Neighbourhood

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For other uses, see Neighbourhood (disambiguation).

A neighbourhood or neighborhood (see spelling differences) is a geographically localised community located within a larger city, town or suburb. The residents of a given neighbourhood are called neighbours (or neighbors), although this term may also be used across much larger distances in rural areas.

Traditionally, a neighbourhood is small enough that the neighbours are all able to know each other. However in practice, neighbours may not know one another very well at all. Villages aren't divided into neighbourhoods, because they are already small enough that the villagers can all know each other.

In Canada and the United States, neighbourhoods are often given official or semi-official status through neighbourhood associations, neighbourhood watches, or block watches. These may regulate such matters as lawn care and fence height, and they may provide such services as block parties, neighbourhood parks, and community security. In some other places the equivalent organisation is the parish, though a parish may have several neighbourhoods within it depending on the area.

In localities where neighbourhoods do not have an official status, questions can arise as to where one neighbourhood begins and another ends, such as in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Many cities may use districts and wards as official divisions of the city, rather than traditional neighbourhood boundries.

In the mainland of the People's Republic of China, the term is generally used for the urban administrative unit usually found immediately below the district level, although an intermediate, subdistrict level exists in some cities. They are also called streets (administrative terminology may vary from city to city). Neighbourhoods encompass 2,000 to 10,000 families. Within neighbourhoods, families are grouped into smaller residential units or quarters of 100 to 600 families and supervised by a residents' committee; these are subdivided into residents' small groups of fifteen to forty families. In most urban areas of China, neighbourhood, community, residential community, residential unit, residential quarter have the same meaning: 社区 or 小区 or 居民区 or 居住区, and is the direct sublevel of a subdistrict (街道办事处), which is the direct sublevel of a district (区), which is the direct sublevel of a city (市). (See Political divisions of China)