Neighborhood organizational and interactional variation in comparative perspective

Summary

The degree to which the residents of neighborhoods form integrated communities with uniform social, political, and economic conditions is highly variable. I define neighborhoods, in agreement with most earlier definitions, as based on place and presence in an urbanized environment. The forms and functions of neighborhoods, and their relationships to larger socio-political urban processes, is not well understood for preindustrial societies. Are neighborhoods fully integrated communities or are people’s primary social networks not connected to place? Does class, ethnic and occupational clustering feature as an important component in neighborhood life? Are all neighborhoods in a city tied to the same economic networks? Using available data from Mesoamerica, Asia, and Europe, I show that neighborhoods can be arranged along a continuum from integrated administrative units to fragmented and acephelous residential zones. Within the same city, neighborhoods often have different socio-spatial conditions. Despite the small sample size, my comparative data offer a glimpse into the processes that produce these varying neighborhood conditions and dynamics that may lead to healthy or decaying cities.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Theorizing and Excavating Neighborhoods

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