Neighbourhoods: Neighbourhood scale

Tuesday, 14 November 2006

Neighbourhood scale

Here's another take on the scale of neighbourhood, developed for work on children's play:

'Doorstep' - 60m straight line distance from home (100m walking)
'Neighbourhood' - 260m straight line distance from home (400m walking)
'Local' - 600m straight line distance from home (1km walking)

This comes from a presentation given by Issy Cole-Hamilton of Play England, at a recent Neighbourhoods Green seminar.

14 Nov 2006 17:30:11 | Space and place

1 Comment

Hi: Just started reading this blog recently... wonderful stuff. Thank you!

This deliniation of scale is very interesting... almost identical to what we've found in our work with Front Porch Forum in and around Burlington, Vermont, USA. We've been thinking of it in more vague terms as:

1. Borrow a cup of sugar distance... homes within site. Maybe 20-30 households.
2. Your neighborhood... several blocks around you. Maybe 200-300 households.
3. Your side of town... an area, more than a neighborhood. Maybe 2,000-3,000 households.

Our service is aimed at the second level. We get folks who want us to make it work at the first or third levels... but that's not what we're designed for. Anyway... helpful to see this reference.

Posted by: Michael Wood-Lewis | Wednesday, 15 November 2006 at 23:37

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Global and local Armistice day yesterday, I've never before heard so many references from that grim history to contemporary warfare. Because of Big Politics, there seems to be an unusually intense consciousness at the moment. Technologies have mediated the ways in which, as ordinary citizens in our relatively peaceful neighbourhoods, we're affected by distant conflict, but still the debate is really about the morality of caring. Meanwhile here's a lovely monochrome fragment of Alan Bennett on his childhood during the second world war: ...hostilities scarcely impinge. War, peace, it makes no difference, our family never quite joining in, let alone joining up, and the camaraderie passes us by as camaraderie generally did.

The neighbourhood agenda and community development Community Development Foundation have published a short policy statement on 'The neighbourhood agenda and community development'. It includes the observation that 'community life has an existence and a value in its own right and not just as a conduit for engagement purposes.'