Community encounters of the close kind: A Sydney study of community without propinquity

Abstract

This study examines Webber's 1963 Community Without Propinquity (CWP) hypothesis within a contemporary Australian context. Webber predicted that barriers to communication between people in increasingly well-educated and affluent societies would be overcome by developments in transport and technology. Close social ties in the place-based community of the neighbourhood would thus become unimportant because personal interactions would be maintained in dispersed communities of interest not limited by geography. This investigation is timely, appropriate and essential because elements identified as catalysts for CWPs, notably improvements in communications and transport, together with the impacts of globalisation and economic restructuring, are widely seen to be changing the nature of many advanced economies, including Australia's. The project researches individual neighbourhood areas and people's identification with such areas; explores where different types of shops, facilities and services are used and the extent to which people's activities are contained within neighbourhood boundaries; examines close social ties and interactions in formal and informal associations; and investigates the salience of issues for place-belonging and associated impacts on wellbeing. Areas with different socio-economic, demographic and cultural characteristics in metropolitan Sydney are studied. Composite results are examined in detail; in addition, locational differences are considered. The results indicate that out-of-area activities exist alongside neighbourhood activity. Whilst the majority of close social ties away from neighbourhoods are with friends and kin, most people also have important place-based associations and relationships. Differences in mobility, in household composition, in number of hours worked and, perhaps most significantly, in affluence emerged as important elements apparently affecting propensities for neighbourhood attachment. The study also suggests factors that seem to weaken neighbourhood cohesion and have effects on wellbeing. This study pioneers comprehensive and systematic research on where, with whom and how close social ties are maintained and explores aspects of neighbourhood life in well-established suburbs of Sydney. The findings facilitate further investigations of the changing nature of urban society. Most importantly, it illustrates the continued relevance of the neighbourhood for social interaction in spite of dispersed networks of association.