The “neighborhood unit” on trial: a case study in the impacts of urban morphology

Abstract

Intense debate among prominent planners today has its roots in disagreements that go back more than a century -but recent research may point the way to resolving some old disagreements

Urban Design and Quality of Life

“…Following on, Porta et al (2014) confirmed this in an extensive geographic and temporal review of cases, subsequently addressing the importance of some structural physical elements at the metropolitan scale for the performance of urban life within social unspoken behavioral rules at the neighborhood scale (Mehaffy et al 2014). These spontaneous clusters are important for the establishment and maintenance of such rules.…”

“…From this perspective, the attention of urban design is beginning to shift from purely form towards patterns and the interpersonal relationships that define them, supported in particular by recent debates criticizing the concept of neighborhood as a physical entity associated with that of community (Mehaffy et al 2014). Whilst these still perceive neighborhoods as important, they interpret them as fluid and variable, changing around individuals, their interests and pursuits.…”

“…Such connections become visible in human-environment relationships in how people develop perceptions of relationships among themselves, society at large, and the wider natural world. Consistent with this are ideas related to the struggle for recognition, which facilitates forgiveness by connecting past experience with the present through people's socially interactive need to experience themselves as belonging, "recognized" as a focus of concern, a valued contributor, or a responsible agent, as central to achieving self-esteem (Honneth 1995).From this perspective, the attention of urban design is beginning to shift from purely form towards patterns and the interpersonal relationships that define them, supported in particular by recent debates criticizing the concept of neighborhood as a physical entity associated with that of community (Mehaffy et al 2014). Whilst these still perceive neighborhoods as important, they interpret them as fluid and variable, changing around individuals, their interests and pursuits.…”

“…The persistence of Perry's synthesis of the Neighborhood Unit idea (Perry 1929) through the development of the discipline has emphasized the fixed spatial relationship between location of services and gravitation of local social practices, taken as a whole, on the grounds of a notional distance of 400 meters (or 5 minutes walk) from a center. This notion of neighborhood needs review, to take into account the complexity of sociality in the information age, and local communities expanding their role in relation to services, by becoming producers and not only consumers of services in a way that involves entrepreneurship and innovation primarily in the local space (Mehaffy et al 2014). New forms of inhabiting, from co-housing to LAT (Living Apart and Together), and working, with the expansion of house-working and multiple-working, coupled with the crisis of publiclysubsidized welfare systems, are emphasizing the benefits of adaptability and resilience through local control, as opposed to centralized planning-and-delivery, as an effective response to emergent societal needs.…”

How ideas work: memes and institutional material in the first 100 years of the neighborhood unit

“…It is intended to supplement numerous existing reviews of the neighborhood unit (Banerjee and Baer 1984;Dahir 1947;Keller 1968;Lawhon 2009;Mehaffy, Porta, and Romice 2014). To do so, I divide the history of the neighborhood unit from 1913 to the present into four, an arbitrary classification (the dates should be interpreted simply as rough markers) that links information captured within the neighborhood unit idea to contemporaneous events and trends, albeit at the risk of simplifying a richer and more complex history.…”