Citation

Chaskin RJ. J. Plann. Lit. 1998; 13(1): 11-30.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1998, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/088541229801300102

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The neighborhood is increasingly used as an organizational anchor for the promotion of planned social change, but defining neighborhood for programmatic ends in any given case is problematic because it admits a variety of competing choices. There is no universal way of defining the neighborhood as a unit, and selecting and defining target neighborhoods is a highly political and negotiable process. This article suggests a heuristic approach to defining neighborhoods that is guided by explicit programmatic aims, informed by a theoretical understanding of neighborhood and the elements it may include, and based on descriptive information on local context.