Do Suburbs Have Neighborhoods?

Do suburbs have neighborhoods? What are neighborhoods, anyway? And how would we know if suburbs had them? Hartford, Connecticut is a small (and shrinking) city, linked with a network of suburbs that range from small cities to rural hamlets. An increasingly small share of our region’s population lives in the city, and poverty has been increasing in inner-ring suburbs. Both the labor market and the education system are regional in nature – workers, parents and students all travel between city and suburbs. If our unit of analysis for urban issues is ‘the neighborhood,’ how can we bring that same analysis to other towns that may share historically urban issues? In this presentation we will review how the Hartford region has changed over time, what it means to be a neighborhood and how different perspectives define neighborhoods in our region.