"This study builds off of the literature regarding the relatively new and popular theory of social capital to understand its relationship with the built environment. Social capital is best described as the accumulation of the perceived benefits that develop through interpersonal relationships and social networks. In this study, social capital is measured as trust in one's neighbors and one's perception of his or her neighborhood's cohesion. These social capital measures comprise the dependent variables. The independent variables include landscape factors such as housing type, median home values, Walk Score, vacancy, housing density, road conditions, blight/abandonment, junk piles/illegal dumping, street segment connectivity, street segment integration. The relationships between these landscape factors and social capital variables are discussed anecdotally and later tested using a linear regression model. This study finds no significant relationships between landscape factors and measures of social capital, although demographic controls such as access to a personal vehicle, education, employment status and income are found to have a significant relationship. However, regression analyses in this study are significant and indicate that landscape variables do account for around 20 percent of the variation in levels of social capital, though the effect of individual factors remains unclear. Therefore, the decisions of urban planners and landscape architects appear to contribute to the social connections of a place and future research should continue to estimate which factors play the greatest roles."--Page ii.
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