Most of us experience the city not as a master plan or a policy document, but through a block, a street, or a cluster of familiar places. It is at the neighborhood scale that cities become livable or unlivable. Yet despite this, neighborhoods are often treated as secondary units in urban planning, rather than as systems that actively shape how cities function.

The idea of neighborhood planning itself is not new. It dates back to 1929, which means we are approaching nearly a century of thinking, experimenting, and debating what neighborhoods should be. Over this long journey, the concept has evolved in ways that are neither linear nor predictable.

What follows are a few pieces of the puzzle from this century-long evolution. Some may feel familiar; others might surprise you. Stay with me.

If you are an urban planner, you have likely encountered Clarence A. Perry’s Neighborhood Unit Concept, and if you haven’t, this is a good moment to revisit it. Perry described a neighborhood as a collection of dwelling units located close to one another, bound by a shared interest in the character of their surrounding environment. More importantly, he framed the neighborhood as a small-scale community: a place where people know one another, share daily activities, and experience a sense of belonging.

While Perry’s definition grounded neighborhoods in physical proximity and shared social life, it did not yet speak to the challenges cities face today. Climate change, resource constraints, demographic shifts, and widening social inequalities have since pushed planners to rethink what neighborhoods are expected to do. It is within this context that the more recent concept of the sustainable neighborhood emerged, one that moves beyond form and function to consider how neighborhoods adapt, endure, and enable collective action over time.

Across countries, neighborhoods are known by different names, shaped by local histories, planning systems, and everyday practices. In the United States, the term neighborhood is common; in the United Kingdom, neighbourhoods are often organized through wards; in France, quartiers; in Latin America, barrios; in Germany, Stadtteile; and in India, mohallas or wards, where informal governance and social life play a defining role. While terminology varies, the underlying idea remains consistent: neighborhoods are the primary scale at which urban life is lived, negotiated, and contested.

In practice, neighborhoods rarely look or function the same. Cities are made up of neighborhoods with distinct characters, capacities, and trajectories. Some develop strong internal networks and a shared sense of purpose, enabling residents to mobilize around schools, parks, or local development decisions. Others may be physically well-served yet socially fragmented, with limited participation and decisions made largely from outside. Over time, these differences shape how neighborhoods respond to change, absorb shocks, and involve residents in shaping their futures.

This is why neighborhood planning matters not as an isolated exercise, but as the foundation upon which citywide outcomes are built.

England offers one of the clearest examples of formal neighborhood planning. Under the Localism Act of 2011, statutory neighborhood plans were introduced, and since then, more than 2,600 communities have initiated the process, with over 1,000 plans formally adopted. Elsewhere, such as in parts of France, the Netherlands, and some U.S. municipalities, neighborhood-scale planning tools exist, but they are typically embedded within broader municipal or regional frameworks rather than structured as standalone, community-led plans. Beyond these cases, evidence becomes far less visible, particularly in developing and underdeveloped countries, where neighborhood governance often operates informally and remains underrepresented in planning research and policy debates.

Together, these patterns suggest that while neighborhood planning has taken formal shape in some contexts, it remains unevenly understood, inconsistently institutionalized, and frequently overlooked, particularly in cities experiencing the fastest growth.

At its core, neighborhood planning is not about drawing boundaries or checking boxes.

This is neighborhood planning	This is not neighborhood planning
Strengthening social ties and collective capacity	Redrawing boundaries without community engagement
Resident participation in shaping local priorities	Applying uniform design standards everywhere
Local governance mechanisms (formal or informal)	Treating neighborhoods as administrative checkboxes
Decisions that reflect neighborhood identity and lived experience	Top-down interventions with no local ownership
Small-scale actions that can scale up to citywide outcomes	Isolated infrastructure projects detached from social context
Long-term stewardship of place, not one-time projects	Assuming physical upgrades alone create strong neighborhoods

As this series has argued, what should matter for developing cities is not only growth, infrastructure, or global competitiveness, but the everyday systems through which urban life is organized and sustained. Neighborhoods sit at the intersection of policy and practice, where collective capacity is either built or eroded over time. For cities in the Global South and rapidly urbanizing regions, the challenge is not to replicate formal neighborhood models from elsewhere, but to recognize, strengthen, and govern the neighborhood systems that already exist.

Paying attention to neighborhoods is not a matter of scale reduction. It is a matter of strategic focus. Cities that invest in neighborhood-level capacity are, in effect, investing in their own long-term resilience, adaptability, and legitimacy.

List of best practices:

Caution — it’s not for blind replication, but rather a starting point to decode your neighborhoods

• Penn South CO-OP
• Barcelona’s Superblocks
• The Kampung Improvement Program
• Sustainable Waterfront in Addis Ababa

What is the unique neighborhood story?