Barbara B. Brown

Place attachment in a revitalizing neighborhood: Individual and block levels of analysis

Place attachments are positive bonds to physical and social settings that support identity and provide other psychological benefits. However, place attachments have been neglected as a potential strength in declining suburban neighborhoods. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses are used to examine attachment to the home and attachment to the block/neighborhood for over 600 residents of a neighborhood with a history of gradual decline. Results show that overall place attachment is higher for home owners, long-term residents, and non-Whites or Hispanics. Place attachment is also high for individuals who perceive fewer incivilities on their block, who have fewer observed incivilities on their property, who have lower fear of crime, and who have a higher sense of neighborhood cohesion and control (i.e. collective efficacy). Furthermore, blocks with more home owners, non-Whites or Hispanics, perceived and observed incivilities, and lower fear of crime have residents with higher overall place attachments. Differences between predictors of home and block/neighborhood attachment are discussed and place attachment is proposed as an underutilized tool for neighborhood revitalization.

Disruptions in Place Attachment

A study of disruptions in psychological processes can provide unique insight into their predisruption functioning as well as the disruptions themselves and their consequences. Place attachment processes normally reflect the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional embeddedness individuals experience in their sociophysical environments. An examination of disruptions in place attachments demonstrate how fundamental they are to the experience and meaning of everyday life. After the development of secure place attachments, the loss of normal attachments creates a stressful period of disruption followed by a postdisruption phase of coping with lost attachments and creating new ones. These three phases of the disruption process are examined with respect to disruptions due to burglaries, voluntary relocations, and disasters, with special attention to the Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, flood and the Yungay, Peru, landslide. Underlying the diversity of disruptions, dialectic themes of stability-change and individuality-communality provide a coherent framework for understanding the temporal phases of attachment and its disruption.

Dialectic Conceptions In Social Psychology: An Application To Social Penetration And Privacy Regulation

Publisher Summary The long-term development of social bonds, including their growth and deterioration, their interaction processes that occur over the history of social relationships, and their holistic systems like qualities, are examined in the chapter. The chapter integrates and extends the social penetration theory and the privacy regulation theory. It introduces the study of interpersonal relationships. The chapter compares social penetration and privacy regulation frameworks in terms of their similarities and differences and their strengths and weaknesses. It examines the concept of dialectics from a historical and philosophical perspective and describes a particular dialectic approach. The idea of opposition, the unity of opposites, and the concept of change are discussed under the concept of dialectics. Then the chapter explores assumptions about social relationships, wherein it discusses about general philosophical assumptions, homeostasis and the maintenance of stability, and specific assumptions about openness-closeness and stability-change. The chapter discusses research conducted on openness-closeness and stability-change processes in reference to (1) relationship development, (2) crises in social relationships, (3) intimacy of exchange, (4) personal characteristics of interaction style, and (5) the interpersonal unit-matching and timing of interaction.

Increasing preschoolers' physical activity intensities: An activity-friendly preschool playground intervention

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to see if portable play equipment added to a preschool playground resulted in higher intensities of physical activity among 3-5-year-old children. METHODS Activity-friendly equipment was added to an outdoor preschool playground. Accelerometry-measured intensities of 15-s epochs of physical activity were tracked for 5 pre-intervention and 5 post-intervention days during outdoor play. Data were collected during fall 2005 in Salt Lake City for 64 preschoolers aged 3, 4, and 5 years. RESULTS After the intervention, both male and female 3- to 5-year-olds significantly decreased sedentary behavior and significantly increased light, moderate, and vigorous physical activity as measured by accelerometry. CONCLUSIONS Results suggest simple interventions, requiring little teacher training, can yield increases in healthy physical activity.

Territoriality, defensible space and residential burglary: An environmental analysis

Previous research on territoriality suggests that territorial intrusion is associated with particular territorial demarcations. In the present study the use of territorial displays involving symbolic barriers, actual barriers, detectability, traces and social climate is related to the territorial intrusion of residential burglary. The five classes of territorial displays were assessed for a total of 306 burglarized houses on burglarized blocks, non-burglarized houses on burglarized blocks, and non-burglarized houses on non-burglarized blocks. After the data were reduced through factor analysis, multiple regression analysis revealed that burglarized houses differed from non-burglarized houses on non-burglarized blocks on four of the five classes of territorial displays. In general, burglarized houses had salient public territorial qualities: cues of openness and unoccupied appearance. In contrast, the non-burglarized houses had salient secondary or primary territorial qualities: territorial markers communicating privacy and individuality. In addition, non-burglarized houses had greater visual contact with neighboring houses.

Mixed land use and walkability: Variations in land use measures and relationships with BMI, overweight, and obesity.

Few studies compare alternative measures of land use diversity or mix in relationship to body mass index. We compare four types of diversity measures: entropy scores (measures of equal distributions of walkable land use categories), distances to walkable destinations (parks and transit stops), proxy measures of mixed use (walk to work measures and neighborhood housing ages), and land use categories used in entropy scores. Generalized estimating equations, conducted on 5000 randomly chosen licensed drivers aged 25-64 in Salt Lake County, Utah, relate lower BMIs to older neighborhoods, components of a 6-category land use entropy score, and nearby light rail stops. Thus the presence of walkable land uses, rather than their equal mixture, relates to healthy weight.

Walkable Route Perceptions and Physical Features Converging Evidence for En Route Walking Experiences

Guided walks near a light rail stop in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, were examined using a 2 (gender) × 3 (route walkability: low-mixed-, or high-walkability features) design. Trained raters confirmed that more walkable segments had more traffic, environmental, and social safety; pleasing aesthetics; natural features; pedestrian amenities; and land use diversity (using the Irvine-Minnesota physical environment audit) and a superior social milieu rating. According to tape-recorded open-ended descriptions, university student participants experienced walkable route segments as noticeably safer, with a more positive social environment, fewer social and physical incivilities, and more attractive natural and built environment features. According to closed-ended scales, walkable route segments had more pleasant social and/or environmental atmosphere and better traffic safety. Few gender differences were found. Results highlight the importance of understanding subjective experiences of walkability and suggest that these experiences should be an additional focus of urban design.

New Urban and Standard Suburban Subdivisions: Evaluating Psychological and Social Goals

Abstract Residents living in a New Urbanist subdivision (NUS) and a more standard suburban subdivision (SSS) near Salt Lake City, UT, were interviewed to test whether residents of a New Urbanist setting experience a stronger sense of community, greater sociability and outdoor use, and stronger preferences for New Urbanist site designs and housing diversity. Results validated several, but not all, New Urbanist claims. The NUS had gridded streets, smaller lots, homes with front porches, and back alleys with accessory apartments over detached garages; the SSS lacked these and had cul-de-sacs and 47% larger lots. After controlling for two sociodemographic variables, the two groups of residents reported similar levels of sense of community. NUS residents reported more neighboring behaviors, outdoor use, and more positive reactions to alleys and apartments; SSS residents were more satisfied with their larger front yard setbacks and front-loaded attached garages. Design and management improvements used elsewhere were suggested to alleviate complaints about the rental apartments and alleys, particularly of too many cars in the alleys.

New Housing as Neighborhood Revitalization Place Attachment and Confidence Among Residents

Neighborhood revitalization efforts include building new subdivisions in declining neighborhoods, but few studies have asked the incoming residents about the success of such new housing efforts. We examined neighborhood confidence and place attachment among residents of such a new housing subdivision (n = 56) and compared them to newcomers (n = 99) and old-timers (n = 271) in the surrounding neighborhood. The new subdivision attracted comparatively wealthy, married, home owning residents. Compared with residents in the surrounding neighborhood, new subdivision residents had more neighborhood confidence, especially those who perceived few incivilities and satisfactory neighborhood services. Subdivision newcomers had higher place attachments than newcomers to the surrounding neighborhood and as high attachments as old-timers in the surrounding neighborhood. Although largely attracted by affordable housing, new subdivision residents may become important neighborhood contributors, given their levels of place attachment and confidence.

Management of colorectal cancer in medicare health maintenance organizations

Because of the financial incentives of prepaid care, the quality of care for Medicare enrollees in Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) is a concern. Therefore, the care in 150 newly diagnosed cases of colorectal cancer in eight HMOs was compared with that in 180 similar fee-for-service (FFS) cases. As part of the diagnostic workup, HMO patients were more likely to have bad fecal occult blood tests (74% vs 52%, p<0.01) and endoscopy or barium enemas (97% vs 90%, p<0.05). FFS patients were more likely to have had preoperative imaging studies (54% vs 38%, p<0.01). Although there were longer diagnostic delays for HMO enrollees with gastrointestinal bleeding, there were no significant differences in disease stage or clinical status, and postoperative follow-up was similar. The authors conclude that enrollees in Medicare HMOs with colorectal cancer receive medical and surgical care at least equal to that received in FFS settings.