Thinking about neighbourhoods

Why are we looking at neighbourhoods? And, indeed, what are neighbourhoods, exactly?

Researchers have no consensus on definitions for neighbourhoods. Dictionaries typically come up with the following:

neighbourhood US, neighborhood [ˈneɪbəˌhʊd]

n

1. the immediate environment; surroundings; vicinity Related adj vicinal

2. a district where people live

3. the people in a particular area; neighbours

4. neighbourly feeling

neighbourhood

noun

1. district, community, quarter, region, surroundings, locality, locale It seemed like a good neighbourhood to raise my children.

2. vicinity, confines, proximity, precincts, environs, purlieus the loss of woodlands in the neighbourhood of large towns

Researchers then try to modify the noun by using something like “walking neighbourhood”. This is sometimes supposed to be around 1 -2 kilometres in diameter from the home. Even this has been recently challenged as too large a space when matched to the actual walking habits of residents in a town in the UK.

Local governments have often used wards – with electoral edges that provide the basis of a segmented local authority – as synonyms for neighbourhoods. This may well replicate neighbourhoods as identified by residents and workers in many places, but this may be coincidence. Most wards have to balance other factors (population size and rate base) in order to make them effective.

More generally, local governments have adopted approaches that use ideas such as the 20 minute city, in which people are able to get anywhere within the city in 20 minutes by all forms of transport (although this is not a universal definition:  “Adelaide once had the enviable reputation as Australia’s “20-minute city”, which meant motorists could access the central business district (CBD) from all parts of the metropolitan area and expect most journeys to fall within a convenient 20-minute timeframe” - http://www.raa.com.au/download.aspx?secid=294&file=documents%5Cdocument_677.pdf). Melbourne has recently become a strong advocate of this approach.

Clearly, what is happening here is two different approaches that are meshing. The first is based in some way on an external measuring approach: 1 km diameter, 20 minutes walking, between the river and the freeway etc. The second is based on the people who live or work in the neighbourhood: what do I define as my neighbourhood?

So, for the purposes of local governments and their communities, what is a reasonable definition of neighbourhood? We suggest a few considerations.

First, a necessary condition is that the people living and working within the neighbourhood see it as a neighbourhood and define themselves as belonging to it – that is, to use one of the above definitions, an area that has a neighbourly feel. This does not mean that everyone in that area has that feeling – simply that it is a general sense, observable (and quantifiable) if people are asked that question.

Through habit and repetition, people may greet each other, recognizable as people who inhabit that neighbourhood. Indeed, it could be argued that this simple indicator of regular greeting of neighbours is a key method of working out how thriving a neighbourhood is.

Second, a likely condition is that there is a natural reason for the neighbourhood to have boundaries that make sense, porous though they may be. This could be built environment features, such as a street or change of housing type, or natural features such as a river or park.

This could also be demographic or ethnographic realities: many of the great urban neighbourhoods over the centuries have been created by concentrations of immigrants from one country gathered together.

Third, a neighbourhood has a scale that is “human” – that is, able to be walked around with relative ease. Again, this is a very vague concept – there have been attempts to develop 15 or 20 minute approaches.

When placed together, these conditions mean that neighbourhoods are a combination of a place where people live and/or work and where they have a feeling of belonging or identification with the people in that neighbourhood. It is possible that they may overlap with other neighbourhoods, or have sub-groups within.