Social Sustainability, Neighbourhood Cohesion and Quality of Life: A Tale of Two Suburbs in Calgary

Calgary is one of the fastest growing cities in North America with over 90% of this growth accommodated in the suburbs. While a lot of the planning rhetoric centers on sustainability, the attempts to explore social sustainability remain limited. The empirical research in this chapter uses a robust approach to operationalize and measure social sustainability using multidisciplinary methods of analysis and focusing on neighbourhood cohesion. It argues that neighbourhoods do matter and neighbourhood cohesion in the suburbs is relatively high, but different factors influence residents’ perceptions and social processes. The research evaluates neighborhood cohesion focusing on three dimensions—psychological sense of community, place attachment, social interaction of residents as well as their correlations with neighborhood uniqueness. Using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, it considers the quality of life and residents’ perception of the physical and social attributes of two suburban neighbourhoods in Calgary to provide an in-depth interpretation of similarities and differences in neighbourhood cohesion and social sustainability. The findings address an important aspect of community planning associated with the attractiveness of semi-gated suburban living in low-density developments embedded in the natural environment.