Neighbouring in Present‐Day Sweden: The Role of Neighbourhood Type, Housing and Personality

ABSTRACT Interaction with neighbours is important not only for individual well‐being but also for social cohesion. This paper examines how neighbouring – the extent to which residents interact with their neighbours – varies across sociodemographic clusters beyond the conventional urban‐rural binary and investigates how housing characteristics and personality traits are further associated with neighbourly interactions. Utilising the Neighbourhood Survey 2020, a representative, large‐scale survey drawn from 10 distinct neighbourhood types across Sweden, the findings reveal that greeting neighbours is commonplace, but that talking to neighbours is rarer, while asking neighbours for help is not widespread. A significant portion of this variation stems from the neighbourhood context itself. Residents in homogeneous neighbourhoods in rural and urban areas exhibit higher levels of neighbourly interaction, while in diverse urban areas neighbouring is weaker. Homogeneity, and not diversity, thus fosters neighbouring. The type of neighbouring matters: asking neighbours for help is more common among migrants in deprived areas and among the poorest in rural homogeneous areas, while greeting neighbours is more common in homogeneous rural neighbourhoods, but not so much in small towns. Personality and housing characteristics also explain part of these patterns, with apartment dwellers and individuals scoring high in neuroticism neighbouring less, whereas those who are more extroverted and live in semi‑detached housing show greater neighbourly engagement. These results enrich ongoing debates around ethnic diversity, segregation, and social cohesion, pointing to increasing spatial polarisation.