“Neighbourhood” from Gregory, D. et al. eds., 2009. The Dictionary of Human Geography 5th ed., Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 494-495.
neighbourhood An urban area dominated by residential uses. While no fixed scale can be assigned, neighbourhoods have tradition- ally been understood to be relatively small or walkable, although they may vary considerably in terms of population (Martin, 2003). Neighbourhood has long been conflated with the notion of community as described in the work of the chicago school sociologists. Neighbourhood is the more explicitly territorial concept of the two. Efforts at defining and using the term ‘neighbourhood’ fall roughly into four areas: typologies (identifying primary neigh- bourhood characteristics); neighbourhood change; neighbourhood effects; and as a terri- tory for political action (Martin, 2003).
Typologies of neighbourhoods draw upon and also echo the conflation with community in the Chicago School approach. These com- bine physical and social features of territor- ies within cities in order to classify each area as some type (Hunter, 1979). The features included in such typologies include race and ethnicity, religion, family status, and class of the area population, housing tenure, age and other infrastructure characteristics. Neighbourhood types can then be correlated with neighbourhood change over time, drawing upon the notion of mobility associated with the Chicago School and from invasion and succession.
Neighbourhood change focuses on both popu- lation and infrastructure. Population may change by one or more measures (such as dominant ethnicity or household structure) due to residential mobility (where people move to a different area within a city or a different location entirely). A neighbourhood’s physical infrastructure changes due to decline (due to age or active disinvestment) or renewed investment (as with urban renewal or gentrification).
‘Neighbourhood effects’ approaches investigate neighbourhoods as loci of social norms that shape individual attitudes, experiences and health (Hunter, 1979; Ellaway, Macintyre and Kearns, 2001). This literature seeks to link individual outcomes with local social and physical conditions. For example, Ellaway, Macintyre and Kearns (2001) found that individuals perceive their health differ- ently depending upon physical conditions of the neighbourhood. However, Mandanipour, Cars and Allen (2000) argued that structural exclusions of the poor (e.g. uneven access to resources, due to segregation) are more powerful forces in an individual’s life chances than local cultural factors.
An approach that highlights the contingency of any definition of neighbourhood upon local context and/or scholarly purpose is that of conceptualizing neighbourhood as a territory for political action (Martin, 2003). In this conceptualization, neighbourhoods are constituted by practice: daily life and particular social and political claims, which are dynamic over time and space. The particular meaning of neighbourhood – as a social community or historical district, for example – will be articulated and deployed according to the people involved and issues at stake. As the other three approaches suggest, ‘neighbourhood’ is a term that is highly dependent upon the par- ticular location in which it is embedded, the local political and social culture, and the perspective of the individual experiencing or observing the neighbourhood.
