Social Capital in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods: A Diversion from Needs or a Real Contribution to the Debate on Area-Based Regeneration?

The most enthusiastic proponents of social capital identify it as the key explanatory factor in economically prosperous and well-governed territorial communities. The tendency is to reduce the concept to ‘sense of community’ and voluntary association. Use of social capital as a policy tool, however, requires a clear understanding of what social capital is and a stronger evidence base to examine its association with positive outcomes. This paper presents an approach to measuring social capital in local territorial communities alongside selected findings from an empirical examination of social capital and its relationship to quality of life in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods (Humphreys, 2005). Variations in levels of social capital in neighbourhoods are associated with both compositional and contextual conditions of place. Socio-economic characteristics of people including higher levels of education and home ownership are positively associated with social capital. Better conditions of place such as good quality local services and a developed community and social infrastructure are also positively associated with social capital. However, this does not mean that the problems of disadvantaged neighbourhoods can be attributed simply to deficits of social capital or certain types of social capital – i.e. bridging and linking social capital. I argue that a more sophisticated understanding is required of the conditions that shape social capital and that are shaped by it in specific spatial contexts, before considering the deployment of social capital as a policy tool.