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The Impact of the Built Environment on Children’s School Conduct Grades: The Role of Diversity of Use in a Hispanic Neighborhood

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American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

A population-based study examined the relationship between diversity of use of the built environment and teacher reports of children’s grades. Diversity of use of the built environment (i.e., proportion of a block that is residential, institutional, commercial and vacant) was assessed for all 403 city blocks in East Little Havana, Miami—a Hispanic neighborhood. Cluster analysis identified three block-types, based on diversity of use: Residential, Mixed-Use, and Commercial. Cross-classified hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine the impact of diversity of use, school, gender, and year-in-school on academic and conduct grades for 2857 public school children who lived in these blocks. Contrary to popular belief, mixed-use blocks were associated with optimal outcomes. Specifically, follow-up analyses found that a youth living on a residential block had a 74% greater odds of being in the lowest 10% of conduct grades (conduct GPA <2.17) than a youth living on a mixed-use block. In fact, an analysis of the population attributable fraction suggests that if the risk associated with residential blocks could be reduced to the level of risk associated with mixed-use blocks, a 38% reduction in Conduct GPAs <2.17 could be achieved in the total population. These findings suggest that public policy targeting the built environment may be a mechanism for community-based interventions to enhance children’s classroom conduct, and potentially related sequelae.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant No. 037377, and by a National Institute of Mental Health/National Institute on Environmental Health Sciences Grant No. MH 63709. School data were contributed by the Miami-Dade Public School System. We thank Drs. Seth Schwartz and Barbara Lopez for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Center for Family Studies, 1425 NW 10th Ave., Room 207, Miami, Florida, 33136, USA

    José Szapocznik, Joanna Lombard, Frank Martinez & Scott C. Brown

  2. University of Miami School of Architecture, Coral Gables, Florida, USA

    José Szapocznik, Joanna Lombard, Frank Martinez & Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

  3. University of Maine College of Education and Human Development, Orono, Maine, USA

    Craig A. Mason

  4. University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Deborah Gorman-Smith

  5. Lehigh University College of Education, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA

    Arnold Spokane

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  1. José Szapocznik
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  2. Joanna Lombard
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Correspondence to José Szapocznik.

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Szapocznik, J., Lombard, J., Martinez, F. et al. The Impact of the Built Environment on Children’s School Conduct Grades: The Role of Diversity of Use in a Hispanic Neighborhood. Am J Community Psychol 38, 299–310 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-006-9084-x

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