A new study out of UC Irvine finds that people connect more with their neighbors in the suburbs than in more dense urban areas. (Yes you read that right.)

The study, released by the University of California at Irvine, found that for every 10 per cent decrease in population density, the chances of people talking to their neighbours weekly increases by 10 per cent, and the likelihood they belong to hobby-based clubs jumps by 15 per cent.

“We found that interaction goes down as population density goes up. So, turning it around, it says that interaction is higher where densities are lower,” says Jan Brueckner, an economics professor at UC Irvine who led the study. “What that means is suburban living promotes more interaction than living in the central city.”

This is not particularly surprising, but is not an even field. Some suburbs are very friendly and have a lot of social capital. Others, like the one that I lived in when I made Subdivided, are cold as ice.

My new burb is pretty great - completely different feel than the last one. It can go negative pretty quickly though. A guy down the street has put in the first “privacy fence” which is about 12 feet high. Once a place goes cold its really hard to turn it around.

BTW there’s an interesting thread on a blog called Marginal Revolution about this study.

This study is a very thin look at the issue, a slice. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t cold neighborhoods with no social capital everywhere. It doesn’t mean that the way subdivisions and towns are designed around the automobile and longer and longer travel times is suddenly a smart strategy. And this one study also does not suddenly make suburbia a good idea.