School Location, Social Ties, and Perceived Neighborhood Boundaries

Local organizations can serve as landmarks that orient residents' understanding of space and foster social ties through regular and repeated interaction. Depending on their location, schools can serve as local social anchors or pull families who live in the same neighborhood in different directions. This study examines the extent to which the geographic location of schools shapes how residents view their social and spatial connection to their own residential neighborhood. Specifically, I use GIS, descriptive statistics, and regressions with neighborhood fixed-effects to analyze the Making Connections Survey of 28 low-income neighborhoods in 10 different cities. The results show that residents who have a child attending a school inside their neighborhood report living in a closer-knit community and knowing more of their kids' friends. Residents also shift their perception of their neighborhoods' geographic boundaries in the direction of the school their child attends.