Neighborhood as a Unit of Planning and Action: A Heuristic Approach

Abstract

The neighborhood is increasingly used as an organizational anchorfor the promotion of planned social change, but defining neighborhood for programmatic ends in any given case is problematic because it admits a variety of competing choices. There is no universal way of defining the neighborhood as a unit, and selecting and defining target neighborhoods is a highly political and negotiable process. This article suggests a heuristic approach to defining neighborhoods that is guided by explicit programmatic aims, informed by a theoretical understanding of neighborhood and the elements it may include, and based on descriptive information on local context.