Making space and building social capital: Unpacking the relationships between community center use and social capital in urban regenerated neighborhoods in Seoul, Korea

Abstract

Scholars and planners have emphasized the importance of community spaces to enhance social capital in neighborhoods. This study extends the previous literature examining the influences of community centers on social capital in neighborhoods. Although prior research have estimated the association between community spaces uses and individual level of social capital, there is limited understanding of the causal direction of the effects of community spaces. This study fills this gap by employing the behavioral dissonance framework to clarify the effects of self-selection bias and/or actual effects of community center uses on social capital. Based on a household drop-off survey of 600 respondents in Seoul, Korea, we use a multiple regression model to identify the relationships between community center uses and overall social capital. Additionally, we take account of how the influences of community center use vary across different domains of social capital by employing ordinal logistic regression models. Our results may help planners and policymakers better understand how to enhance social capital with community spaces and develop tailored strategies to achieve social sustainability in regenerated neighborhoods according to different domains of social capital.