Sustainable Urban Living and Social Capital: Some Evidence from Crisis-Hit Greece

Developed societies have for long been engaged in finding ways to increase, deepen, and strengthen their social capital levels as a means to sustain institutional quality and their overall growth potential. However, this is a multifaceted and complex task, especially when linked to urban sustainability. Analysis of social capital as a spatial phenomenon is rather limited, despite the commonly held view that locally embedded associations, partnerships, and initiatives can foster community empowerment and regeneration by building and sustaining well-functioning communities. To that extent, social capital is inexorably linked to the territorial capital that regions and localities might mobilize toward addressing the wider social, economic, environmental, and developmental challenges that they face. Within this context, the present study analyzes the civic engagement pattern of urban residents in Greece and tests for the effect of soft social capital constructs such as social trust, social altruism, equality, tolerance, and humanitarianism, upon this pattern. Analysis is based on microlevel data drawn from the European Social Value surveys round 4 (2008) and round 5 (2010). Results show that, while controlling for the sociodemographic and economic profile of respondents, the onset of the economic crisis in the country has negatively affected the social capital scores of both urban and nonurban residents, with urban residents showing higher levels of civic engagement compared to nonurban residents.