A sense of belonging to the neighbourhood in places beyond the metropolis – the role of social infrastructure

Abstract This paper analyses the importance of social infrastructure, understood as physical locations and institutions that influence the way people engage with one another, for explaining local belonging beyond the metropolis. Previous studies emphasise the importance of factors such as length of residence, trust, social cohesion, or community organisation for the sense of belonging to one’s neighbourhood, but more or less ignore the aspect of social infrastructure. Furthermore, these studies predominantly focus on the major metropolises in the Global North and South, consistently overlooking smaller places. In this paper, a regional, individual-level dataset is used to analyse the systematic relationship between feelings of local belonging and the existing social infrastructure in cities, towns, and villages in Germany, covering various size categories below the metropolis. The statistical analyses show that local belonging primarily means belonging to the people in the neighbourhood. Trust in neighbours and conversations with neighbours are by far the strongest explanatory factors for a sense of belonging, while social infrastructure, although relevant at the individual level, is much less important. In contrast to the emphasis placed on social infrastructure in qualitative empirical studies, it plays only a minor role in residents’ sense of belonging in German cities and villages.