Your neighbourhood is not a circle, and you are not its centre

Abstract

Neighbourhoods are one of the major areas of focus of place attachment research. However, the understanding of the physical space linked to the term “neighbourhood” is particularly vague. We tested the reliability of one frequently used approach to estimate neighbourhood areas based on a fixed radius centred at each resident's home. Our findings suggest that only few neighbourhoods would be adequately represented by such home-centred circles. We argue that investigations of neighbourhood attachment and interactions require a more sophisticated model of the space people define as their neighbourhood.