Several years ago I did work on Who's On First via Mapzen on 
neighborhoods for hundreds of world cities, with a focus on North 
America and Europe. In lots of places (like a lot of Europe) they are 
essentially admin units, in others (including a lot of the US) they are 
more amorphous. And even where there are discrete admin units that are 
in use (like the arondissments in Paris), there are also informally 
bounded areas like "Montmartre" or "the Left Bank" that overlap and 
interfere. Here in Minneapolis we have officially defined neighborhoods, 
bounded somewhat arbitrarily for local funding projects, based in part 
on old elementary school catchment basins. There are also important 
named neighborhoods like Uptown and Dinkytown that do not have 
boundaries. I find it useful in cases like this to not assume 
neighborhoods are polygonal by nature, but may have a core-and-periphery 
aspect to them, especially if they have a commercial core; subdivisions 
without that core are more likely to be polygonal. In fact, my work was 
to identify and place label points (with zoom scale attributes for 
relative importance) rather than define polygons, though much of Mapzen 
is grounded in polygons. Who's on First is still available as Open 
Source data and may provide useful information.

Nat Case
Minneapolis, MN

-------- Original message --------

> From: Angela R Cope <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 1/29/21 8:55 AM (GMT-05:00)
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Neighborhood Boundaries Research / Social Theory
>
> *From:*Belle Lipton <[log in to unmask]>
> *Sent:* Friday, January 29, 2021 7:25 AM
> *To:* [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> *Cc:* Belle Lipton <[log in to unmask]>
> *Subject:* Neighborhood Boundaries Research / Social Theory
> One of our teachers is designing a lesson for next week, looking at 
> neighborhoods and wondering if anyone knew of books or articles that 
> address these questions:
>
> Who decides the boundaries between our neighborhoods? How does this 
> impact how we think about where we live? Who benefits from certain 
> ways of dividing and who doesn’t?
>
> Belle Lipton
> GIS Map Librarian - Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the 
> Boston Public Library
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>