What is a neighbourhood?

A neighbourhood may be defined as having several thousand residents covering an area that people can walk across. The scale of a neighbourhood typically focuses on a primary school catchment area (Power and Wilson, 2000; Novick, 1979). Scale is important when considering what a neighbourhood is, but it is not the only consideration. From a review of the literature, we can find four over-lapping approaches to defining neighbourhood.

1. By its functions – Neighbourhood is seen as a site for the routines of everyday life (e.g. shopping); the provision of community support services and institutional resources (e.g. schools, libraries, parent drop-ins); informal surveillance (‘the eyes of the street’, such as block parents); and social control (e.g. over the neighbourhood children and youth to make sure they do not misbehave, but this could include the support of other people’s children).

2. By fixed boundaries – Defining neighbourhood via fixed boundaries, such as postal codes or census tracts, is a proxy most often used for research purposes to draw a line around neighbourhoods. The City of Toronto defines ‘neighbourhoood’ for administrative and funding purposes as consisting of several census tracts, between 7,000 and 10,000 people. One of the limitations of the fixed boundaries approach is that it may not capture ‘natural neighbourhoods’, nor people’s perceived neighbourhoods.

3. The degree of homogeneity – Homogeneity can result by choice (people choosing to live with others who share important values, cultural backgrounds, language, etc.) or necessity (e.g. where affordable housing can be found). People with similar values and lifestyles often aggregate to the same geographical locales.

4. People’s lived experiences – Neighbourhoods do not necessarily have objective features that are experienced or defined the same way by all residents. Neighbourhoods have social and symbolic, as well as physical boundaries. They can, therefore, be defined subjectively from within by the people who live there. For many people, neighbourhoods are a source of their identities and sense of pride. American research shows that more educated residents are likely to say that their neighbourhood is larger than other residents. Conversely, neighbourhoods are perceived as smaller if they have a higher proportion of low income residents and ‘minority language’ speakers.

Residents who interact more with their neighbours also have a different view of their neighbourhood than those who are more isolated. (Interestingly, this study also found that “a surprising number of 36 routine activities take place close to home”, with the workplace being the furthest from home” (Sastry et al, 2002). Initiatives funded under Britain’s local neighbourhood renewal strategies use various definitions of neighbourhood, depending on what makes sense to local conditions. Local perceptions of neighbourhoods “may be defined by natural dividing lines such as roads or rivers, changes in housing design or nature or the sense of community generated around centres such as schools” (NRU, 2001:13). “Bespoke neighbourhoods” is the term used to describe the definition of neighbourhood that emerges when people are asked to draw a line around what they consider to be their neighbourhood. This may or may not overlap with geographical boundaries. It is obvious that there is no single definition of neighbourhood, that a neighbourhood is fluid and may be different at different times depending on the situation, the people asked, and the policy or research rationale.

A neighbourhood is like an onion.

“Neighbourhoods often have sharp boundaries, either physical or atmospheric, but the layers of neighbourhood life are like an onion with a tight core and a loose outer skin”. (Power and Wilson, 2000:1)

To capture the complexity and inter-relationships between different aspects of “neighbourhood”, some writers compare a neighbourhood to an onion as a way of understanding the roles neighbourhood plays in people’s lives. Power and Wilson (2000) and Lupton (2003) use the onion analogy to describe the levels at which ‘neighbourhood’ exists. When their different levels are combined, one ends up with four somewhat distinct layers of neighbourhood:

1. The home area for social interaction and making connections with others. This includes the home and immediate surroundings. This can also be the level for “demonstrating and reflecting one’s values” (Lupton, 2003).

2. The locality for schools, shops and parks. This level denotes status (Lupton) and reflects the social composition of the neighbourhood (Power and Wilson, 2000).

3. The neighbourhood environment. A neighbourhood’s reputation, its physical appearance and ‘feel’, the social norms that exist are all part of the neighbourhood environment which Power and Wilson define as giving “an intangible but powerful signal of who we are and how we should behave, and … offer[ing] a sense of familiarity and security to the people who live there” (Power and Wilson, 2000:1). 37

4. The wider urban district or region. This is the level of neighbourhood that exists for job opportunities, “the wider landscape of social and economic opportunities” (Lupton, 2003:5).

Power and Wilson maintain that neighbourhoods give people a sense of familiarity and security which break down when all the three layers – home, services, environment – are significantly “disrupted” (Power and Wilson, 2001:2). What Lupton draws from the analogy is that different boundaries make sense to meet different needs. When people are asked what their neighbourhood is, they may refer to any or all of the aspects or levels above: their local school, the atmosphere of the city centre, the feel of the neighbourhood environment, or the job opportunities that exist close by. (from Christa Freiler)

So, what exactly constitutes your local neighbourhood?

What is the neighbourhood of your church?