Outline

 Neighbourhood

 Neighbourhood Effect, and

 New Urbanism
 Neighbourhood
 Economic and administrative units,

 Agencies for collecting statistics and organizing civic functions

 The nearest 500 individuals or as an area in which there is a

relatively high level of homogeneity

 as a comprehensive residential system, is a complex and multi-faceted
phenomenon

Neighborhood urban unit,

The building blocks of cities,

A crucial dimension of contemporary urban life, and

Influences the processes that shape social identity and life chances.
 Con…
View the city as a composite assemblage made of discrete urban units,

The design of residential areas as specific urban units,

The social measure for the design of residential areas is offered the most substantial

criterion,
Relates the practice of design to its direct subject society,

The social approach gives a definite base to

 Urban subareas and fixes them in the specific confinement of their function

A planning tool to organize the city according to social measures of personal and
communal well-being.
 Con…
it maintains the advancement through spatial definition, of the welfare

of the individual, the community, and society at large,

the size of the urban subunit (in terms of area and population) is determined

by the function of the neighborhood as a social unit,

 based primarily on its capacity to provide face-to-face encounters and to

foster meaningful social interactions.

Is a dynamic and ever-evolving concept, custom-made to fit contemporary

professional and theoretical contexts.
 Approaches
Humanistic
Neither as an invention nor as a design technique but rather as a universal human
phenomenon, `a fact of nature‘
People who enter by birth, chosen residence into common life,

A social framework exist wherever human beings congregate,

in permanent family dwellings.

Is a place defined by the identity of the people inhabiting it,
 Con…
 A step in a continuum of social order based upon the strength of human
bonds(nuclear family, neighbourhood, city, society),
 The planner's task is to relate to these communal living needs by forming

an appropriate environment,
 Neighbourhood as a means for social formation and social reform, and

 The creation of the physical setting which provides for these most

fundamental human properties.

 Discourse
The necessity for the design of neighbourhoods.

A.The naturalistic,

 People living in close proximity form neighbourhoods regardless of planning

interventions,
Neighbourhoods relate to the most basic human necessity for social interaction,

People living in the same vicinity and sharing communal services will

`naturally' form a neighbourhood.

 Con…
B. The nostalgic argument,
A conscious design effort, (a universal fact of life)
City development,
Technical, economic forces, and the social needs of the inhabitants.
A capitalistic venture, supported by technical innovations, the rituals of local

attachment were broken up.

Neighborhood ceases to be an integral part of the city's structure,

planning has to intervene and neighborhood design has to become a conscious

process(restoration)
 an attempt to recreate the social structures and way of life of a faded past.
 Con…
C. The utopian argument
Community as the most important social unit,

In modern society all traditional social ties

(the clan, the village, the extended family) have irreversibly broken up.
 instead of harking back to a lost past,

the neighbourhood a lost historic phenomenon

Ideal community becomes the goal and the appropriate affiliation group.

The neighborhood becomes the environment most suitable for communal

associations.
 Con…
D. The operational argument
Mass housing
Through the provision of urban structures, at the neighbourhood level,

The focus of planning moves, from the individual to the community,

The design for the social group, the community, becomes a goal in itself,

A theoretical construct directed to an operational necessity,

The emphasis of professional practice turns from the individual to

the needs of the masses, and

Offers the right framework for action.
 Con…
The instrumental approach
Moves away from value-based issues to
Production mechanisms,

Deals with practical and substantial topics trying to resolve how to make

the neighbourhood.
The neighbourhood as an appropriate scale for the making of the city
becomes an agent in a systematic design process.
Views the city as a system made of smaller subsystems,
The complex higher organism analogy of the urban system,
 Con…
 the design of such a complex structure requires a systematic approach

toward the whole,

 towards its parts, which are seen as complex organisms by themselves
 It calls for the development of methods and tools,

which bear structural relations toward complex problems,

 the city is viewed as a structurally ordered whole

 the neighborhood is perceived as a system operating within another system.

 Con…

With the growing attempt to base city-making on natural processes,

 the importance of the instrumental argument to explain the

neighbourhood increases

The significance of the neighbourhood arises

not simply by its competence as a human setting, but by its capacity

to generate these settings by using a methodical and structured process.

 Con…
The phenomenological approach
Neighbourhood as a cultural phenomenon,

Deeper in meaning than a social association caused by physical proximity.

Focuses on the neighbourhood as a cultural entity.

A unique urban entity which is embedded the knowledge and awareness

of a place,
It is a spatial pattern whose meaning originates from profound and
continued bonds between place and people.
Fostering a deep (cultural) meaning to it.
 Con…

The meanings attached to particular places by the experiences and

histories of its subjects,
Sees the neighbourhood in terms of the experience in the making

of a place, meaningful for a group of people,

 identity, significance, and meaning (not an object of planning),

But a subject-an expression of a place by its residents.

Towards cultural continuity of the city to recreate its meaning.

an event of urban existence which planning has to consider and to relate.
 Neighbourhood effects
The notion of the urban underclass
focuses on the relationship between values and norms of

urban minority communities, and

Social and economic marginality.

Residents of the ghettos, and slums are ultimately responsible

for their own social and economic situation.

Ex examines participants in a public housing voucher programme that allows poor
families to choose their neighbourhood of residence;
 Con…
Children of suburban movers are performing better in school and in the
labour market than their inner-city counterparts;
 Youths in middle-class suburbs learn important social and behavioral
skills, unavailable to youths in poor inner-city neighborhoods.

Three mechanisms
 Peer groups (local peer networks)
 ‘infect’ youngsters with negative behavior and attitudes;

 The metaphor of the ‘epidemic’ e.g. School dropout, teenage pregnancy…

 The concentration of poverty at the neighborhood level was the best predictor

of child maltreatment
 Con…
Concentrated poverty and adult role-models,
 Local adults in poverty areas pass their pathological behaviour,

 Collective socialization effect

Physical infrastructure and institutional networks

 Local institutions, such as schools, commonly fail to provide

adequate services in poverty-stricken areas

 Dilapidated physical infrastructure destabilizes communities
 Models
Epidemic model,
Behavior is assumed to be contagious and

The power of peer influences to spread problem behavior.

Collective socialization(the neighborhood role-models)

More successful adults provide important ingredients in a child’s socialization.

An institutional model,
 Operate indirectly through the quality of services available in the locality,

Difficulty in recruiting the best professional staff in poor areas,

Budget constraints,
 Con…
Relative deprivation,
Individuals evaluate their situation or relative standing with their neighbours,

Poorer children are more likely to underperform or drop-out

Where more affluent children are present because their relative performance appears
worse.

A network model,
Employment access,

Social inclusion depends on links to more advantaged, and

networks offering critical information.

 New Urbanism
Traditional U.S. Suburban design, neo-traditional neighbourhood design
A strong close-knit community is a valued American image,

Pragmatic problem of learning from the best of the past to develop

and legitimate new techniques,

Regenerated by rebuilding cities according to new design principles,

Built environment can create a sense of community grounded,

 Private communication networks are simply no substitute for real
neighbourhoods,
 How we build communities that will overcome our current civic deficits,
 Con…
Build social capital and revive a community spirit which is currently lost

Extract the community-forming elements out of urbanism, and

Reinstate them in new town development.

To build a sense of community;

 Integrating private residential space with surrounding public space; and

Careful design and placement of public space.

Process of documenting the perceived correlation between design elements

and social engagement.

 Cohousing neighbourhoods

provides a useful case study for analysis

uses design (social contact),and

formal social structures(resident management, decision making processes),

To encourage social interaction in neighbourhoods.

Examples of residential areas with optimal conditions for social interaction.

The design approach adopts most of the architectural and urban design principles.

higher densities, good visibility, and car parking on the periphery of

communities,…
 Con…
Provides an opportunity to study the implementation of all of these principles.

Social contacts are enhanced in a community;

When residents have opportunities for contact,

Live in close proximity to others, and

Have appropriate space for interaction.

successful future development of the neo-traditional neighbourhoods produced

by the new urbanist movement social contact design and resident involvement in
the design process.
 Social Interaction Model
Social interaction model
Increasing social interaction inside urban neighbourhoods

(neighbourhood planning approaches),

New urbanism neighbourhoods

 to bring people of diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction,

Strengthening the personal and civic bonds essential to an

authentic community,
 Social interactions within high density areas (communal services)
 Con…
Compact urban form with mixed land use and pedestrian friendly streets,
 Lack of social interactions,

 threat to the safety aspects and sense of security,

Urban streets are social places in the planning,

 the creation of public spaces for social interactions and contact,

The "street space“

recognition of group identity and communicating with places and people,

Image of the street supports the feeling of belonging, and

the sense of locality.

 Con…
Daily shopping outlets, transportation nodes, and

Schools are distributed along main neighbourhood routes,

Increase the time and effort efficiency of daily trips within the neighbourhoods

The convenience to walk, the possibility of residents knowing each other.

Design, aim at increasing the “walkability” of neighbourhood streets by making

them safer not just from speeding cars, but from strangers.
The more the residents use neighbourhood spaces and streets,

the more they know each other, control over the built environment, the less

likely strangers go unnoticed in the neighbourhood .

 Urban form and the social life of neighborhoods
Determine specific factors associated with sense of community.

Physical factors can act as a mechanism to promote resident interaction,

The process by which design criteria work to influence social behavior.

Form and behavior

 Micro-environmental factors or site layout (overall neighborhood form);

Architectural design plays a role in fostering or inhibiting resident interaction;

the structural features of buildings window and door placement are a factor in

resident interaction.
 Con…
Specific environmental factors are positively correlated with some aspects
of sense of community
Spatial proximity of residents, based on the positioning of doors,

determined interaction patterns,

Common areas and other shared features had a strong impact
on social contact,
 Con…
The effect of the design of public housing on the formation of social relationships.
Social interaction was greatly improved in public housing consisting of

low-rise buildings with high site coverage.

Increase resident interaction may be indirectly linked to the design ideology,

an environmental basis increased neighboring;

feelings of safety,

 Greater utilization of public space, and

Greater use of local facilities for shopping

 Con…
Other factors are not as directly tied to form or environment,
Sense of community has been linked to social control of the

neighbourhood, and
To public ownership of neighbourhood facilities.
Strong emphasis on;
 Design quality,

 High importance attached to building codes and

 Emphasis on providing local neighbourhood facilities.

(a sense of control over the environment)
 Con…
Place of residence as a factor in building social relationships;

In Pittsburgh (the use of neighbourhood facilities),

for shopping, worship or recreation(resident interaction).

Urban design includes,

Mixed uses,(Commercial, civic, residential, public spaces, in each community.

Intermingling of housing for different income groups, and

 A strong privileging of the public realm.

Neighborhood plan limited in physical size, has a well-defined edge, and a
focused center,
 Con…
 Provide jobs near where people live and to allow residents to walk or bicycle
to the places they need to go(mixed use).

Urban projects include the renovations of public housing,

Strives to reduce the concentration of poor families in public housing, and

To develop neighborhoods with residents of different economic and

racial/ethnic groups
Focus on a community’s physical infrastructure in the belief that

community design influence particular social patterns.

 Con…
A set of principles to form the foundation of community planning,
Walkable neighborhoods oriented to the quarter-mile, five-minute walk.

Primary orientation to public transit systems, rather than private automobiles.

Greater integration of different land uses (such as housing, shops, workplaces

and schools) at the neighborhood level.

Neighbourhoods are merely a set of generally desirable design principles to be

adapted in the light of local context and prevailing social, economic and political
realities.
 References
Bauder, H., 2002. Neighbourhood effects and cultural exclusion. Urban
studies, 39(1), pp.85-93.

Williams, J., 2005. Designing neighbourhoods for social interaction: The case of
cohousing. Journal of Urban design, 10(2), pp.195-227.