11 Drivers of Community Attachment – Ranked. Findings from “Soul of the Community”, a Gallup/Knight study

in Environmental Justice

The goal of the Knight Foundation-Gallup Soul of the Community project is to explore how community qualities influence residents’ feelings about where they live, and how those perceptions relate to local economic growth and vitality.

Gallup interviewed a group of randomly selected adults age 18 or older, currently residing in each of the 26 Knight Foundation Communities. Interviews took place from February 17th through April 26, 2009. The interview was approximately 18 minutes long and covered 86 questions. The sample for each community was a representative selection of residential household telephone numbers in the defined area. Once a household within the identified area was reached, Gallup randomly selected one adult within the sampled household. Each county within a community was sampled proportionally to the adult population in each area. About 400 citizen interviews were completed in most of the Knight communities – 28,000 nationwide, over the past two years.

CA Map

Main findings

Overall, 24% of citizens are attached to the community in which they live; 40% are not attached.

Gallup identified two key components of Community Attachment (CA):

  1. Attitudinal Loyalty, describes citizens’ general satisfaction with place, their likelihood to recommend it to others, and their outlook for their community’s future.
    1. 60% of respondents were satisfied with their community (25% highly satisfied)
    2. 57% were like to recommend it to others (30% very likely)
    3. 44% had a positive outlook for their community (17% very positive)
  2. Passion, captures the connection to place and the pride taken in living there.
    1. 66% of respondents are proud to live in their community (38% very proud)
    2. 57% believe their community is perfect for them (29% feel this strongly)

Gallup also identified five key dimensions (domains) of community, and a citizen’s connection to it, which drive overall CA. These five domains describe perceptions of:

  1. the basic structural, economic, and leadership offerings of the community (what the community gives or offers its residents),
  2. perceptions of the community’s openness to different groups (what the community stands for in diversity),
  3. citizen involvement in the community (what citizens give back to the community),
  4. the people connections they have to that community (how citizens belong to the community), and
  5. citizen’s personal state of well being (how the person feels and copes in the environment).

CA ModelCommunities which are strong on all five domains (and thus have high overall attachment) have the greatest opportunity to attract and retain the most desirable citizens for driving economic and social success. Each Domain has a different level of impact on CA. These domains were further broken out into eleven aspects, which affected a resident’s attachment to the community. Together, these domains explain about 40% of the overall variance in CA (based on logistic regression). So if we can move (i.e. improve) these 11 aspects (and more specifically the ones with the highest influence) we should be able to move CA.

In descending order:

  1. Openness – Perceptions of openness of the community to different groups (older people, racial and ethnic minorities, families with kids, gays and lesbians, talented college graduates, immigrants)
  2. Social Offerings – Vibrant night life; good place to meet people; other people care about each other
  3. Aesthetics – Parks, playgrounds, and trails; beauty or physical setting
  4. Education – Quality of public schools (K-12), colleges, and universities
  5. Basic Services – Highways and freeway system, availability of quality healthcare, availability of affordable housing
  6. Leadership – Community leaders represent residents’ interests; leadership of elected city officials
  7. Economy – Economic conditions & prospects, job opportunities, income
  8. Emotional Wellness – The personal well being of citizens (respect, rest, stress, learning)
  9. Safety – Level of community crime; safe to walk within 1 mile of home
  10. Social Capital – The people-connections citizens have to the community and how they share time with others (belong to formal/informal groups/clubs; spend time with neighbors; close friends in community; family in community)
  11. Civic Involvement – What residents give to the community in terms of civic involvement (volunteer; voted in local election; attend local community meetings; work with residents to make change)

Key Attachment Drivers

Learn more: 2009 – Full Report(PDF), 2009 – Presentation(PPT), 2009 – Data (ZIP, DOC, POR – asks for email)

Majora Carter’s tale of urban renewal

in Environmental Justice

Majora Carter is a visionary voice in city planning who views urban renewal through an environmental lens. With her inspired ideas and fierce persistence, Carter managed to bring the South Bronx its first open-waterfront park in 60 years, Hunts Point Riverside Park. Excerpts:

Why is this story important?  Because from a planning perspective, economic degradation  begets environmental degradation, which begets social degradation. The disinvestment that began in the 1960s  set the stage for all the environmental injustices that were to come.  Antiquated zoning and land-use regulations are still used to this day to continue putting polluting facilities in my neighborhood. Are these factors taken into consideration when land-use policy is decided?  What costs are associated with these decisions? And who pays?  Who profits? Does anything justify what the local community goes through? This was “planning” — in quotes — that did not have our best interests in mind.

As we nurture the natural environment, its abundance will give us back even more. We run a project called the Bronx Ecological Stewardship Training,  which provides job training in the fields of ecological restorations,  so that folks from our community have the skills to compete for these well-paying jobs.  Little by little, we’re seeding the area with green collar jobs — then the people that have both a financial and personal stake in their environment.

We also built the city’s — New York City’s first green and cool roof demonstration project on top of our offices. Cool roofs are highly reflective surfaces that don’t absorb solar heat and pass it on to the building or atmosphere. Green roofs are soil and living plants. Both can be used instead of petroleum-based roofing materials that absorb heat, contribute to urban “heat island” effect and degrade under the sun, which we in turn breathe.

I do not expect individuals, corporations or government to make the world a better place because it is right or moral. I know it’s the bottom line, or one’s perception of it, that motivates people in the end. I’m interested in what I like to call the “triple bottom line” that sustainable development can produce. Developments that have the potential to create positive returns for all concerned: the developers, government and the community where these projects go up.

A parade of government subsidies is going to proposed big-box and stadium developments in the South Bronx, but there is scant coordination between city agencies on how to deal with the cumulative effects of increased traffic, pollution, solid waste and the impacts on open space.

Now let’s get this straight. I am not anti-development. Ours is a city, not a wilderness preserve. And I’ve embraced my inner capitalist. And you probably all have, and if you haven’t, you need to. So I don’t have a problem with developers making money. There’s enough precedent out there to show that a sustainable, community-friendly development can still make a fortune. Fellow TEDsters Bill McDonough and Amory Lovins — both heroes of mine by the way — have shown that you can actually do that.

I do have a problem with developments that hyper-exploit politically vulnerable communities for profit. That it continues is a shame upon us all, because we are all responsible for the future that we create. But one of the things I do to remind myself of greater possibilities is to learn from visionaries in other cities. This is my version of globalization.

When I spoke to Mr. Gore the other day after breakfast, I asked him how environmental justice activists were going to be included in his new marketing strategy.  His response was a grant program.  I don’t think he understood that I wasn’t asking for funding.  I was making him an offer.

What troubled me was that this top-down approach is still around. Now, don’t get me wrong, we need money. But grassroots groups are needed at the table during the decision-making process. Of the 90 percent of the energy that Mr. Gore reminded us that we waste every day, don’t add wasting our energy, intelligence and hard-earned experience to that count.

By working together, we can become one of those small, rapidly growing groups of individuals who actually have the audacity and courage to believe that we actually can change the world.