Turning Estates into Villages

[nxylas]

We are, to a surprising extent, what the built environment makes us. Academic papers show that many of the problems we blame on individual behaviour are caused in part by the places in which we live. People are more likely to help their neighbours in quiet areas, for example, than in noisy ones. A long series of studies across several countries, beginning in San Francisco in 1969, shows unequivocally that communities become weaker as the volume of traffic on their streets increases

More at: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/08/09/turning-estates-into-villages/

(Note: in British parlance, "estate" in this context refers to a planned neighborhood, usually a lower-income one, and has negative connotations, rather like the word "Projects" in the States).