Summary: Nature of neighbourhoods in big city. Analyse of sub-neighbourhood and neighbourhood territorial social subsystems in Poznań
The neighbourhood can define the social roots of life, determine our current lifestyle and decide our future, define social identity, be an arena in which an individual learns social activity and attains civil maturity, and finally be an important source of a life force. Naturally, the neighbourhood can equally mean conflicts, exclusion, social deviance or isolation, and an escalation of anonymity and disembedding. There is no doubt that neighbourhood means spatial proximity, but not all spatial proximity ends with social nearness. What is the nature of big-city neighbourhoods in Polish conditions? This is the chief question underlying the considerations presented in this publication.
Are present-day inhabitants of a big Polish city strongly attached to their neighbourhoods, and are neighbourhood units a basis for the city's harmonious growth? Doorplates with family names tend to disappear from entrance doors, and door entry phone systems tend to display numbers of flats rather than the names of people living in them. Does it mean that a neighbourhood is phasing out from the social stratum and that modern man is withdrawing to his dwelling to protect his individuality there?
The transformations taking place in the structures of a big city justify, or rather demand, a research intended to identify modern forms of neighbourhood life and describe the specificity of neighbourhood subsystems in a big city and their level of integration.
This aim will be approached in both, theoretical and empirical terms. In the theoretical approach, the author intends to give an overview of the conceptions and views about neighbourhood and to embed neighbourhood issues in the conception of a territorial social system. In the empirical part, the neighbourhood question will be presented on the example of Poznań. The analyses of the territorial and social layer of the neighbourhood reveal the modern nature of Poznań neighbourhoods that developed in the last century and at the start of the next. The issues addressed include the degree of territorial closure and current condition of neighbourhoods, social relations holding in neighbourhoods with different building patterns, and chances of neighbourhoods to be supported by selected organisational structures. For analytical and reporting purposes, the different theoretical approaches to neighbourhood were classified into content-related groups, each with a carefully preserved chief, distinct and original thought of its authors. In a few cases the neighbourhood was merely a background for reflections on other questions, e.g. the organisation of a neighbourhood unit, identification of areas of concentration of residents with similar social profiles (lifestyle clusters or neighbourhood clusters), or identification of modern lifestyles of the middle class in gentrified inner-city areas. Still, even in those cases the scholars offer, even if indirectly, certain perspectives in which to view the
key topic of this dissertation. Thus, nine perspectives were distinguished which rely on different understandings of the neighbourhood focusing on:
• the function of an urban neighbourhood unit,
• the essence of the street in a neighbourhood and a community centred on the neighbourhood street,
• the function of traditional, social and psychological, contacts,
• the role of spatially defined neighbourhood clusters,
• the role of an inner gradation of the neighbourhood: from a single block of flats to the entire estate,
• changes in the traditional neighbourhood due to a growing importance of extraneighbourhood social networks,
• an increasing tendency towards closure and social isolation in neighbourhoods,
• the appearance of neighbourhoods defined by new lifestyles, especially those presented by the middle class, and
• the transformation of neighbourhoods in successive development stages.
A survey of the literature on the subject leads to the conclusion that in formulating the basic theoretical assumptions that would allow an exhaustive treatment of the neighbourhood question one should consider:
• the territorial aspect of the neighbourhood,
• its social aspect,
• its institutional aspect, and
• the aspect of the internal dynamics and structural (systemic) diversity of the neighbourhood.
In an attempt to work out a general conception describing the neighbourhood and meeting the above requirements, the neighbourhood communities are treated as structures making up subsystems of a city and constituting the city system. Thus, a systems perspective is adopted in the dissertation which is intended to assist in sorting out the issues addressed, and in particular in identifying the problem questions fully.
A neighbourhood is understood in the dissertation as a territorially defined social system of various types of relations holding among its inhabitants and institutional influences shaping external relations. It is a system based on the proximity of habitation which is rarely fully disintegrated or fully integrated. The degree of its integration is determined by a variety of systemic relations and territorial marking.
Within the territorial social system of a city, the following subsystems can be distinguished:
• sub-neighbourhood,
• neighbourhood, and
• sublocal.
Each of the social layers of the above territorial subsystems can in fact appear as:
• a sub-neighbourhood community,
• a neighbourhood community,
• a local community, and
• an urban society.
The following internal relations can be listed that help to characterise social subsystems on a scale of their integration-disintegration:
• isolation,
• co-existence, and
• co-operation.
External relations hold among the communities of the individual subsystems and can be those of subordination, equality or superiority. In practice, external relations are supported, more or less explicitly, by the institutional-administrative endowment of the particular subsystems. They are the relations of:
- withdrawal,
- interest, or
- involvement.
Territoriality is also described through the attitude of the particular communities and their
members towards the area used. Those attitudes include:
- negation,
- neutrality, or
- belonging.
Observations about modern big-city neighbourhoods that can be formulated on the basis of the research are as follows:
1. In territorial terms, old neighbourhoods tend to deteriorate slowly while most of the new
ones are being built in isolation from the surroundings from the start.
2. Institutions and places which used to be the hubs of neighbourhood life have disappeared or are in decline, including:
a. the caretaker, who was not only a person sweeping the yard, but also the carrier of many
other functions: integrative, communicative, organisational, and social control; and
b. the mangle and the washroom.
3. There are still such places as the local shop or service (e.g. a hairdresser's), but their function has been changing into purely utilitarian. Some of them have moved out of the neighbourhood.
4. There has appeared the phenomenon of e-neighbourhood and the integration of a group of residents through participation in neighbourhood discussion forums.
5. In new neighbourhoods excessive weight is given to security forces guarding the buildings, treated as a panacea for all the detrimental phenomena taking place in the neighbourhood.
6. The majority of respondents living in open housing complexes do not want their
neighbourhoods to be fenced off, but only monitored or placed under discreet surveillance. This shows that the persons concerned can see the difference between the feeling of safety and a merely physical sense of isolation.
7. The analysis and theoretical considerations presented above indicate that neighbourhoods should possess a territorial character of their own; they should be distinct, but not isolated.
8. The lifestyle of a city dweller tends to change: everyday life is faster and often lived outside the neighbourhood, at work and in a circle of friends from other parts of the city.
9. There is growing animation on the secondary market in dwellings, which does not favour long-term residency and the formation of ties. A number of flats are being let to students.
10. Institutional and organisational support for neighbourhoods should provide a basis for social activity and be a catalyst of the dormant potential of neighbourhood communities. The present research shows that a majority of residents are ready for pro-neighbourhood action, having a favourable image of a neighbour and expectations concerning him. Thus, institutions and organisations can encourage and stimulate this social capital, with primary schools and parishes having the greatest potential in this matter. However, this potential is practically left untapped. External links of neighbourhoods are still weak. Neighbourhoods find no support on the part of institutions assisting residents in their activity.
11. The residents showing greater interest in neighbourhood life are those who are older, have a lower education, children, and have lived in the same place for a longer time.
12. In the Poznań conditions, neighbourhood areas showing a special type of building pattern can be categorised in terms of increasing neighbourhood integration as follows (starting with the least integrated neighbourhoods):
a. new housing complexes,
b. old municipal tenement houses,
c. blocks-of-flats of the socialist city, and
d. single-family housing estates.
Today the mangle that used to be a meeting place for the women of a neighbourhood has disappeared, as has the caretaker who was an integrator of social life and the sandpit which was the focus of life for the younger residents. In the contemporary neighbourhood one can observe a reflection of both, global changes and microstructural influences. Still, despite those factors the social nature of man remains the same. Man keeps being a social creature seeking selfactualisation in social structures that are emotionally and spatially close to him. Hence, neighbourhood subsystems are among the basic and real socio-spatial categories of the city.