Neighbours but strangers: social psychological processes predicting public place sociability in multicultural regenerated neighbourhoods

• Autor(a) principal: Fuligni, Caterina
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/19109
• topic: Public place sociability; Regeneration; Perceived community participation; Sense of community; Place attachment; Multicultural ideology; Sociabilidade em espaço público; Regeneração; Participação percebida da comunidade; Sentido de comunidade; Ligação ao lugar; Ideologia multicultural

This study examined weather different types of regeneration strategy— “bottom-up” versus “topdown”—affect differently residents’ perceived community participation, sense of community, place attachment and public place sociability. Specifically, it explored a) how perceived community participation predicts the use of public places for everyday sociability, examining the mediator roles of sense of community and place attachment and b) whether these effects would be moderated by residents’ endorsement of multiculturalism. A questionnaire survey (N=119) with native Italian residents from two sub-urban and ethnic diverse neighbourhoods undergoing urban regeneration (“top-down” versus “bottom-up”) indicated that: a) residents in the “bottomup” neighbourhood reported greater levels of sense of community, place attachment, public place sociability compared to the “top-down” neighbourhood except for perceived community participation; b) the relationship between perceived community participation and public place sociability is mediated by sense of community; and c) this positive indirect effect does not depend on residents’ multicultural ideology. Consequences and practical implications of considering community and place meanings in order to reverse neighborhood decline, lack of social cohesion, and threats of crime are discussed.