Social mobility and social infrastructure: How scale of the neighbourhood impacts social interaction
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Keywords: neighbourhood, social mobility, interactions, social infrastructure
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Danielle Drozdzewski, Stockholm University
Natasha Alexandra Webster, Örebro University
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Abstract
Social infrastructure in the neighbourhood, including its spatiality, morphology and layout in material and physical form, makes place. How people identify their neighbourhood, including self-definition of place name, spatial boundaries of the neighbourhood and their mobility times around the neighbourhood, matter. They matter because mobility within and out of the neighbourhood is interlinked with core components of our everyday lives – where we work, where we recreate, do activities, family considerations, and, the proximity of essential amenities. Distance and means of access to these core components from our place of residence, then, also has bearing on our social interactions in the neighbourhood. Amenities and activities accessible by foot within the neighbourhood hold different potential for interactions in the neighbourhood then those mobilities achieved by vehicular transport.
In better understanding how social infrastructure has a bearing on residents’ social mobility and interactions in their neighbourhood, in this paper we draw from survey data from a Swedish research project (The Neighbourhood Revisited: Spatial Polarization and Social Cohesion in Contemporary Sweden). In that survey we asked our participants to identify their neighbourhoods, specify social infrastructure therein, and indicate the time travelled and form of mobility to core components of their everyday lives. Our analyses are refracted through participants’ life course stage, their spatial location, as well as neighbourhood trajectories for Sweden determined from a combination of socio-demographic and census derived data.
Social mobility and social infrastructure: How scale of the neighbourhood impacts social interaction
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Paper Abstract