Neighbourhood unit

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The neighbourhood unit represents a type of metric used in urban planning. The neighbourhood unit schema provides a model layout for an integral residential district.

1 History
2 Principle
3 Urban application
4 Sociological implications

[edit] History

The idea of the neighbourhood unit was presented by Mr. Clarence Perry in a sociological conference held in 1923 and later applied into a regional plan of the New York City in 1929.

[edit] Principle

The neighbourhood unit was designed to create a semi-public space within newly industrialising American cities that offered limited opportunities of incoming workers and workers´children to integrate and foster a community spirit in an alienated urban environment.

Opposed to an increasing distances between places of residency and places of work it was focused on a walker metrics, i. e. the city layout where key points are not located further than within an average walking distance.

The local school or a church were considered to be central nodes of the unit. The number of children at school or members of the congregation thus determined limits of the neighbourhood district, ranging from 5000 to 10 000 respecting a number of expected density of population.

Desired proximity of local shops was about a quarter of mile within the district, the distance of the school from the borders of the district was half a mile max.

[edit] Urban application

The idea of the neighbourhood layout was applied in postwar British urban planning policy, especially new town development.

[edit] Sociological implications

The concept of the neighbourhood unit historically correspond to activities of American wave of school of urban studies and ecology called Chicago school, operating mostly in the 1920's and 1930's. It is closely linked to activities of Jane Jacobs, American urbanist and humanist in the field of migrant integration and child labour force.

The schema of neighbourhood unit further refers to Charles Horton Cooley´s theory of primary groups and to the concept of neighbourhood as a type of a residential community.

The concept of the neighbourhood unit should have enhanced the feeling of identification with the environment for the incomers, support their spatial integration, foster social cohesion and avoid social pathology, taking the form of alienation and civic indifference.