How Gridded Streets Weaken Neighborhood Ties and Lower Voter Turnout

📍 What This Paper Investigates

Amid rapid urbanization in the developing world, the physical layout of cities is an underexplored influence on political behavior. This paper examines how the built environment—specifically the degree to which neighborhood streets form orderly grids—shapes everyday social interaction, political problem-solving ties, and electoral participation in urban Ghana.

🧭 Data Sources and Research Design

• Street network data measuring the extent of gridded, orderly street layouts.
• An original household survey conducted in urban Ghana that captures neighbor interaction, involvement in local political problem-solving networks, and self-reported electoral turnout.

🔑 Key Findings

• Gridded, orderly neighborhoods are associated with reduced social interactions among neighbors.
• Residents in more gridded areas are less embedded in political problem-solving networks that neighbors use to address local issues.
• These reductions in social and political ties are linked to lower electoral turnout in gridded neighborhoods.
• Mechanism: rather than making residents more legible to state officials, gridded street designs make the local state and political realm less legible to residents by curtailing routine opportunities to forge politically valuable social ties—an effect particularly salient in contexts of clientelist politics.

⚖️ Why This Matters

Findings highlight the need to include the built environment in explanations of grassroots urban politics. Physical design of streets can reshape social networks that undergird clientelist exchange and civic engagement, with direct implications for how citizens connect to local political actors and whether they participate in elections.