together the disorder and community capacity perspectives, since both are grounded in social (dis)organization theory and cumulative causation.

Abstract

The author analyzed how individual and neighborhood characteristics, social and physical disorder, and crime affected three individual community capacity outcomes: city quality of life, neighborhood safety, and household moving intentions. The "broken windows" downward spiral suggests that neighborhood incivilities may decrease multiple psychosocial assessments, or, individual community capacities. Consistent with prior research, the authors found that social and physical disorder decreased all three outcomes. Second, the author found that both disorders also mediated neighborhood effects, including socioeconomic status and residential stability. Third, these direct and indirect disorder effects are not altered by prior victimization or neighborhood crime rates. Reducing disorder will, in turn, improve three distinct domains and geographic scales of individual community capacity, and can also reduce the adverse effects of other local area capacity deficits. (Published Abstract)