Neighborhood vs Community
Professor John McKnight: Capacity Building Beyond Community Services
Defining “community” and “neighborhood”
“Community” is one of those words which is… has a different meaning for almost every person. If I say community and you think of yours, it’s not mine. In fact, if…if you think of community, whatever yours is, it probably isn’t the same as the person that lives next door to you, even somebody in your household. So it isn’t very helpful to say I’m interested in the community, because you could say I’m a member of a community of scholars, and that is historians across the United States.
Geographically it’s unlimited. But the thing we became clear on, I started at the university a program in community studies, so I had to decide pretty specifically what I meant if I was going to study it, and I learned that it’s pretty arbitrary. Therefore, you make up your own definition as to what you mean by community.
And so what we meant. I’m with a group there at the Asset-Based Community Development Institute, and what we meant was a neighborhood, a physical place, not a community of scholars, right? And a small, physical place, a small town or a neighborhood, and that’s what we were focused on when we said community studies, that’s what we meant.
And then, you might say even then how would you define a neighborhood, right? What…what…what is it? And I think the most useful thing that we could do was to listen to people who live there and say, “What neighborhood is this?” That is, a neighborhood is really about a related group of people. And somebody in city hall can draw a line [Laughs] around a part…within the city, but that doesn’t mean the people there would agree that’s their neighborhood.
A neighborhood is defined by the people who live in a place, and so we always follow the local understanding of the residents as to what this neighborhood is or the boundaries, the Van Ryan Expressway over there and, ah, the creek that goes down Mill Street over here and they’d say, generally, “that’s our neighborhood.”
So when we’re thinking about community, we’re thinking about resident-defined place. And the reason for that is because what people feel is their neighborhood is telling you what they’re motivated to do something about.
So it’s the commitment and feeling of a local person’s definition about a place that if you want to see things get organized and things begin to improve, you have to depend on the motives of people to feel an identity with a place. So we’ve always focused on what people think is their neighborhood and understood that the motives people have to act are closely tied to a place that they feel is theirs.
In other words, if you ask me, I live in Chicago, do I want to improve Chicago, which some people would say, “My community is Chicago.” It would be pretty hard for me to say… I might say yes, but I don’t know where’s the handle, what…how am I going to do that, right? But if you said do I want to improve my neighborhood, I’d say yes, and I’d say yes, because it seemed to me doable and I care more strongly about my neighborhood than I do about Chicago. So that’s the way we have understood. It’s a place people feel related to and where they have relationships with each other.
Neighborhood vs Community
https://theurbantwist.com/2015/07/14/neighborhood-vs-community/
As I was listening to a TV show online, the host was very specific that black people don’t have communities. They live in neighborhoods that continually put their citizens in an isochronism of poverty, violence, drugs and lack of assistance from state and federal legislature. African-Americans that live in low-income areas live among these conditions.
When citizens of Baltimore were rioting against the police, one phrase I kept hearing is that, “There burning down their own community.”
What got me so upset is that while a few small stores were burning down, they were mainly burning CVS, Wal-Mart, Target and other corporate owned facilities. I know burning and looting is enough, but let’s not confuse it with this talk like scads of mom and pop shops were being robbed and set on fire.
Let’s define a few key differences between living in a neighborhood and living in a community.
Income Matters
When people live in a neighborhood, it’s usually because of income or sometimes lack of income, thus neighborhoods can be segregated, separating the poor, middle class and the affluent. Street avenue signs and buildings are usually good ways to tell what type of neighborhood you crossed into. Communities can span blocks and are not bound by street signs necessarily.
No One Knows Your Name
In neighborhoods, there is not a sense of togetherness like in a community. You may know some people who live down the street from you, but unless you work together or have a commonality, you might never speak to them.
In communities, it seems friendlier and people work to keep the community safe and clean, they preserve it for the next generation. It’s easy to be friendly when you know people by name, whom you know you’re gonna run into in town who own businesses.
Keep the Money in House
In neighborhoods you usually outsource things that you need and shop for like, food, clothes, entertainment, schools, etc.Communities such as a Jewish community have their own schools, bakeries, shops, synagogues, community patrol and other places to spend money.
Group economics is practiced in communities, but not in neighborhoods. When you practice group economics it spreads throughout the community. For example if you buy a meal from a Chinese restaurant, that owner then goes to someone and buys a TV, from a local electronic store and then that person buys some new clothes from a store shop also in the same community and this process reverberates 10-12 times before it goes to another community.
This keeps the power of the dollar in house.In black neighborhoods, we go to a Korean nail shop for our nails, Asian shop for our Chinese food, hair and laundry. We go to Wal-mart for clothes and white people for money in banks. This is a problem, especially since blacks are estimated to spend this year over one trillion dollars on goods and services. We will spend more collectively than the GDP of Egypt, Turkey, Poland, Australia and 150 other countries.
Where’s the Love?
In communities there are gatherings and other social events. In neighborhoods, the only time I really see people interact with other people in the neighborhood is when there is a BBQ. Also when someone in a neighborhood opens a business, they have a tendency to be met with opposition and reluctance from other people in the neighborhood. Communities want local businesses to thrive, cause they know it means more money being distributed into the area.
These are just a few things I feel are the important differences, but if you have other, please feel free.
Difference Between Neighborhood and Community
https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-neighborhood-and-vs-community/
Neighborhood and community are words that are used almost interchangeably by people to refer to both geographical areas in proximity and people of a certain ethnicity or race. People talk about their neighborhoods and communities in the same breath though there is a subtle difference between the two concepts. This article takes a closer look at neighborhood and community to highlight their differences.
Neighborhood
Neighborhood is a concept that arises out of the word neighbor that refers to people living near or adjacent to one another. In a city, neighborhood is always the area that surrounds this city or lies in the close vicinity. However, the word has also come to mean the people living near one another in a particular area or district. If you say the gunshot surprised the entire neighborhood, it means you are referring to the people and not the geographic area. In general though, neighborhood always means a surrounding area or region.
Community
Community is a word that refers to groups of people living in a particular area or district. It also means all people that live in a particular area. It is also a word that is used to refer to ethnic groups living inside a particular area such as the black community, Hispanic community, and so on. The word is also used to refer to specific groups within a community such as the business community, community of lawyers, and so on. Then there is the use of community to describe community colleges, community hospitals, community service, and so on.
What is the difference between Neighborhood and Community?
- Neighborhood mostly refers to the adjoining area or the surrounding area of a city.
- Community is used more in the sense of groups of people living in a particular area or district such as the black community or the Asian community.
- There is no reference to geographical boundaries while talking about community, whereas there is definite geographical entity when referring to a neighborhood.
- A neighborhood is used more in a physical sense, whereas there are social implications of the concept of community.