Neighborhood planning

Neighborhood planning is a form of urban planning through which professional urban planners and communities seek to shape new and existing neighborhoods. It can denote the process of creating a physical neighborhood plan, for example via participatory planning, or an ongoing process through which neighborhood affairs are decided.^[1]

The concept of the neighborhood as a spatial unit has a long and contested history.^[2][3] In 1915, Robert E. Park and E. W. Burgess introduced the idea of "neighborhood" as an ecological concept with urban planning implications. Since then, many concepts and ideas of a neighborhood have emerged,^[4] including the influential concept of the neighborhood unit. The history of neighborhood planning in the United States extends over a century.^[5] City planners have used this process to combat a range a social problems such as community disintegration, economic marginalization, and environmental degradation.^[6] The concept was partially employed during the development of new towns in the United Kingdom. The process has been revived as a form of community-led planning in England under the Localism Act 2011.^[7]