The Decline and Rise of Neighbourhoods: The Importance of Neighbourhood Governance

Abstract

There is a substantial literature on the explanation of neighbourhood change. Most of this literature concentrates on identifying factors and developments behind processes of decline. This paper reviews the literature, focusing on the identification of patterns of neighbourhood change, and argues that the concept of neighbourhood governance is a missing link in attempts to explain these patterns. Including neighbourhood governance in the explanations of neighbourhood change and decline will produce better explanatory models and, finally, a better view about what is actually steering neighbourhood change.

Multiscalarity and Neighbourhood Governance

“…For self-governance, such a body could be a fully participative and deliberative assembly or forum in which decisions affecting the neighbourhood are made. This seems feasible because evidence indicates that residents' attachment to their neighbourhood (which obviously requires the neighbourhood to have a distinct identity) is the most important factor associated with their participation in neighbourhood life generally, and in neighbourhood governance in particular (Somerville et al, 2009) On scale 3, neighbourhood governance bodies are widespread (though by no means universal) in most countries, in the form of primary tiers of local government (e.g. parish and town councils in England; communes in France).…”

Urban Geography Evolving: Toward an Evolutionary Urban Geography

“…A comprehensive review of the literature on urban change and decline is beyond the scope of this essay, and interested readers should refer to, inter alia, Grigsby et al (1987), Megbolugbe et al (1996), Pitkin (2001), Pacione (2003), or Somerville et al (2009) for more depth on the topics that follow. Here the focus is narrowly on a handful of matters that concern manifestations of urban decline, particularly "blight" (Weaver, Bagchi-Sen 2013;Weaver 2013) and "disorder" (Ross, Mirowsky 1999;vitale 2008).…”

“…In fact, despite a voluminous body of scholarship on urban change and dynamics (Megbolugbe et al 1996;Wyly 1999;Pitkin 2001;Somerville et al 2009), much of which ostensibly describes evolutionary processes (Allen 1997;Wyly 1999), an urban counterpart to EEG has not emerged within the human geography literature. As an example, consider that at the time of this writing, executing a Google Scholar search on the exact phrase "evolutionary urban geography" yields a single result (Ghitter, Smart 2009), compared to 1,440 results for "evolutionary economic geography".…”

A Cross-Level Exploratory Analysis of “Neighborhood Effects” on Urban Behavior: An Evolutionary Perspective

“…When households are relatively proximate, actors are geographically available to experience passive contacts ("stage 2 neighboring"), passive contacts may then lead to intentional contacts ("stage 3 neighboring"), and intentional/active contacts can eventually produce mutual trust and a sense of community among neighbors ("stage 4 neighboring") ( [6], pp. [17][18][19].…”

“…Urban social and behavioral scientists have long been interested in neighborhoods: what they are [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]; how they form [8,9]; the processes by which they change over time, and, in turn, how those changes play out at higher levels of aggregation [10][11][12][13][14][15]; their roles in strategic planning and governance [16,17]; and, among other things, how (or if) they affect the behaviors and life outcomes of their constituent actors [18][19][20][21][22][23]. Concerning the latter of these themes, which is the focus of the current article, the ways in which neighborhood contexts influence individuals have proven quite difficult to study empirically.…”