At last, a reason not to hate sprawl: suburbanites have closer ties to their communities than city dwellers, according to a recent study (pdf). Two economists, one from the University of California at Irvine and another from Dublin City University Business School, analyzed data on 15,000 Americans and found that people in low-density (i.e, more spread out) areas have more friends and know their neighbors better than their urban counterparts. The study suggests that critics of sprawl (notably Robert Putnam, author of the 2000 book Bowling Alone) may be mistaken in their argument that suburban life decreases “social capital,” our web of connections to each other.
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