Neighborhood

Cities are made up of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are places in which people know each other. Knowing your neighbors begins simply by meeting the people who live on either side of you or across the street. You may attend a neighborhood school and meet other families in the area. You may become familiar with the people in the drugstore, grocery store, hardware store, coffee shop, or local bakery. As you begin to know people you can help each other. Borrow a cup of sugar, make a meal for a sick person nearby, shovel the walk of an elderly person, dog sit, or house sit if people travel.
Knowing your neighbors is one way of knowing a neighborhood. Other ways include becoming familiar with your daily walks. You begin to know the houses and the buildings, the landmarks and the parks, the commercial offerings, and the people. As you begin to become familiar with the layout, destinations, and people in a neighborhood, you build social and economic relationships locally. You learn about yourself, and your relationship to the world right in the very place that you are born and live in. A city’s downtown or central core often starts at the crossing of two roads, a leading bridge connecting two sides of a river, or a parallel road along foothills, mountains, or a waterfront. Businesses, civic and governmental, hotels, convention centers, religious structures, and museums attract residents and anchor the economic and cultural identity in the center. Surrounding the downtown are often mixed-use neighborhoods of homes and businesses, residential neighborhoods, historical neighborhoods, and industrial neighborhoods, Surrounding the historic central cores are often industrial neighborhoods, first-tier historical neighborhoods, mixed-use neighborhoods of homes and businesses, residential neighborhoods, and eventually suburban areas. Most languages contain the word ‘neighborhood’. Know your neighborhood!