Journal of Urbanism, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2014.896394
Neighborhood formation in semi-urban settlements
Michael E. Smitha*, Ashley Engquistb, Cinthia Carvajalc, Katrina Johnston-Zimmermand,
Monica Algarae, Bridgette Gillilandc, Yui Kuznetsovc and Amanda Younge
a
Arizona State University, School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Mesa, AZ, USA;
University of Vienna, Cultural Differences and Transnational Processes, Vienna, Austria; cArizona
State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; dProject for Public Spaces, New York, NY, USA; eArizona State
University, Museum Studies, Tempe, AZ, USA
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b
Semi-urban settlements are places where large numbers of people come together,
whether forcibly or voluntarily, in special-purpose settlements that lack many of the
features characteristic of cities. This exploratory study examines 11 different types of
semi-urban settlement from the present and the past and finds that neighborhoods are
present as important social and spatial units in 10 of the types. This finding supports
the notion that neighborhoods are fundamental and perhaps universal features of cities
and semi-urban settlements. The following social drivers for neighborhood creation are
identified in both formal and informal semi-urban settlements: defense, group preservation, sociality, convenience, administration, and control/surveillance. The results have
implications for understanding urban and neighborhood dynamics in a wide range of
cities and other settlements.
Keywords: neighborhoods; comparative; semi-urban settlements
When people assemble to live in large numbers for periods of a week or more they create
a social environment that shares many of the interactions and social processes characteristic of cities and urban settlements. In this paper we call such settlements ‘semi-urban’;
they include refugee camps, shantytowns, military camps, internment camps, religious
camp meetings, and other types of settlement. Because these semi-urban settlements tend
to form quickly, they can reveal the operation of urban social processes that are more difficult to observe in longer-established, more permanent cities.
Neighborhood organization is a widespread, perhaps universal, feature of urban life
across the ages (Smith 2010). Scholars working on contemporary cities typically define
the neighborhood as follows: ‘A neighborhood is a subsection of a larger community – a
collection of people and institutions occupying a spatially defined area influenced by ecological, cultural, and sometimes political forces’ (Sampson 2003, 973); or, ‘a spatial construction denoting a geographical unit in which residents share proximity and the
circumstances that come with it. The neighborhood is a subunit of a larger area and is usually seen as primarily, if not exclusively, as residential’ (Chaskin 1997, 522–523). In a
study of neighborhoods at ancient cities, Smith emphasizes face-to-face interaction to a
greater extent than these scholars: ‘A neighborhood is a residential zone that has considerable face-to-face interaction and is distinctive on the basis of physical and/or social characteristics’ (Smith 2010, 139). These definitions are related to the concept of community in
the social sciences, which is typically defined from two elements: social interaction and
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
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M.E. Smith et al.
common characteristics (e.g. Brower 2011). Bowles and Gintis (2002, 5) review definitions of community in the planning and social science literature and suggest that when a
community is spatially localized in a city, it is called a neighborhood.
This paper has two goals. First, it explores some of the urban social dynamics operating in semi-urban settlements. This is a rich area for urban analysis, and we argue that
greater comparative and conceptual attention to these settlements will contribute to a
broader understanding of urbanization processes in general. Second, the identification of
neighborhood organization in all but one type of semi-urban settlement adds empirical
support to the notion that neighborhoods are a universal feature of urban life. While much
research focuses on the importance of neighborhoods today (Forrest 2008; Brower 2011;
Sampson 2012), the exploration of the variety of neighborhood expressions over time and
space is still in its infancy.
This study suggests that neighborhoods form in most types of semi-urban settlements,
through either top-down processes, bottom-up processes, or a combination of the two. This
finding not only contributes to an understanding of social processes in these settlements,
but also underscores the fundamental importance of neighborhoods in human settlements.
This is an exploratory study and we suggest that additional comparative research on semiurban settlements has the potential to illuminate many urban social processes.
Semi-urban settlements
Although many definitions of city and urbanism are found in the literature, nearly all
emphasize some combination or subset of three features: demography, complexity, and
centrality. Cities are often defined as places: (1) with large populations and/or high population densities; and/or (2) with social complexity or heterogeneity of residents; and/or (3)
with central activities and institutions that affect a larger area outside their boundaries.
Louis Wirth’s influential definition of city as a permanent settlement with a large population, high density, and social complexity (Wirth 1938) emphasizes the first two of these
features, whereas Richard Fox’s (Fox 1977) functional definition of urbanism gives primary emphasis to the third factor. The concept of semi-urban settlement focuses on the
first factor, population.
Because this is an exploratory study of a topic – semi-urban settlements – that has seen
little comparative research, we employ a somewhat loose definition. As research in this
field progresses, more precise definitions and categories can be devised. We define
semi-urban settlements as places where large numbers of people come together, whether
forcibly or voluntarily, in special-purpose settlements that lack many of the features characteristic of cities. Most of the settlement types we consider have large populations and
high population densities, and some may exhibit social complexity or heterogeneity. Few
serve as central hubs for a broader settlement system (i.e., they have limited urban functions), although some cases may develop into more permanent urban settlements over
time. It is their high population that makes them comparable with urban settlements with
respect to many social dynamics.
We divide semi-urban settlements into three categories: voluntary camps, shantytowns,
and formal settlements. We consider settlements in the first two categories as informal in
nature. Douglas Uzzell’s (Uzzell 1990) discussion of these concepts is useful:
‘Formal’ activities in this discussion are those that are required, enabled, implied, or sanctioned by law. In the broadest sense, in the present discussion, ‘informal’ activities are everything else. (116)
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Implementation of formal plans requires coercive power in one form or another. Generative
planning, by contrast, is based on operational information, and the power required for its
implementation may be minimal. (114)
Uzzell’s use of the term ‘generative planning’ to label informal processes differs from the
usage of the term generative by scholars such as Christopher Alexander and Besim Hakim,
for whom a key component of the concept is the adherence to long-lasting communitylevel cultural traditions (Mehaffy 2008). In contrast, the informal dynamics of some of the
semi-urban settlements we discuss cannot be based on such cultural traditions because of
their rapid formation and/or the cultural heterogeneity of the people involved. These settlements were established largely through processes of volunteer actions, in contrast to the
formal settlements, which were established largely by force or necessity. The formal semiurban settlements conform to Kevin Lynch’s (Lynch 1981, 81–88) concept of ‘The city as
a practical machine.’
Table 1 identifies 17 types of semi-urban settlement. Most were formed rapidly by
large numbers of people. Table 1 does not exhaust the list of settlement types that fit the
definition of semi-urban settlement, but presents those that were investigated for the possi-
Table 1. Types of semi-urban settlements.
Settlement type
Functional category
Creation
Form
Permanence
Voluntary camps
Pilgrimage site
Religious camp
Religious site
Religious site
Volunteer
Volunteer
Periodic
Periodic
Recreational
settlement
Nomadic aggregation
site
Other campsite
Nomadic aggregation
site
Volunteer
Customary
Other
planned
Varied
Volunteer
Irregular
Periodic
Volunteer
Special occasion
Irregular
Customary
Temporary
Periodic
Necessity;
volunteer
Necessity;
volunteer
Regular
Permanent
Irregular
Permanent
Orthogonal
Orthogonal
Orthogonal
Orthogonal
Temporary
Temporary
Temporary
Permanent
Orthogonal
Orthogonal
Permanent
Permanent
Varied
Other
planned
Other
planned
Permanent
Enduring
* Festival
* RV camp
* Protest camp
* Plains Indian
aggregation
Shantytowns
Planned invasion
settlement
* Generative settlement
Neighborhood
Neighborhood
Formal (‘practical machine’) sites
* Military camp
Military camp
* Internment camp
Detention center
Concentration camp
Detention center
* Company town
Labor settlement
* Worker compound
Mining and lumber
camp
Slave settlement
* Refugee camp
* Disaster camp
Labor settlement
Labor settlement
Labor settlement
Displaced persons
camp
Displaced persons
camp
Force
Force
Force
Necessity;
volunteer
Force; necessity
Volunteer
Force
Necessity
Necessity
Periodic
Temporary
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M.E. Smith et al.
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ble presence of neighborhoods in the first stage of the research. Types marked with an
asterisk are described in this paper; for the other types, we could not find reliable data on
the presence or absence of neighborhoods. It is likely that more intensive research by specialists will turn up data on neighborhood and community organization at some of the settlement types (such as religious camps and slave settlements) that we omit from this
paper. While all of these 17 settlement types (and others) do have published literatures, we
found the number of works that considered the spatial parameters of social processes to be
much smaller.
Why do neighborhoods form? Ultimate causes
The literature on urban neighborhoods tends to take their existence for granted, and questions about how or why neighborhoods form initially are rarely considered. The why questions (e.g. why do neighborhoods exist? or, why are they universal features of cities?)
concern distal or ultimate causes (Mayr 1961) while questions of how neighborhoods form
involve proximate causes, also known as drivers or causal mechanisms (Gerring 2012, chs
8–9). We consider the why question briefly, and then concentrate the analysis on specific
drivers responsible for the creation of neighborhoods.
A number of anthropologists have identified scaling factors in the population size of
individual communities. John Bodley (Bodley 2003, 54–78) summarizes research by a
number of scholars suggesting that the largest community in which people can maintain
face-to-face relationships has around 500 ± 100 individuals. Beyond this threshold people
cannot keep track of individuals and social stress becomes a problem. In another approach
to the issue, Robin Dunbar has examined the sizes of a variety of types of social networks.
He suggests that 150 is a maximal size of networks of stable interpersonal relationships, a
more restrictive criterion than Bodley’s face-to-face interactions (Hill and Dunbar 2003;
Dunbar 2011; also Feinman 2011). Archeologist Roland Fletcher (Fletcher 1995)
approaches the question in terms of both the population size and the density of settlements, assembling a large array of comparative data showing a series of thresholds in settlement size and density.
Most explanations for these community size thresholds focus on one or both of two
cognitive factors: constraints in human memory and psychological stress from crowding.
We are not concerned here with the actual population size thresholds or with the specific
mechanisms that create and maintain such thresholds. Rather, the important point is that
cognitive and other forces act to limit the sizes of effective human communities. When
settlements – cities – become significantly larger than these thresholds, either the settlements must fission, or else residents must find ways to form smaller units within the city;
these smaller units are neighborhoods. This observation fits well with Fletcher’s (1995)
hypothesis that the stress-based limits to settlement size and density can only be transcended when societies develop the means for the spatial segregation of activities, as well
as innovations in communications or transport. The urban neighborhood is an example of
this segregation of activities.
How do neighborhoods form? Drivers or proximate causes
Although the scholarly literature on neighborhoods has little to say about how they form
initially, that literature can be used to identify likely drivers of neighborhood formation.
We single out six such drivers that seem to account for the formation and persistence of
neighborhoods, both in cities and in semi-urban settlements. Four are bottom-up processes
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– defense, group preservation, sociality, and convenience – in that they arise from the
actions of people independent of the state, local authorities, or other controlling institutions. Two are top-down processes – administration and control/surveillance – that are
accomplished by some level of formal institutional control.
Table 2 provides subjective judgments about the individual drivers that are responsible
for the creation of neighborhoods in each of the types of semi-urban settlement considered
here. These identifications are based on a reading of the literature on each settlement type;
the sources used in the research described in this paper go beyond the specific works referenced in this paper. Here we describe the six main drivers of neighborhood formation in
semi-urban settlements.
Defense
The need for protection by minority groups is a major driver in creating neighborhoods in
cities new and old (Rapoport 1980–81; York et al. 2011). One of the categories in Gerald
Suttles’s influential typology of neighborhoods is the defended neighborhood, defined as a
‘small subsection of the city that constitutes a “safe haven” for its members’ (Suttles
1972, 57–58); for modern cities he lists racial ghettos and housing projects as examples
(see also Chaskin 1997, 535–536). Defended neighborhoods were also prevalent in premodern cities (Rapoport 1980–81).
We have identified one clear example of defense as a major driver of neighborhood formation: refugee camps, where conflicts along ethnic, national, and religious lines are a
problem. The controlling authorities make an effort to separate groups to avoid conflict, and
residents typically fortify their communities against attack or intrusion (Agier 2011, 135).
Group preservation
Group preservation operates in a similar fashion to defense, but with less emphasis on
security from physical assault. In long-lasting cities, this driver is often called ‘mutual support’ (Knox and Pinch 2006, 175; York et al. 2011). Residents create self-help networks in
various realms of life. These support networks may take time to develop, and thus they
might not have time to influence neighborhood formation in rapidly forming settlements.
On the other hand, if pre-existing groups arrive in a semi-urban settlement, their desire to
interact and support one another can lead directly to neighborhood formation. This can be
seen as the structural equivalent of chain migration (in which successive groups of immigrants move into the same area), a major driver of social clustering in urban neighborhoods (Greenshields 1980). The force of group preservation can lead to the reproduction
of rural forms of settlement within the city (Rapoport 1983, 264).
Sociality
As noted by Carmon (2001, 10488), ‘the term neighborhood is rooted in the verb neighbor,’ and ‘to neighbor’ means both living near one another and engaging in practices of
friendliness and sociality. The exercise of sociality is one factor in the creation of community in general, and neighborhoods can be viewed as spatially localized communities
within larger settlements (Wellman 1999; Jabareen and Carmon 2010). Political economy
models of community dynamics (e.g. Ostrom 2000; Bowles and Gintis 2002) emphasize
social interaction and peer monitoring as the primary forces creating and maintaining successful communities, and the driver sociality is an expression of these dynamics.
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M.E. Smith et al.
Table 2. Major drivers of neighborhood formation.
Type
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Voluntary
camps
Plains Indians
aggregations
Festivals
RV camp:
Quartzsite
Protest camps
Group
Control and
Defense preservation Sociality Convenience Administration surveillance
1?
1
1
1
1
Other informal
settlements
Shantytowns
Formal (‘practical
machine’) sites
Military
camps
Internment
camps
Company
towns
Workers’
compounds
Refugee
camps
Disaster
camps
1
1
1?
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
2
1
1
2
1
1
2
1
1
2
1
1
1
Notes: 1, Driver in initial neighborhood formation; 2, driver in the establishment of feeling of community after
initial neighborhood formation; and ? significance of the driver is uncertain.
Sociality appears to have been the major driver in the formation of most of the informal semi-urban settlements in the sample. The various first-hand descriptions of these settlements show the importance of social interaction, both as an explicit process as
expressed by residents and as an abstract analytical explanation of behavior. Among the
formal settlements, sociality quickly developed among residents of imposed neighborhoods in the two cases where we have detailed ethnographic data (internment camps and
refugee camps),
Convenience
In cities before the development of the automobile and powered transport, places of work
were often located within the home or very close by. Low-order services (retail and other)
were frequently available throughout a city. Place-based patterns of interaction developed
into neighborhoods for reasons of convenience and efficiency (least-cost forces), factors
which then helped maintain neighborhoods as important social and spatial units. The driver
‘convenience’ refers to the formation of local networks or neighborhoods through custom
and the practices of everyday life. As stated by Chaskin (1997, 531), the neighborhood provides ‘a forum for relationships through which information, aid, services, and connection to
broader networks and systems are shared’ (see also Bowles and Gintis 2002).
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It can be difficult to draw a firm distinction between sociality and convenience in the
dynamics of existing neighborhoods, since the former is often transformed into the kind of
convenience described above by Chaskin. But as a driver of initial neighborhood formation, convenience seems to operate strongly only in shantytowns. This unique situation
highlights two differences between shantytowns and the 10 other kinds of semi-urban settlements: shantytowns are the only type of semi-urban settlement shown in Table 1 that
are neither temporary/periodic nor dedicated to a limited purpose.
Administration
This driver describes the creation of spatial units for the administration and control of people, and the establishment of services and features in those units by the actions of officials.
Suttles has two categories of neighborhood that fit here: the artificial neighborhood that is
designed by planners (Suttles 1972, 41–43) and the community of limited liability, a unit
imposed by outsiders – whether government or commercial – for purposes of administration (58–64). In both cases, neighborhoods are created, and often maintained, by top-down
administrative actions, not by the actions of residents.
In the sample, administration was a major driver in neighborhood creation in all of the
formal settlements. The relevant authorities – whether the state, the military, commercial
enterprises, or non-governmental organizations – seek efficiency and effectiveness for
whatever special purpose the semi-urban settlement serves (Lynch 1981, 81–88).
Control and surveillance
Control and surveillance as drivers of neighborhood formation go beyond administration
in their greater intrusiveness into the lives of residents. They were important drivers of
neighborhood creation in all of the formal settlements except disaster camps. Authorities
evidently believe that the efficiency and effectiveness they seek can only be accomplished
by close supervision of residents. At least two of the four functions of surveillance in Victorian architecture discussed by Andrzejewski (2008) – discipline and efficiency – operated in most of the formal semi-urban settlements.
Methods
We examined the published literature on the 17 types of semi-urban settlements listed in
Table 1, looking specifically for evidence of the spatial patterning of residences and the
nature of social interactions within settlements. For five settlement types we could not find
sufficient information to determine whether spatial clusters existed or not (pilgrimage sites,
religious camps, concentration camps, mining/lumber camps, and slave settlements). For
one settlement type – disaster camps – we located some spatial information but no evidence for the formation of clusters or neighborhoods. For each of the remaining 10 settlement types we found at least one case study documenting the presence of neighborhoods.
The initial plan was to select a sample of several cases for each settlement type to
explore the presence and nature of neighborhoods. This idea was soon abandoned due to
the rarity of studies that include spatial data. Few researchers on semi-urban settlements
provide maps, and the numerous available photographs of these settlements rarely provide
information on spatial clustering. Also rare are ethnographic descriptions that indicate the
spatial configuration of social interactions among residents. As a result the quality of the
data is extremely uneven, ranging from rigorous fieldwork with abundant empirical
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M.E. Smith et al.
documentation (e.g. shantytowns) to anecdotal accounts of spatial clustering or neighborhoods (e.g. festivals and recreational vehicle (RV) camps). For many of the types we
located only one example with sufficient data, and the discussion here focuses on these
cases. An obvious limitation of the sample is that it is difficult to determine the extent to
which our admittedly exploratory findings can be generalized.
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Informal semi-urban settlements: voluntary camps
We have located some level of empirical data indicating the presence of neighborhoods in
four types of semi-urban settlements established largely through volunteer processes,
sometimes aided by factors of practical necessity: Plains Indians aggregation campsites,
RV camps, festival sites, and protest camps. In these informal settlements neighborhoods
are created by the actions of residents with little or no direction from law or authorities.
Plains Indians aggregation campsites
We begin with a rather specialized kind of pre-modern non-urban settlement, the aggregation campsites of North American Plains Indians in the 19th century. Within a century of
the introduction of horses into the North American Plains (in the late 17th century), a distinctive horse-based bison hunting adaptation had developed among a linguistically diverse
group of cultures (Oliver 1962). These were nomadic peoples whose typical social group
was a band of 50–100 people, a size related to the needs of bison hunting. Their regular
settlements were camps with several tipis that Banks and Snortland (1995) call group
camps.
Ethnographers have identified two forms of temporary settlements that formed periodically through the aggregation of several individual bands. For present purposes, these
aggregation sites are important because subgroups (the basic bands) formed clusters of tipis that correspond to neighborhoods. The first type of aggregation site was the cluster
camp, defined as ‘an irregular arrangement of tipis clustered in groups’ (Banks and
Snortland 1995, 130); these had a mean size of 27.3 tipis. Royal Hassrick describes these
settlements as follows:
‘The village plan was an informal assemblage of lodges, with the location of tipis determined
by family relationship, position in the previous village site [group camp], and geographical
configuration’ (Hassrick 1964, 153). The clusters of tipis within the cluster camps can be considered neighborhoods.
The second form of aggregation site for the Plains Indians was the circular camp. These
settlements (mean of 39.3 tipis) were carefully arranged in a circular configuration, with
the tipis of each constituent group or ‘tribe’ in clusters around the periphery. In Figure 1
each of the tipis stands for one of these spatial clusters. This arrangement facilitated the
activities of the Sun Dance, a major four-day ceremonial event (Spier 1921). Again, the
clusters (numbers 1–10 in Figure 1) can be considered neighborhoods.
The occurrence of these large aggregations was constrained by the seasonal patterns of
the bison herds. They had to take place while the herds were in their large congregating
season to provide sufficient food, but before the rutting season began. Alice Kehoe compares the aggregation sites with urban settlements as follows:
Nomad peoples were constrained to adapt social affairs to ecological cycles: most of the business that in towns [in other cultures] occurred over the year had to be compressed by the
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nomads into the few summer weeks when grass was most lush on the open plains. Trading,
gambling, visiting friends from other bands, games and sports competitions, and seeking a
compatible spouse or comrade were individual incentives to rendezvous in large camps. Adjudicating disputes, discussing policies and strategies for allied bands drew leaders to these
camps. Above all, participation in rituals was a magnet. (Kehoe 1981, 295)
Thus it is not at all surprising that the residents of these large temporary settlements
arranged their tipis and their social life into clusters or neighborhoods. The same phenomenon also occurred on an even larger spatial scale at the battle of Little Bighorn, where a
coalition of tribes (the most numerous were the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho)
defeated Gen. George Armstrong Custer. Although we lack detailed plans, the first-hand
descriptions and archeological remains suggest that each tribal group created its own
campsite or cluster within a large sprawling agglomeration of tipis on the west bank of the
Little Bighorn River (Graham 1953; Fletcher 1991; Fox 1993).
The Plains Indian societies were tribal groups lacking both formal leaders and administrative institutions with social power over people. Sociality and group preservation appear
to have been the primary drivers of neighborhood formation in these groups, and perhaps
defense played a role in the larger aggregations such as at the Little Bighorn battle.
Figure 1. Cheyenne camp circle from a Sun Dance aggregation camp (Grinnell 1928, 90). The
numbered tribal units are the neighborhoods. Reproduced with permission.
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M.E. Smith et al.
RV Camp at Quartzsite, Arizona
Contemporary nomads – primarily retirees in recreational vehicles (RVs) – also create seasonal aggregation sites. The largest and best documented example is Quartzsite, Arizona.
Each winter this town is transformed from a small sleepy highway stop into a bustling and
sprawling city of RVs. On the periphery of the town people have considerable freedom to
locate their RVs on extensive plots of land administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Some people form spatial clusters with friends and acquaintances, and many of
these clusters are reformed each year. Some appear to be informal arrangements, while
others show the hand of planning and coordination. Some of the clusters have informal
names. Figure 2 shows one such cluster in January 2013.
Accounts of life at Quartzite (Berg 2010) describe friends interacting and spending
time in common activities, but the spatial configurations of vehicles is not always clear.
An ethnographic study of RV life in general discusses how community is created at RV
camps through reciprocity, common ideology, and the use of space and symbols (Counts
and Counts 1996, ch. 8). Unfortunately, these authors fail to provide the spatial information necessary to identify clusters or neighborhoods at the RV sites studied. The forces
leading to aggregation are similar to the case of the Plains Indians campsites: environment
(the Arizona climate) and economics (the availability of inexpensive parking places from
the Bureau of Land Management). Several urban scholars have written about Quartzsite;
Nate Berg (Berg 2010) calls Quartzsite an ‘impromptu city’ and Deane Simpson (Simpson
2007) places Quartzsite into the larger context of what he calls ‘RV urbanism.’
Festival sites
We could identify only a single festival with sufficient social and spatial data to address the
question of neighborhoods: the Burning Man festival held each summer in the Nevada desert. This celebration of art and free expression has grown from a small gathering of friends
around a bonfire in San Francisco in 1986 to a thriving week-long urban settlement of over
50,000 in 2012. At the completion of each festival the entire campsite and physical infrastructure are dismantled, to be resurveyed and rebuilt the following year. Although several
scholarly monographs have been published on the festival (e.g. Chen 2009; Gilmore 2010),
its urban qualities have only started to be explored (Zancan 2006; Berg 2011).
The Burning Man settlement is called ‘Black Rock City.’ For the first few years of the
festival there were few rules and little coordinated planning. As the festival grew in size,
however, chaos and dangerous activities posed problems, threatening the festival’s use permits from the Bureau of Land Management. In 1993 a series of rules was established, and
a coordinated urban plan was applied. Information on neighborhoods at Burning Man
comes from Rod Garrett, the primary designer and planner of Black Rock City, and Harvey DuBois, its ‘City Manager,’ in the form of interviews and blogs. In the words of
DuBois (2010):
Because Black Rock City has grown from such a small organic center to its current size and
shape in a relatively short period of time (one week a year for 20 years on the Black Rock
Desert equals 20 weeks), it’s easy to examine how everything comes together to make a successful neighborhood. We’ve learned that: 1) friends and family camp in an area because they
liked it and can find each other easily year after year, 2) people come to parts of the city due
to a concept or association (like ‘4:20’ [a marijuana-centered group]) or a rumor (like the
amount of dust present) and tend to stay there, their numbers growing every year until a sense
of that place becomes identifiable, and 3) the curatorial nature of theme camp placement
helped to foster a sense of ‘there’ in an area.
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Figure 2. Circular cluster of recreational vehicles (RVs) at Quartzsite, Arizona, in January 2013.
Their owners all belong to the Montana Owners Club. Photograph: Shelley Ware; reproduced with
permission.
It seems clear the neighborhoods in Black Rock City initially developed informally
through social networks and common interests, factors that correspond to the driver of
sociality. As planning became a significant part of the festival’s spatial framework, efforts
were made to reinforce and encourage neighborhood formation:
We began zoning space within our city in 1997 because of the need to locate theme camps
[neighborhoods] in some coherent way. (Garrett 2010)
While the intent of placement and zoning was (and still is) to provide the citizens of Black
Rock City with an amazing experience, zoning is also used to help facilitate harmony while
allowing for divergent interests within a city. It’s the Placement Team’s job to meet the
demands of particular elements of the city who have developed different needs and different
tolerances. (DuBois 2010)
The relationship between population size and the formation of neighborhoods was explicitly acknowledged by Garrett in an interview with Roberto Zancan:
We are redefining our zoning to break the city down into smaller, more humanly scaled
neighbourhoods. This becomes increasingly necessary as our population continues to grow
while still using the old camp centric model. Populations, in their desire for that human scale,
are driven to choose divisive ways to break the population into smaller units, resulting in
grouping through the exclusion of others. By visually suggesting smaller areas, we can create
divisions of a size the mind can wrap itself around. (Zancan 2006)
The interplay between the Burning Man ethos (free expression, communal effort, and
immediacy) and the growing needs for planning and urban services as the festival grew is
a fascinating topic, and further research from an urban perspective is called for (for a start,
see Berg 2011).
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M.E. Smith et al.
Protest camps
The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement of 2011 and its allies in other US cities were explicitly and normatively leaderless and non-hierarchical, and the concept of social anarchy
(Graeber 2004) is often invoked in describing these social phenomena (van Gelder 2011).
Their campsites are thus good examples of informal semi-urban settlements. Here, we discuss neighborhood organization at one such camp – the ‘Occupy Portland’ movement –
based on an ethnographic study of the camp by Katrina Johnston (Johnston 2011). This
camp was established on October 6, 2011, in adjacent square-block parks (Chapman and
Lownsdale Square Parks) in downtown Portland, and dismantled on November 13. Johnston carried out ethnographic research during the entire period of occupation (Figure 3).
In the absence of any initial restrictions on where to place personal tents, the first residents set up tents at will and newcomers simply filled in the gaps wherever they could find
a space. The emphasis was on locations in the interior areas of the pre-separated grassy triangles of the parks (Figure 4). As individuals spent time with those who happened to set
up personal tents nearby, social bonds were formed and clusters of nearby residents took
on a name (e.g. ‘A-Camp,’ ‘The Aquarium,’ and ‘Time-travelers’). The members of the
named clusters called themselves tribes. Neighbors (fellow tribe members) would then
rearrange the space to create common areas under tarps complete with tables, chairs, hay
barrels, and pillows. The clusters of adjacent tents thus became neighborhoods, identified
by their tribal label. Alleys and courtyards were also given names.
The spatial organization of the camp – features like neighborhood structure, central
facilities, and the separation between public and private spaces – was generated and modified over time by bottom-up processes. Once established, top-down planning efforts were
consistently resisted by the residents. For example, as the parks filled up, plans were made
to reorganize the campsite into neat rows of tents with straight alleys, but this idea was
rejected by the participants.
Informal semi-urban settlements: shantytowns
Shantytowns, or squatters settlements, are prominent features of many cities in the
developing world today (UNCHS/Habitat 2003). Most studies that discuss ‘neighborhoods’ in shantytowns treat the neighborhood as a pre-existing spatial unit, i.e. the
shantytown settlements are considered neighborhoods within their larger urban configuration (e.g. Aparicio 2008; Clerc 2008). At this level, the enormous literature on the
dynamics of formation of shantytowns (e.g. UNCHS/Habitat 1982; Cymet 1992;
Huchzermeyer 2004) is relevant to the generation of neighborhoods. The focus here,
however, is on the development of neighborhoods as social–spatial divisions within shantytowns. This topic has not been extensively studied because research requires detailed
spatial and social data; shantytowns typically have patterns of social order that are not
obvious from their spatial configurations (Lomnitz 1975, 39; Carvajal 2011; Smit 2006).
For the case study, we draw on a monograph by Schlyter and Schlyter (1979) on the
shantytown known as George in Lusaka, Zambia. These scholars combined ethnographic
and historical research with ample use of mapping and photography to produce the most
detailed publication of the spatial and social organization of a shantytown settlement. They
document this settlement over several decades of expansion and densification. The most
explicit data on neighborhoods is from their fieldwork in 1973:
On the aerial photos of George the lay-out of the houses seems to be random. However, when
walking around in the area, observing the way in which land and houses are used, we
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Journal of Urbanism
Figure 3.
13
Tents at the Protest Portland site. Photograph: Katrina Johnston.
Figure 4. Plan of the Protest Portland site. The named campsites are the neighborhoods. Map:
Katrina Johnston.
experienced a pattern of houses clustered together in groups. The houses in the groups faced
each other as their entrances and the swept areas in front of them were visually connected.
Together with the space in between, the whole areas constituted what we called a ‘socially
open space.’ (Schlyter and Schlyter 1979, 89)
Figure 5 shows these groups or clusters in one part of the settlement. Most clusters are oriented around a path or a well that serves the constituent households, whose members typically interact on a regular basis. These clusters can be considered mini-neighborhoods.
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Although Schlyter and Schlyter do not map or describe formal neighborhood-like spatial
units on a scale larger than these clusters, they do map the spatial extent of social interactions for several individual households (Schlyter and Schlyter 1979, 100), and these interaction fields cover a larger area than the clusters. Although spatially based, the social
clusters identified by Schlyter and Schlyter would be difficult or impossible to identify by
spatial clustering methods alone.
Our research on George and other shantytowns (e.g. Carvajal 2011) indicates that sociality and convenience are the main drivers of neighborhood formation. Some shantytowns
are formed by invasion and not accretion (Cymet 1992; Smit 2006). These are often settled initially by several groups from distinct places of origin, and group preservation is
probably an important driver of clustering within such settlements.
Formal (‘practical machine’) settlements
Formal settlements are those established by some kind of institution, typically either
through force or in reaction to practical necessity. We have found evidence for neighbor-
Figure 5. House clusters in the shantytown of George in Lusaka, Zambia (Schlyter and Schlyter
1979, 89). Reproduced with permission.
Journal of Urbanism
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hood organization at several types of formal settlements: military camps, internment
camps, company towns, workers’ compounds, and refugee camps. As in the case of informal settlements, these types include both contemporary special-purpose examples and premodern examples. The first four types share a set of spatial attributes: highly planned layouts, standardized housing, largely self-contained settlements, and physical separation
from other neighborhoods and settlements. These relate to the practical, regimented, and
administratively controlled nature of these ‘cities as practical machines’ (Lynch 1981,
81–88). We also examined disaster camps, but could find no evidence for the presence of
neighborhood organization.
Military camps
We begin the discussion of neighborhoods in formal settlements with the most regimented
and controlled example: the military camp. We focus here on Roman fortresses in Britain,
the best documented category of ancient military camp (Breeze 1983; Davison 1989).
These are known from both historical documents and archeological excavations.
Although no two Roman forts were identical in form, they shared certain features and
spatial principles. Within the walls, each fort had a headquarters structure, a commanding
officers house, a set of granaries, and groups of barracks called strigae. A striga was composed of two parallel rows of facing rooms (or tents) known as hemistrigae (Figure 6).
The striga is the unit that corresponds most closely to a neighborhood. Each of the two
rows (hemistrigae) were divided into 10 residential units called contubernia. These could
be tents, or – as in the fort at Fendoch (Figure 6) – two-room units, each with a front room
for storage of gear and weapons and a back room for living quarters shared by eight soldiers. The 80 soldiers in a hemistriga formed a unit called a century, which was under the
command of an officer called a centurium, who resided in the large residence at the end of
each row. Six centuries formed a cohort of 480 soldiers; at Fendoch, the three strigae in
the northeast portion of the fort (the right side in Figure 6) comprised a cohort.
The open area between the two hemistrigae provided space for games, gambling, and
other social interactions, activities that were in time moved outside the fort if the local
population set up establishments such as taverns, shops, gambling dens, and brothels.
While cooking took place behind the ramparts, meals were usually eaten in the men’s
rooms or in the open space of the strigae (Breeze 1983, 54–56). Unlike the informal settlements described above, neighborhood organization in military camps was created from
the top-down drivers of administration and control/surveillance. Once a fort was occupied,
the spatial and social dynamics of sociality contributed to the creation of community
within the striga. While it may seem odd at first glance to call these administratively
defined spatial units ‘neighborhoods,’ they do fit the definitions of neighborhood stated
above (‘a subsection of a larger community – a collection of people and institutions occupying a spatially defined area influenced by ecological, cultural, and sometimes political
forces’; Sampson 2003, 973). This example illustrates how the spatial expression of the
social dynamics of neighborhoods dovetails with the administrative needs of administratively planned formal settlements.
Internment camps
Internment camps are facilities for the confinement of people for political purposes. The
best-known examples are from World War II: German concentration camps (Kogon 1950)
and US internment camps for Japanese-Americans. The latter camps have a higher level
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M.E. Smith et al.
Figure 6. Roman fortress at Fendoch. The neighborhood was the strigae (‘S’ on the map); each
contained two rows of rooms facing a common open space and housed 160 soldiers. Modified after
Davison (1989), vol. 2, 456; original map in Richmond (1939), figure 2. We are grateful to the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for permission to reproduce this image.
of documentation, including ethnographic research during the war (Arensberg 1942;
Provinse and Kimball 1946; Spicer et al. 1969) and recent fieldwork by historical
archeologists (Burton et al. 2002; Myers and Moshenska 2011). For this reason, we focus
on the Japanese-American internment camps here.
Unlike cases where pre-existing settlements and structures are modified for use as
internment centers (Vilches 2011), the Japanese-American camps were specifically
designed and built to be used as internment camps. Their layouts can be summarized as
follows:
[The camps] were designed to be self-contained communities, complete with hospitals, post
offices, schools, warehouses, offices, factories and residential areas, all surrounded by barbed
wire and guard towers. […] Plans were based on a grid system of blocks. Block size varied
in the non-residential areas such as the administrative area, warehouses, and hospital. The
remainder of the central cores was made up of residential blocks separated by empty fire
breaks. Each residential block consisted of ten to fourteen barracks, a mess hall, latrines for
men and women, a laundry, and a recreation hall. (Burton et al. 2002, 40, 41)
These ‘blocks’ are the units that correspond to neighborhoods; individual camps usually
had thirty or more blocks. Figure 7 shows a typical block layout. One target of fieldwork
by government-sponsored ethnographers was the question of community. Blocks were
filled as people arrived at the camp, and most residents did not know one another prior to
arrival. All the ethnographers remarked on the emergence of social interaction and feelings
of community within the blocks:
Thus it was that on the basis of the definition and acceptance of the status of ‘evacuee’ combined with widespread opposition and suspicion of the administration and its officials, that
the evacuee group achieved a basis for common action and the eventual achievement of
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Figure 7. Block of barracks at a Japanese-American internment camp. The block is the neighborhood (Spicer et al. 1969, 70). From Impounded People, by Spicer, Hansen, Loumala, and Opler.
Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press.
systems of stabilized relationships sanctioned by widely held sentiments – in other words, a
community (Provinse and Kimball 1946, 407)
A number of specific factors promoted the development of community within the
blocks. Camp managers set up the outlines of a program of block leadership, but left the
details to individual blocks, which stimulated collective action. Provinse and Kimball
(1946, 405) state that ‘block loyalties developed quickly, soon followed by inter-block
competition.’ Everyday practices that promoted unity and cohesion included decorating
mess halls, scouting and gardening programs, theater productions, community newspapers,
and many other neighborhood-scale activities. These studies of internment camps provide
important details for a process that can only be inferred for Roman military camps: the
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M.E. Smith et al.
development of community through the driver of sociality once a formal system of neighborhoods has been established by authorities.
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Company towns
Company towns are settlements planned and constructed by a single institution (whether
state or commercial) for a specific economic activity. From the large literature on the planning and architecture of company towns (e.g. Garner 1992; Crawford 1995), we select the
city of Abadan, Iran, because of the distinctive nature of neighborhood creation. The
Anglo Persian Oil Company (later British Petroleum) built a refinery in Abadan before
World War I, and expanded its size in the 1940s. Workers were recruited from throughout
the Near East, and the company designed a series of neighborhoods to keep groups of
workers separated from one another (Figure 8). In the words of Kaveh Ehsani:
It is self-evident that if different city neighborhoods are constructed adjacent to each other,
the provision of common services and infrastructure would be far cheaper due to the economies of scale. In fact, Abadan’s neighborhoods were built apart and separated by wide
stretches of empty terrain, wide roads, pipelines, administrative and industrial facilities and,
of course, the enormous bulk of the refinery itself. This imposed separation prevents easy
intermingling and routine pedestrian interaction, as well as potentially dangerous collective
congregation between separate city sections. (Ehsani 2003, 390)
According to documents in the archives of the Anglo Persian Oil Company, this was the
intention of the settlement’s planners. The design called for construction of:
nuclei of small townships in several (four or five) distinct areas, well separated from one
another, and on Company leased in preference to State ground. A small township is one more
easily and efficiently controlled than a large one. […] Being far removed from the present
town, [political] activities within the latter will gradually wither. (company document published in Crinson 2003, 65)
Figure 8. Residential neighborhoods at the British Petroleum company town of Abadan, Iran
(Seccombe and Lawless 1987, 50). Reproduced with permission.
Journal of Urbanism
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The plan of Abadan (Figure 8) shows a ring of residential neighborhoods distributed
around the periphery of the refinery and tank farm, hemmed in by natural and built features (Vieille 1964). The greatest separation is between the neighborhood of largely European managers (Braim) and the remainder of the neighborhoods. But in contrast to many
European colonial cities, where planning and zoning were used primarily to separate European and native residential zones (King 1976; Stanley 2012), segregation-based planning
in Abadan extended to individual non-European parts of the city.
Workers’ compounds
We use the term ‘workers’ compound’ to describe a distinctive type of walled residential
neighborhood in ancient Egyptian cities. These settlements are typically called ‘workers’
villages’ in the Egyptological literature (e.g. Kemp 1987), but since most are associated
with urban settlements, the label village seems misleading. They are better viewed as residential neighborhoods, planned and built by the state to house specialized workers dedicated to particular economic tasks (Kemp 2006). Some are separated from their urban
cores by open ground, a typical pattern of neighborhood placement in low-density cities
(Smith 2011). The highly regular walled form of these workers neighborhoods stands out
in contrast to other Egyptian housing (Figure 9). The best-known examples of workers’
compounds are those at Amarna, Deir el-Medina, Kahun, and Giza.
As pointed out by Gilliland (2011), these settlements share spatial and architectural
attributes with company towns in the United States and Latin America, including their
walled perimeter, spatial isolation from other settlements, orthogonal planning, standardized housing, and rapid construction by an overarching authority. The ancient Egyptian
economy was strongly centralized. The state managed large-scale economic tasks, from
mining to the construction and maintenance of pyramids and other civic structures (Kemp
2006). Because of the importance of large groups of specialized workers in the Egyptian
economy, the state built and maintained these workers’ compounds. In contrast, other residential zones at Amarna (the most completely mapped ancient Egyptian city) show little
or no central planning (Lacovara 1997).
Whereas ancient Egyptian workers’ compounds could be considered as pre-capitalist
versions of company towns (Gilliland 2011), we single them out because of their distinctive spatial expressions and their radical economic and political context compared to company towns. The drivers of their formation are the same as company towns, with the
addition of defense as a possible driver (Table 2).
Refugee camps
Refugee camps are among the most numerous and populous types of semi-urban settlement today (Agier 2011; Corsellis and Vitale 2005). To deal with the logistics and scale of
these settlements, several relief organizations – including the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and Oxfam – have created hierarchical spatial plans for
camp layouts. The goals are to supply necessities, use the land efficiently, and maintain
social control of the camp. A manual on planning the layout and organization of refugee
camps produced by Oxfam International (Corsellis and Vitale 2005) describes four spatial–social levels (Figure 10):
Camps hold up to 20,000 residents; they are divided into four sectors. The administrative center is located in the center of the camp.
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M.E. Smith et al.
Figure 9. ‘Workers’ compound’ and adjoining structures comprising the ‘workers village’ at the
New Kingdom Egyptian city of Amarna. The workers’ compound is the neighborhood (modified
after Lacovara 1997, 142). Drawing: Lisa Heidorn; reproduced with permission.
Sectors have 5000 residents and are divided into four blocks. Each sector should
contain recreational and commercial spaces.
Blocks have 1250 residents and are divided into 16 communities.
Communities contain 80 residents. They are arranged in 16 plots, each with a shelter
or dwelling.
In this ideal spatial hierarchy, the communities correspond to neighborhoods. Unfortunately, few studies of refugee camps have focused on spatial and social issues. The major
exception is ethnographer Michel Agier (Agier 2002, 2008, 2011), who has conducted
fieldwork in UN refugee camps in Kenya. Agier describes the nature of blocks and sections at these camps. Blocks cover 2–3 hectares and have 100–150 shelters housing some
300–600 refugees. They are separated by fences of barbed wire and thorns. Agier notes:
‘The refugees have been grouped in the various blocks according to their place of origin,
ethnicity and sometimes their clan of origin’ (Agier 2002, 325). Several studies of Palestinian refugee camps mention the existence of neighborhoods (Tuastad 1997; Doraï 2008),
but they provide neither spatial data nor descriptions of interaction patterns. In some Palestinian refugee camps re-housing development projects are underway (Murillo 2007), and
these projects are attempting to organize neighborhood units and city blocks according to
tribal, business, solidarity, and friendship relationships.
Refugee camps are complex, multifaceted settlements, and their spatial and social patterns are generated by the broadest collection of drivers of any of the semi-urban settlements. Where possible, they are planned and laid out for administration and control, as are
the other formal settlements. But fieldwork by Agier and others shows that defense and
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Figure 10. Oxfam spatial planning scheme for refugee camps showing four spatial–social levels
of settlement. The ‘community’ is the neighborhood (modified after Corsellis and Vitale 2005, 380).
Reproduced with permission.
group preservation are also important factors in structuring the camps after their initial
establishment. And as in other cases, social interaction (sociality) plays a significant role
once people are established and living in the camp.
Disaster camps
Disaster camps resemble refugee camps in several ways: they are established very rapidly
by displaced people, they consist of temporary shelters, and their construction and management are typically under the direction of a central authority (Quarantelli 1995; Solnit
2009). The two kinds of settlement can be difficult to distinguish in photographs. We can
find no indication, however, that neighborhoods exist in disaster camps. In contrast to the
literature on refugee camps (e.g. Corsellis and Vitale 2005), none of the works on disaster
housing mentions planning for neighborhoods (Johnson 2007; Lizarralde 2010; Quarantelli
1995), and none of the descriptions of camps that we have seen mentions the occurrence
of neighborhood-like spatial or social clustering (Solnit 2009; Kamel 2010).
We suggest several reasons for the lack of neighborhood organization in disaster
camps, most of which focus on the temporal dimension. First, there is rarely time to plan
the layouts of these camps effectively, and we could not locate any published guidelines
similar to those produced by the UN and Oxfam International for the planning of refugee
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M.E. Smith et al.
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camps. The fact that ethnic conflict is not anticipated may reduce the need to establish
plans for these camps ahead of time. Second, people generally spend far less time in disaster camps than in refugee camps, and residents are often focused on a quick return home.
It may be that disaster camps are simply not occupied for enough time for neighborhoods
to develop through informal patterns.
Conclusions
The research described in this paper has identified the existence of neighborhoods in a
wide variety of semi-urban settlements. These findings emphasize the fundamental importance of neighborhood organization in human societies. Not only do all known cities have
some form of neighborhoods (Smith 2010), but also a diverse group of semi-urban settlements exhibit neighborhood organization. Neighborhoods develop both through informal,
bottom-up, social forces and through formal, top-down decisions. For a number of settlement types we could not locate sufficient information to determine the presence or absence
of neighborhoods (Table 1). Disaster camps, on the other hand, are relatively well documented but no one has suggested the existence of neighborhoods.
The distinctions we have drawn between informal and formal settlements, and between
bottom-up and top-down drivers, should not be reified. These are useful analytical distinctions whose expression in real settlements is often nuanced and blended. In two cases –
the Burning Man festival site and the Occupy Portland site – population growth in informal settlements stimulated increased central planning and administration. In Burning Man,
planning and administration were embraced as means to preserve other informal aspects of
the festival experience, whereas the residents of the Occupy Portland camp rejected such
initiatives. And just as informal settlements can lead to top-down actions, formal settlements can display important bottom-up processes. The clearest example of this are the Japanese-American internment camps, where the administratively designed and regulated
blocks were soon transformed into neighborhood communities through the activities and
interactions of the residents.
In conclusion, we echo the call of scholars such as Agier (2002, 2011), Berg (2010,
2011), and Fletcher (1991, 1995) for greater scholarly attention to semi-urban settlements.
Such research can help scholars uncover the structure and dynamics of cities and urbanization around the world.
Acknowledgements
This research was carried out as part of the research project ‘Urban Organization through the Ages:
Neighborhoods, Open Spaces, and Urban Life’ (http://cities.asu.edu/). Michael Smith directed the
research, with administrative and research help from Cinthia Carvajal, Ashley Engquist, and Katrina
Johnston-Zimmerman. Each author researched one or more of the settlement types, and all authors
contributed to writing the paper. Nate Berg, Jennifer Birch, George Cowgill, Daniel Hrushka, and
Barbara Stark provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper. Michael Smith thanks
Roberto Zancan for a reference to his interview with Rod Garrett about Burning Man. Several anonymous reviewers offered many helpful comments and suggestions, resulting in an improved paper.
Funding
Funding for the project was provided by the President’s Strategic Fund, Arizona State University.
Journal of Urbanism
23
Notes on contributors
Michael E. Smith is Professor of Archaeology at the School of Human Evolution & Social Change,
Arizona State University. His major research interests are Aztec household and community organization, and comparative pre-modern urbanism.
Ashley Engquist is a graduate student in Cultural Differences and Transnational Processes in
Vienna. She is interested in immigration and new forms of identity.
Cinthia Carvajal completed BA degrees in Anthropology and Sustainability from Arizona State University. She is interested in shantytowns in the developing world.
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Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman is a research and communications associate for Project for Public
Spaces in New York City. She has an MA in Urban Studies from Portland State University.
Monica Algara is currently pursuing her MA in Museum Studies with a focus on Anthropology.
She is interested in portraying and exhibiting cultures, specifically the Southwest and Mesoamerican
regions.
Bridgette Gilliland is a recent graduate of the Anthropology program at Arizona State University.
She is interested in how urban functions affected ancient societies.
Yui Kuznetsov is a recent graduate of the Anthropology program at Arizona State University, where
she served as a volunteer and intern on the project ‘Urban Organization through the Ages.’ She is
currently an Intern in the program Refugee Focus in Phoenix, Arizona.
Amanda Young completed her undergraduate studies in Anthropology and is now a graduate student
in Museum Studies at Arizona State University. She is interested in classical archeology and collections management.
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