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Contact: Jon Meerdink ([email protected])

ANN ARBOR — Our environments shape our lives in profound ways.

The climate in which we live affects our well-being in visible and invisible ways. Our social environment affects every aspect of our relationships, both at home and at work. Our built environment affects the way we move through every moment of our day.

Noah Webster of the Institute for Social Research’s Survey Research Center studies each of these environments and how we interact with them. But Webster has a further interest: how these different environments intersect and how these intersections affect societal challenges.

In the most recent edition of ISR’s Insights Speaker Series, Webster touched on these issues in a presentation titled “The intersection of the social, natural, and built environments.” He argued even things as simple as the layout of an office can affect many different aspects of day-to-day life, creating downstream impacts on our social environments.

“Social relationships are influenced by the physical structures that we encounter. Think about our workspace. Hallways might influence what pathway you might walk every day and whose office you might pass by and how often that influences whether or not and how often you talk to them,” he said.

Webster prevented findings from three different studies. The first explored the link between social ties and health in affordable senior housing communities. Through this study, he demonstrated that more positive social ties in affordable senior housing were linked to improvements in functional health. Not only that, but linking influential people with physical activity intervention could result in greater participation and sustained behavioral changes among other residents. 

In the second, Webster demonstrated how rain gardens can be an important part of the effort to mitigate climate change. Not only that, but as key pieces of neighborhood green infrastructure, they can have a measurable social benefit by bringing neighbors together.

Finally, Webster explored the impact of a project originally funded as a part of a collaboration between ISR and the U-M College of Engineering. This project, which went on to receive additional funding after its initial grant from ISR, examined how independent dam operators within a single watershed can affect locally isolated populations through their decisions. Through this research, Webster and others are working to better understand the role of social capital in decision making regarding the flow of water within the watershed.

Webster says these interactions between environments — especially between the built environment and the social environment — are under-researched, but he and his colleagues are working to change that.

View Webster’s full presentation above, and for more on the Insights Speaker Series, click here, or browse the recent presentations below.

• ISR’s Pamela Davis-Kean discusses the importance and impact of mathematical skills in educational development in Insights presentation
• ISR’s Kira Birditt explains why ‘concordant drinking’ may strengthen marital bonds in Insights talk
• Does an increasingly partisan political environment have negative consequences for democracy?