Neighborhood design affects voter turnout

What is it about?

Well established in the literature is that social context, like the racial or partisan composition of neighborhoods, affects individual political behavior. Less understood is how the design of neighborhoods may also influence these behaviors. Using a nationally representative survey with measures of the frequency of neighbor interaction and individual voter turnout and to which I merged respondents’ census tract information and then used Google Maps images to code respondents’ neighborhood design features, I show how the physical structure of residential places—whether homes have porches, streets are tree-lined, neighborhoods have natural gathering places—promotes neighborly exchanges that subsequently affect individual voter turnout.

Featured Image

Photo by Craig Tidball on Unsplash

Photo by Craig Tidball on Unsplash

Why is it important?

My study makes three contributions. First, the findings contribute to the literature by expanding how we conceptualize contextual effects to include the built environment. Second, it improves how design is measured by using an innovative method to code neighborhood features. Finally, the findings demonstrate that neighborhood design affects voter turnout through the mediator of neighborly contact. Overall, my findings show that neighborhood design does have a direct effect on neighbor-to-neighbor interactions and that these neighborly contacts matter, because they affect voter turnout.

Perspectives