How the Built Environment Affects Public Trust in Canadian Municipalities

Description

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of strong neighbourhoods, where people can rely on one another. Support can mean delivering groceries to older people living by themselves or simply checking on each other’s health. These scenarios, among others, show that interpersonal trust is a central component of a strong community.

On May 10, IMFG Graduate Fellow Fernando Calderón Figueroa will explore the relationship between trust and the built environment of neighbourhoods across Canadian municipalities. First, he will use data from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey to show that trust is spatially concentrated — in other words, that people with similar levels of trust towards others tend to be in proximity to one another. Second, he will argue that the spatial composition of cities — measured through people’s proximity to amenities like libraries, parks, and schools — is positively correlated with trust, and that a having a lot of amenities in close proximity to each other promotes the kind of recurrent casual encounters that lead to higher levels of trust.