Neighbouring, sense of community and participation: Research in the city of Genoa

This paper presents a study of the effects of sense of community, neighbouring ties and inhabitants' participation on local activities. Sense of community is considered a central concept in psychological theory concerning the impact that the individual must bear when living in an urban reality. Sense of community, at the empirical level, has been studied in relationships to territory, the neighbouring and the local community. The research of Chavis and Wandersman (1990), falling within this conceptual framework, explores an empirical model in which sense of community can act as a catalyst for local action such as, for example, participation in neighbouring association. Within this reference frame, the ecological model of Perkins, Brown and Taylor (1996) considers the relationship between physical environment, social environment, community cognition and community behaviour: these elements are considered to be the main predictor of participation in local activities. A preliminary analysis on secondary data about all the neighbourhoods of the city of Genoa was conducted. The results of this analysis led to the choice of two suburbs as subjects of the second phase of this research, on the basis that educational level was almost the same within both areas and thus would minimise the influence of this index on the results. Social and spatial features of these two suburbs (such as public green areas, number of local associations, number of children) were used as indexes within the present work. The second phase of research was conducted on two suburbs (N = 100 subjects) in order to investigate the differences in neighbouring, sense of community and participation.