Neighborhoods have their own identities, but in most places, what makes something a neighborhood rather than its own town is the fact that it is surrounded by other neighborhoods that are immediately accessible. That’s why Lincoln Park in Chicago and Soho NY are neighborhoods, but they use a whole different term to identify Manhattan from Long Island and so on. Those are properly boroughs rather than neighborhoods, as they are big, physically separated, and it’s not that easy to get between them, which leads to each almost being considered its own city. And it’s still harder to get between LA neighborhoods than it is to literally cross the (admittedly very thin) stretch of ocean between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
And I don’t think there’s any similarity between your second example, looking at how someone interacts with the whole of a country, and this question of how someone interacts with their local community. Countries are of course big enough that folks might see less than 50% of their own and still love it. But it’s much harder to consider someone an expert or proud local of a “city” they don’t visit 90% of. You can be a countryman and see only 30% of your country, but you can’t really be a local and see only 10% of your city.
Well, I think if we were to resolve this, we’d need a formal definition of neighborhood, and you make a useful distinction of a neighborhood vs a borough or a town. I suspect sociologists have some useful definitions, but that’s not my field.
it’s much harder to consider someone an expert or proud local of a “city” they don’t visit 90% of.
This is a lot more difficult to get behind. People are proud of their cities for a variety of reasons; visiting 90% of it seems like an irrelevant criterion. There’s some truth to the trope of the born-in-NYC native who’s never been to the Statue of Liberty.
Neighborhoods have their own identities, but in most places, what makes something a neighborhood rather than its own town is the fact that it is surrounded by other neighborhoods that are immediately accessible. That’s why Lincoln Park in Chicago and Soho NY are neighborhoods, but they use a whole different term to identify Manhattan from Long Island and so on. Those are properly boroughs rather than neighborhoods, as they are big, physically separated, and it’s not that easy to get between them, which leads to each almost being considered its own city. And it’s still harder to get between LA neighborhoods than it is to literally cross the (admittedly very thin) stretch of ocean between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
And I don’t think there’s any similarity between your second example, looking at how someone interacts with the whole of a country, and this question of how someone interacts with their local community. Countries are of course big enough that folks might see less than 50% of their own and still love it. But it’s much harder to consider someone an expert or proud local of a “city” they don’t visit 90% of. You can be a countryman and see only 30% of your country, but you can’t really be a local and see only 10% of your city.
Well, I think if we were to resolve this, we’d need a formal definition of neighborhood, and you make a useful distinction of a neighborhood vs a borough or a town. I suspect sociologists have some useful definitions, but that’s not my field.
This is a lot more difficult to get behind. People are proud of their cities for a variety of reasons; visiting 90% of it seems like an irrelevant criterion. There’s some truth to the trope of the born-in-NYC native who’s never been to the Statue of Liberty.