Neighborhood Environment and Sense of Community: Multilevel Analysis in Suburban City of Tokyo

Objective: Many commuter towns have been developed in suburban city of Tokyo, and many people have moved there. In such a city, the sense of community among the residents might be low, but it is important to foster this toward building community capacity. Improving neighborhood environment might help in developing a sense of community among the residents. This study examined the relationship between the sense of community and neighborhood environment among general population in a suburban city of Tokyo. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using mailed questionnaires in February 2009. The participants were randomly selected 4,123 people who were aged 20 and above living in 7 areas (including 72 districts) in Kashiwa city, Chiba prefecture. The questions included attitude toward community scale, with two subscales of "activeness" and "cooperativeness," and neighborhood environment walkability scale (using subscales of "aesthetics" and "crime"). The neighborhoodenvironment walkability scale was developed as a district variable by aggregating the individual scores within each district. Results: The analysis included 1,720 questionnaires (valid response rate: 41.7%). A multilevel analysis showed that high district score of "aesthetics" and low district score of "crime" were associated with high score of "cooperativeness." However, there was no association between neighborhood environment and "activeness." Conclusion: The result indicates that improvement in the neighborhood environment would play important role in developing sense of cooperativeness. Meanwhile, further study is necessary to clarify how the sense of activeness among the residents can be fostered.