social capital

Yesterday afternoon I traveled to Charlotte to complete a delineation of a wetland for a good client of mine. I usually do not go to charlotte, but this client was in a fix for time and needed this done ASAP. Every time a make a change in scenery to the big city I am shocked at the amount of development that is going on in north Mecklenburg County. The particular site I was on was a proposed future cookie cutter development to serve the young professional crowd. On the way home last night I found my self debating the merits of clustered high density development versus lower density larger lots.
I suppose environmental aspects could be argued both ways. With higher density and more cluster development like in this particular proposed development larger green areas can be left and developed into trails and common areas. Where as lower density development concentrates less im pervious surfaces and abates the effects of concentrated flow causing erosion and sedimentation into the water. There is a side to this argument that I have not debated in my mind. This is the idea of social capital. It was obvious after our class discussion that social capital is much higher in clustered dense developments that it would be in more spread out subdivisions.