Neighbourhood Unit - Urban Application

Urban Application

The concept of the neighbourhood unit is a notable aspect of designs of the new town movement . The neighbourhood unit seems to have an uneasy relationship to the Garden City Movement of the same period – consider garden suburbs. Raymond Unwin – an architect working for Ebenezer Howard – was an advocate of the neighbourhood unit.

Mumford observes a bidirectional relationship between the neighbourhood unit realtor’s residential subdivision model. It should be noted that Clarence Perry in fact resided within Forest Hills Gardens at the time he presented his treatise on neighbourhoods 1923. While spatial elements of ‘neighbourhoods’ such as Forest Hills Gardens or Westwood Highlands are in keeping with those championed by reformers and progressive planners, these suburbs do not have common ideological origins. Instead realtors playing the role of ‘community builder’ had quite insidious consequences for ideas about public space, community inclusion and political agency.

The use of deed restrictions by neighbourhood corporations wanting to control undesirable externalities in the early 1900s (and beyond) has been linked to ongoing racial segregation in the United States. The use of the ‘neighbourhood unit’ in this way emphasises exclusion rather than inclusion as initially intended. Traces of the exclusion remain evident within the streetscape of neighbourhoods such as Forest Hill Gardens with signs delineating the ownership of commonly considered public space. In contemporary Melbourne, Australia, the Owners Corporations Act 2006 enables access restrictions upon facilities generally considered public. Western Leisure Management makes this explicit on their website relating to use of facilities within the ‘un-gated’ neighbourhoods they manage; "These estates are part of an Owners Corporation and the facilities within are accessible by Residents Only and are not open to the general public."