Like community, a fundamentally positive term in American society but nevertheless nebulous and contradictory. Historically, neighborhoods reflect the physical development and divisions of settlements through work, ethnicity and class. They may be united by public and private institutions—parks, schools, libraries, markets, churches, restaurants, bars and clubs—and also by patterns of face-to-face interaction and support.

This ideal has been challenged by changes in urban districts, since the Second World War which no longer represent class or ethnic enclaves. Migration, miscegenation, decline or even gentrification may be perceived as sources of destruction; nostalgic images of “the old neighborhood” clash with fears of “dangerous neighborhoods” torn by drugs and crime. On a more intimate scale, an ideal of good neighbors, in cities and small towns, opposes the massification and anonymity of suburbs and large-scale housing. At the same time, neighbors are expected to respect space and privacy, making the neighborhood a locus of feuds as well as solidarity Few formal structures of neighborhood government or identity specify boundaries and citizenship, although ad-hoc organizations spring into play to oppose policies, like urban renewal or busing, or to deal with perceived neighborhood eyesores and social problems.

Older cities may have wardlevel political leaders who channel local concerns into larger political units; “walking the neighborhoods” is important for city council and mayoral candidates as well as those seeking national office. Some neighborhoods maintain town watches for crime or celebrate community through street festivals and potlucks.

Neighborhood newspapers also promote community through local events and consumption—stores, yard sales, etc. In the 1990s, neighborhoods have also been championed as sites of renewal for urban action after the perceived failure of government development strategies—as exemplified in Boston’s Dudley Street project and community-development corporations (Medoff and Sklar, 1994). Business improvement districts, which tax local citizens and merchants to provide special additional services in garbage removal and security represent a more commercial interpretation, found in areas like Times Square.

Yet, patterns of exclusion, difference and competition within cities pit the interests of one group against another even if expressed in apparently neutral geographic terms.

Media may cover “incidents in Crown Heights” (New York City) or problems in South Central Los Angeles, CA, but place itself is less important than the restrictions and divisions that turn neighborhoods into confinement or fortresses. Indeed, geographies of fiction and news often rely on vague neighborhood labels that obscure the complexities of interaction, context and change that make such localities dynamic urban units.

Neighborhoods, nonetheless, provide massmedia settings imbued with meanings— Bedford-Stuyvesant as a black neighborhood for Spike Lee, or the class and ethnic readings of an earlier Queens in Norman Lear’s All in the Family. Neighbors may be depicted as nosy and gossiping, intruding on individual privacy or, conversely, unwilling to talk about or know about what is going on (familiar plot devices in both sitcoms and crime shows). Positive values of neighborhood are underscored in advertising, where one insurance company presents itself as “like a good neighbor”—a title also used to label US policy towards Latin America in the Roosevelt Era.