Neighbourhood and preventive strategies with children and families: what works?

This paper argues that the 1989 Children Act has provided a poor context for discussing ‘prevention’. The Act has not helped the development of either a proper understanding of childhood disadvantages or policies to deal with it. This paper presents a fresh perspective on ‘prevention’ in the context of Government initiatives such as Sure Start, and argues for analysis of neighbourhood disadvantages and neighbourhood-based policies. The ‘geography of disadvantage’ has to be understood as well as the facts of disadvantage, that is, the concentrations and persistence of variations in income, health, and educational outcomes as they affect children. Examples of early years programmes and projects are reviewed for their impact on disadvantaged children and their families. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neighbourhood social ties: how much do residential,physical and virtual mobility matter?

Following up on the prediction by classical sociological theorists that neighbours will become irrelevant as societies become more mobile, this research examines the strength of people's social ties with neighbours and the associations thereof with residential, physical and virtual mobility using longitudinal data for Germany. Unlike previous studies, the research considers the three forms of mobility simultaneously and contrasts its effects on social ties with neighbours to those with family. The results show that residential and physical mobility are negatively associated with social ties to neighbours and positively with ties to family. Virtual mobility does not weaken social ties with neighbours but ties with family. The positive association between mobility and social ties with family may not be strong enough to ascertain that people maintain as close social ties to others in the future as it does not outweigh the negative association with visiting neighbours.     

Exemplary Urban Practitioners in Neighbourhood Renewal: Survival of the Fittest… and the Fitting

Often institutional solutions such as structures and organisations are seen as best practices in neighbourhood renewal. Using empirical case study data from the Netherlands and the UK, this paper demonstrates that there should be more attention for the role of individual urban practitioners. The relevance of this conclusion goes beyond the domain of neighbourhood regeneration alone. Due to the new government policy paradigms (e.g. Big Society/Participation Society), welfare reforms are introduced that combine severe austerity measures with more responsibilities for individual citizens and cross-sectorial partnerships between institutions. This post-crisis participation society calls for individuals that are able to ‘make a difference’ by bridging the gap between the systems of government agencies and other institutions, and the lifeworld of residents. But what are the characteristics and working methods of highly effective ‘exemplary urban practitioners’? This paper explores the characteristics of these practitioners by analysing empirical data from neighbourhood renewal case studies using Habermas system/lifeworld concept.     

Off the Block but within the Neighbourhood: The Local Slave Trade in São Paulo

This article compares slave-trading networks in the 1860s and 1870s in Santos and Mogi das Cruzes, two largely dissimilar townships in the south-eastern province of São Paulo, Brazil. These local markets had different structural patterns, even though buyers in both places depended on personal connections to procure single or very small lots of slaves. Santos had a more defined network of slave traders, while buyers and sellers in Mogi das Cruzes relied more on family connections. These findings are linked with studies on the internal market in Brazil and other parts of the Americas to show that local slave trading was more important than has been assumed, yet requires greater study to understand fully.