Introduction

It’s difficult to think about cities without the neighborhoods that comprise them. Neighborhoods are the subject of intense study, yet remain largely ill-defined. Sure, city administrations often divide up their cities into distinct geographic areas, give those areas names, and sometimes even label them as “neighborhoods”. But rarely do these administrative boundaries match what residents experience as their own neighborhood. In fact, it’s common for people living in the same geographic area to have different ideas about what their neighborhood is called and what its boundaries are!  To get a handle on all of this, our current module is all about neighborhoods.

Readings

We’re going to do two readings that will introduce us to some of the basic vocabulary of neighborhoods. The Neighborhood entry in the Encyclopedia of Human Geography will give you a great introduction and cover the neighborhood ideas of Louis Wirth. The second reading covers another neighborhood conceptualization, called the neighborhood unit.