A New Look at Urban Alienation: The Effect of Neighborhood Disorder on Perceived Powerlessness

Using data from the 1995 survey of Community, Crime and Health, a representative sample of 2,482 adults in Illinois age 18 to 92 (with linked data on respondents' census tracts), we find that urban residence is associated with perceived powerlessness. Most of the effect, however, is due to the sociodemographic characteristics of people living in the city. Yet even when we adjust for sociodemographic characteristics, a small effect of urban residence on subjective powerlessness remains. This remaining effect is explained by the experience of disorder in one's neighborhood. People who live in urban areas and high-poverty neighborhoods report more neighborhood disorder ; this disorder, not the city nor the neighborhood poverty per se, affects perceived powerlessness. People who report living in a disordered neighborhood have significantly higher levels of perceived powerlessness, in small part because they lack social ties with neighbors.