The Role of Sister Cities' Staff Exchanges in Developing "Learning Cities": Exploring Necessary and Sufficient Conditions in Social Capital Development Utilizing Proportional Odds Modeling

In the last half century former international adversaries have become cooperators through networking and knowledge sharing for decision making aimed at improving quality of life and sustainability; nowhere has this been more striking then at the urban level where such activity is seen as a key compo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of environmental research and public health 2015-06, Vol.12 (7), p.7133-7153
Main Authors: Buckley, Patrick Henry, Takahashi, Akio, Anderson, Amy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cities
Conservation of Natural Resources
Humans
International Cooperation
Japan
Learning
Models, Statistical
Program Evaluation
Quality of Life
Social Capital
Social Change
Sustainability
United States
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Summary:In the last half century former international adversaries have become cooperators through networking and knowledge sharing for decision making aimed at improving quality of life and sustainability; nowhere has this been more striking then at the urban level where such activity is seen as a key component in building "learning cities" through the development of social capital. Although mega-cities have been leaders in such efforts, mid-sized cities with lesser resource endowments have striven to follow by focusing on more frugal sister city type exchanges. The underlying thesis of our research is that great value can be derived from city-to-city exchanges through social capital development. However, such a study must differentiate between necessary and sufficient conditions. Past studies assumed necessary conditions were met and immediately jumped to demonstrating the existence of structural relationships by measuring networking while further assuming that the existence of such demonstrated a parallel development of cognitive social capital. Our research addresses this lacuna by stepping back and critically examining these assumptions. To accomplish this goal we use a Proportional Odds Modeling with a Cumulative Logit Link approach to demonstrate the existence of a common latent structure, hence asserting that necessary conditions are met.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph120707133