Planning for Social Environments : Social Capital in the Context of Critical Realism and the Dynamics of Complex Systems
1 . Planning and the Measurement of Social Capital
Social capital as a subject of formal research is relatively new , although the phenomena of social structures clearly is not ( Aristotle , 2012 ; Tocqueville , 2001 ). Amid significant and wide-ranging academic interest in social capital ( Friesen , 2018b ), agreement on measurement and consensus on the scope of what is included in social capital remain elusive . This need not be a significant worry as science has always proceeded from partial understanding , competing theories , and unclear boundaries ( Brody , 1970 ; Chomsky , 1996 ; Serres , 1995 ). There are dozens of varying definitions of social capital ( see Appendix 1 for a representative list of definitions and authors ) but for this paper , the term social capital is intended to refer to the density and quality of human relational networks , both formal and informal . Social capital is a phenomena whose effect is significant ( Coleman , 1988 ; Kawachi , Kennedy , Lochner , & ProthrowStith , 1997 ; Ostrom & Ahn , 2003 ), despite the difficulty of consistent definition and agreed-to measurement . Latent constructs , such as social capital ( Sekar & Rai , 2018 ), are gateways for insight about our understanding of the social infrastructure of urban communities at the scale of neighborhoods is particularly important for planners and policymakers . This local scale is related to a significant number of phenomena that are vital to well-being such as mental health , longevity , educational achievement , economic performance , and belonging ( Bethune , 2014 ; Dunkelman , 2014 ; Pinker , 2014 ).
1.1 . Issues of Scale in Social Capital Measurement
National and regional social trends become visible through instruments like the General Social Survey ( GSS ), allowing us to learn about how people spend their time , how they perceive their neighbors , what they think of the organizations in their communities , and so on . While this scale of analysis is of some use to planners , it is much less valuable in the context of community level design and decision-making . This is particularly true for social capital , where local conditions are key drivers of the relational ecology of citizens at these scales ( Bechard & Marchand , 2006 ). The GSS instrument does not provide this resolution .
Neighborhood-level social capital measurement requires a data collection approach that is sufficiently economical for deployment across cities at neighborhood levels . Saturation surveys ( outside of a census ) are generally not feasible given cost and complexity , but the increasing ubiquity of mobile devices that collect geographic positioning systems ( GPS ) data means ever-larger data sets are at least potentially available for emerging data analysis approaches ( Cohen , 2011 ; Pentland , 2014 ). For example , it would be expensive to collect a representative sampling at neighborhood levels for an entire city with the additional burden of mapping the social networks of participants . Participant surveys , though common as a form of data generation and in addition to their
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