Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography

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Between places and flows: towards a new agenda

for neighbourhood research in an age of mobility

Ronald Van kempen & Bart Wissink

To cite this article: Ronald Van kempen & Bart Wissink (2014) Between places and flows: towards
a new agenda for neighbourhood research in an age of mobility, Geografiska Annaler: Series B,
Human Geography, 96:2, 95-108, DOI: 10.1111/geob.12039

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1111/geob.12039

Published online: 10 Nov 2016.

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 BETWEEN PLACES AND FLOWS
Between Places and Flows:
Towards a New Agenda for Neighbourhood
Research in an Age of Mobility
by
Ronald van Kempen and Bart Wissink
van Kempen, R. and WISSINK, B. (2014): ‘Between places and
flows: towards a new agenda for neighbourhood research in an age
of mobility’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography
96 (2): 95–108.
ABSTRACT. This article discusses the role of the neighbourhood
in an era of increased mobility. It explores the consequences of the
“new mobilities paradigm”, which argues that the growing impor-
tance of flows – of people, goods and information – results in a de-­
territorialization of social practices. Flows thus gain prominence
in comparison to places like regions and neighbourhoods. At the
same time, however, neighbourhoods continue to play a role in the
actions and imaginations of people, neighbourhood organizations,
and government policies. People still live in neighbourhoods, and
governments still try to solve often severe social problems through
neighbourhood policies. We argue that the neighbourhood has to
be re-imagined as a collection of hybrid nodes connecting a multi-
plicity of flows that bind actors and objects in order to understand
the potential effectiveness of these policies. From this new mobil-
ities perspective, we make suggestions for future neighbourhood
research.
Keywords: neighbourhood, mobilities, flows, networks, places,
segregation
Introduction
‘In the neighbourhood, if anywhere, it is neces-
sary to recover the sense of intimacy and innerness
that has been disrupted by the increased scale of the
city and the speed of transportation’. With these
words, Lewis Mumford (1954, p. 269) summarizes
the ambitious expectations attached to neighbour-
hood planning. With these ambitions, neighbour-
hoods were transformed from spontaneous facts
of life – for instance as the building blocks of the
medieval city – into a conscious design standard,
meant to help combat the ‘nightmare of the indefin-
able’ (Mumford 1954, p. 259) characterizing the so-
cial reality of industrial cities. The neighbourhood
unit (Perry [1929] 2011; Johnson 2002) gave con-
crete form to efforts of community building that had
been in the air since the late nineteenth century (Hall
2002).
Half a century has passed, and the idea that
strong neighbourhood relations form the basis for
© The authors 2014
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
a healthy urban society still finds widespread sup-
port, especially among policy makers. It is not sur-
prising then that governments the world over have
introduced neighbourhood policies to solve social
problems. Generally, such policies favour the crea-
tion of mixed neigh­bourhoods (Kearns and Forrest
2000; Veldboer et al. 2002; Blokland 2008; Graham
et al. 2009; Arthurson 2012; Bolt and van Kempen
2013). Examples are the Socially Integrative City
programme in Germany, the National Strategy for
Neighbourhood Renewal in the UK, and policies
for “hometown making” (furusato-zukuri) in Japan
(Wissink and Hazelzet 2012). These policies aim to
enhance a sense of community in mixed neighbour-
hoods as a means to increase social interaction and
thus solve social problems.
In view of the abundance of neighbourhood pol-
icies it is not surprising that research into the neigh-
bourhood has blossomed as well. This research
focuses on a diversity of topics like residential seg-
regation, neighbourhood effects, local social net-
works, and bonding and bridging social capital. It
acknowledges that neighbourhoods exist, and that
in one way or another they are relevant for residents.
After all, as Castells (1996, p. 423) argues, ‘the
overwhelming majority of people … live in places,
and so they perceive their space as place-based’.
Blokland (2003, p. 207) shows that the ‘neighbour-
hood functions as a vat of shared memories’, while
Forrest (2008) stresses that the neighbourhood re-
tains a powerful imagery, even in our contempo-
rary age of heightened mobilities. Neighbourhoods
can thus be seen as categories through which people
and organizations – including government agencies
and neighbourhood organizations – give meaning to
their reality and through which they structure action.
After all, when people and organizations perceive
neighbour­hoods as real, they are real in their conse-
quences (Thomas and Thomas 1928).
At the same time, however, for many decades
now, studies have criticized the assumed importance
95
 RONALD VAN KEMPEN AND BART WISSINK
of the neighbourhood as well. This research, for ex-
ample, shows that neighbourhood effects are often
quite small or that mixed neighbourhoods do not
always create mutual social networks. As a conse-
quence, neighbour­hood policies are also criticized,
but researchers hardly ever manage to cross the di-
vide between the ideologically opposed camps of
believers and critics of neighbourhood policies.
In this article we argue that in some institutional
settings, residential segregation might have auto-
matic negative effects as the quality of urban ser-
vices here is directly linked to residential location.
But in other settings, this link might be less pro-
nounced. This does not imply that segregation will
not have negative effects, but those effects have to
be studied empirically. And such research has to
acknowledge the changing role of the neighbour-
hood in the contemporary age of mobilities. Yes, the
neighbourhood is a reality, but it might be a differ-
ent reality now, in different cities, and for different
groups. Governments might create symbolic and in-
effective government policies if they overlook that
possibility. In this article, we thus aim to help de-
velop an agenda for neighbourhood research befit-
ting our contemporary mobile society. This results
in the following research questions: What is the rel-
evance of the neighbourhood in an era of increased
mobility? How should the neighbour­hood be con-
ceptualized for adequate neighbourhood research?
We answer these questions in the next four sec-
tions. The second section explores research that un-
derscores the importance of the neighbourhood. The
third section then focuses on alternative studies that
question the relevance of the neighbourhood. The
fourth section introduces the new mobilities par-
adigm, and suggests that we need to re-imagine
neighbourhoods, not as closed spaces, but as the lo-
cation where nodes of various networks come to-
gether. This view is translated into an agenda for
empirical neighbourhood research. Answering the
research questions, the fifth section concludes the
article.
The neighbourhood as a focal point of research
With its social and political relevance, the neigh-
bourhood has attracted the attention of many urban
researchers. In this section we present research that
aligns with the idea that the neighbourhood is an im-
portant part of our lived experience. More specifi-
cally, this research assumes that residential location
has a substantial effect on social life. We present four
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Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
distinct fields of research: segregation studies ana-
lysing if different urban groups live separated from
one another; studies into neighbour­hood effects; re-
search that illuminates the importance of the neigh-
bourhood for social networks; and studies of bonding
and bridging social capital in neighbourhoods.
Residential segregation
The idea that neighbourhoods are important is the
often implicit assumption of large numbers of stud-
ies into the residential segregation and concentra-
tion of groups in cities. Systematic research into
segregation and concentration started at a time when
the neighbourhood unit was developed, with the
early endeavours of the Chicago School (cf. Burgess
1925; Hoyt 1939). Ever since, researchers all over
the world have specialized in this topic, resulting in
massive numbers of books and articles, often based
on statistical data at neighbourhood level.
Some recent examples of segregation research
in the USA include Logan et al. (2004), South et al.
(2005), Clark (2006), Ellis et al. (2007), Allen and
Turner (2009), and Massey et al. (2009). In the
last two decades, a European literature on segrega-
tion has developed as well (cf. Kazepov 2005; van
Kempen 2005; Stillwell and Phillips 2006; Hatz
2009; Musterd 2012; Sager 2012; Boschman et
al. 2013). Compared with Western Europe and the
United States, research into spatial segregation is
less pervasive in Central and East European coun-
tries although, particularly after the political trans-
formations of the early 1990s, some authors have
produced interesting accounts of the changing pat-
terns of segregation in those countries (cf. Ruopilla
2005 for Estonia; Kovács 2009 for Hungary; and
Sýkora 2009 for the Czech Republic). Segregation
research in Asian and other emerging economies
is developing quickly (Beal 2002; Firman 2004;
K’Akumu and Olima 2007; Li and Wu 2008; Roberts
and Wilson 2009; Madrazo and van Kempen 2012;
Wissink et al. 2014).
Segregation studies are valuable as they draw
attention to patterns of residential segregation and
concentration and to the causes of these patterns.
Typically, these publications include maps indicat-
ing the spatial concen­trations of selected groups in
certain neighbour­hoods. Those maps allow compar-
isons between cities, and over time.
Such studies are interesting and provide impor-
tant knowledge of residential locations of people and
the residential segregation of groups. This literature
© The authors 2014
 BETWEEN PLACES AND FLOWS
in general does discuss explanations for segregation,
but it is not very explicit about the effects of segre-
gation and concentration on the lives of residents.
Implicitly, authors often seem to assume that seg-
regation as such is bad. One example of such a neg-
ative reading of segregation is Sampson’s (2012)
recent Great American City. Broadly discussed in
the American literature, this remarkable descrip-
tion of Chicago gives a great overview of the endur-
ing differences between neighbourhoods that aligns
with the human ecology tradition of the Chicago
School.
However, on top of the high quality of the de-
scriptive scholarly work, when discussing the con-
sequences of segregation, the study assumes a clear
ideological position. Sampson shows that neigh-
bourhoods are and remain different and that the pos-
sible futures of residents are strongly structured
by these differences. However, Sampson does not
take serious the politically very relevant question of
whether these differences result from personal char-
acteristics of residents that are grouped together in
the neighbourhood (so-called neighbourhood selec-
tion), or whether these are real neighbourhood ef-
fects. After all, Sampson argues that neighbourhood
selection itself is a neighbourhood effect. The differ-
ence between selection and effect is however impor-
tant and might imply very different policies to solve
problems in or of the neighbourhood.
We want to argue that it might be understanda-
ble to choose this position in the setting of American
cities, where the quality of urban services – like
schools, shops, protection from crime, and health
care – and thus urban futures is directly linked to res-
idential location. In such a situation, residential seg-
regation will always be negative for underprivileged
groups. However, not all cities have such levels of
institutional differentiation, and with this, the issue
of residential segregation in those cities changes al-
together. Segregation now still might be negative –
for instance because it impedes contacts between
groups that are deemed important – but these effects
have to be researched empirically. That observation
turns attention to studies of so-called neighbour-
hood effects.
Neighbourhoods have effects
Over the last decades, there has been a host of stud-
ies on the possible effects of living in a neighbour-
hood (for overviews, see Sampson et al. 2002;
van Ham et al. 2012; van Kempen and Bolt 2012;
© The authors 2014
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
Manley et al. 2013). Different questions lie at the
heart of such research (Friedrichs 1998). Does liv-
ing in a neighbourhood with a specific type of popu-
lation limit social mobility? Does living in an ethnic
neighbourhood limit integration and assimilation?
Do impoverished neighbourhoods make their resi-
dents worse off? Aiming to isolate the effect of the
neighbourhood, for instance on social mobility,
these studies usually deploy multivariate analyses.
Strikingly, these studies generate many differ-
ent results (see also van Kempen and Bolt 2012).
Hogan and Kitagawa (1985), for instance, observe
neighbourhood effects in teenage pregnancies of
unmarried female African Americans in Chicago,
using bivariate analyses, but these disappear when
controlling for other variables. In Germany, Alpheis
(1990) concludes that individual traits of Yugoslav
and Turkish guest workers have a much greater ef-
fect on migrant assimilation than the population
composition of the neighbourhood. More recently,
in a study in Sweden on the effects of income mix on
adult earnings, Galster et al. (2008) show that neigh-
bourhood effects do exist, but they are low. Urban
(2009) finds only a small effect of the childhood
neighbourhood on income and unemployment risks
in Stockholm. The ethnic makeup of neighbour-
hoods seems to have a smaller effect than the so-
cioeconomic composition. Oberwittler (2007) finds
evidence in Germany that there are neighbourhood
effects on adolescent delinquency of native adoles-
cents, but not for immigrants.
Within this literature, there is also extensive
research into neighbourhood effects for children
and adolescents (e.g. Sykes and Musterd 2011).
Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn (2000) give an exten-
sive overview. When controlling for individual and
family-level characteristics, these studies generally
show only limited neighbourhood effects on diverse
issues like IQ, school achievement, verbal abil-
ity and reading recognition scores. Adolescents do
have contacts in many different places outside their
own neighbourhood, and the effect of the residential
neighbourhood on social behaviour might be limited
(Visser et al. 2014).
Studies into neighbourhood effects thus seem to
result in one dominant conclusion: there are neigh-
bourhood effects, but these are small in comparison
to individual and household characteristics (Brooks-
Gunn et al. 1997; Jargowsky 1997; Ellen and Turner
1997; Andersson 2001; Friedrichs et al. 2003;
Musterd et al. 2008; van Kempen and Bolt 2012;
van Ham et al. 2012). This remarkable observation
97
 RONALD VAN KEMPEN AND BART WISSINK
questions a fundamental assumption of many of
these studies: they are all based on the place where
people reside (see also Wong and Shaw 2011). In
the current age of mobilities, the assumption that the
place where people live is important can be chal-
lenged more and more, as will be shown later in this
article.
Neighbourhoods are important for some groups
Many studies focus on the role of the neighbour-
hood in the daily life of residents. This has resulted
in lively descriptions, often based on qualitative re-
search, of how people live in their neighbourhoods
as community, with a focus on social networks with
the neighbourhood and the effects this has for so-
cial wellbeing (cf. Gans 1962; Suttles 1968; Bestor
1989). Generally, these studies conclude that the
neighbourhood is important for some groups, but
not for others. The poor are a first group for which
the neighbourhood is important: they have many so-
cial contacts within the neighbour­hood (cf. Henning
and Lieberg 1996; Ellen and Turner 1997; Guest
and Wierzbicki 1999; Wissink and Hazelzet 2012;
Hazelzet and Wissink 2012). Wilson (1987, 1996)
shows that this can have negative effects: spatial
concen­trations of poor people without the presence
of the middle classes can result in damaging social
isolation.
Ethnic groups also feature prominently in this
literature. Migrants are shown to often congregate
in ethnic enclaves where they have a strong local
orientation (cf. Gans 1962; Wilson and Portes 1980;
Zhou and Logan 1991; Wissink et al. 2014). While
this local orientation has multiple causes, the need
for mutual support – for instance in finding jobs –
seems especially important. Migrants who do not
speak the local language and migrants with a low
education are especially prone to move to ethnic en-
claves (Enchautegui 1997; Fong and Gulia 1999).
Children are another group for which the neigh-
bourhood can be important (Matthews and Limb
1999). Young people usually have less freedom of
movement than adults, either for financial and prac-
tical reasons, or because they are restricted by their
parents – for example from places that are consid-
ered dangerous or from places that are far away from
the home (Valentine 1997; Karsten 1998; Visser
et al. 2013). As a result, children automatically have
more contacts within the neighbourhood. Research
shows that the same goes for parents of young chil-
dren (Wissink and Hazelzet 2012).
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Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
A final group with a strong neighbourhood ori-
entation are the elderly. With age the chance of
health and mobility challenges increases. Friends
and amenities close to home become important, so
it is not surprising that many elderly show a strong
neighbourhood orientation and attachment (cf.
Phillipson et al. 2001; Allan and Phillipson 2008;
Wissink and Hazelzet 2012).
Bonding and bridging social capital
A fourth field of studies on the importance of the
neighbourhood for healthy social life relates to the
analysis of social capital. Although used earlier (e.g.
Bourdieu 1986), the concept of social capital has re-
ceived wide attention since the 1990s, especially
through the work of Robert Putnam. There is a range
of definitions and related perspectives of the term.
Amongst these is Bourdieu’s (1986, p. 248) defini-
tion of social capital as ‘the aggregate of the actual
or potential resources which are linked to posses-
sion of a durable network of more or less institu-
tionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and
recognition’. Alternatively, Putnam (1998, p. v) de-
scribes social capital as ‘the norms and networks of
civil society that lubricate cooperative action among
both citizens and their institutions. Without ade-
quate supplies of social capital … social institutions
falter’. Social capital theory now distinguishes be-
tween bonding social capital as social capital within
a closed group, and bridging social capital relat-
ing to links between members of different groups
(Granovetter 1973; Putnam 1998; de Souza Briggs
1998; Narayan 1999).
Neighbourhoods have started to receive much
attention in the research on social capital. Putnam
(2000, p. 407) directly related neighbouring to in-
creasing social capital, stating that he hoped that ‘by
2010 Americans will spend less time traveling and
more time connecting with … neighbors than … to-
day’. Blokland (2008) argues that neighbourhood
policies generally assume that: (1) inhabitants of
deprived neighbourhoods have a lot of bonding so-
cial capital, but insufficient bridging social capital;
(2) neighbourhoods should therefore be racially and
economically diverse; (3) and that this will enhance
the liveability of neighbourhoods (cf. Sampson and
Raudenbusch 2004). However, Blokland (2008)
shows that cross-group relations do not automati-
cally translate into bridging social capital, as these
bridges might well transport understandings of dis-
tance and difference rather than commonality (cf.
© The authors 2014
 BETWEEN PLACES AND FLOWS
Rose et al. 2013). De Souza Briggs (1998) shows
that the bridging social capital of poor residents of
a mixed inner-city neighbourhood in Yonkers, NY
does not exceed the bridging social capital in ho-
mogeneous neighbourhoods. Like­wise, Liu et al.
(2012) show a limited link between neighbourhood
characteristics and cross-group personal networks
(and thus potential bridging social capital) for rural
migrants in Guangzhou, China.
Questioning the importance of the
neighbourhood
In the previous sections, we presented research that
discusses a wide range of issues, but generally, this
research seems to have at least one common start-
ing point: the residential location of people is es-
sential for their everyday lives (cf. Wong and Shaw
2011). This research rests on ‘the assumption that
relevant exposures to risks and/or resources can be
represented by one bounded space containing a spe-
cific location – typically a residence – and where
exposure is 24/7/365’ (Matthews 2008, p. 257).
However, numerous publications also question this
assumption. Here we will focus on three strands of
research: early criticisms of the role of the residen-
tial neighbourhood for social life; research showing
that co-habitation in the same neighbourhood does
not imply living together; and research on the im-
portance of other places for social life than the resi-
dential neighbourhood.
Early criticism of the relevance of the
neighbourhood
For some time now, researchers have been arguing
that the neighbourhood might not be the main locus
of activity patterns of many groups (see van Kempen
and Bolt 2012). As early as 1957, Merton discerned
locals – non-mobile working-class residents – from
cosmopolitans. Cosmopolitans are highly mobile
middle-class professionals whose social relation-
ships do not centre on the residential neighbourhood.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, others have argued
that the neighbourhood was becoming less impor-
tant, as people became more mobile through joint
developments in transportation – including the mass
purchase of cars – and infra­structure (Webber 1964;
Stein 1972). In the words of Janelle (1973), this re-
sulted in human extensibility, or the increased op-
portunity for interaction among people and places.
And Webber (1964) argued that accessibility will be
© The authors 2014
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
more important than propinquity for the develop-
ment of social contacts. Meanwhile, Keller (1968)
expected the number of social relationships in the
neighbourhood to decline.
In the 1970s, these developments generated a
fear for the “loss of community”. One of the core
publications responding to these worries is Claude
Fischer’s To Dwell among Friends (1982). This
study of friendship networks in the United States
shows that diminishing social contacts for some
groups in the neighbourhood are compensated by
increased outside contacts. Fischer (1982, p. 8)
concluded: ‘personal networks are not inherently
bound to a particular area. Some people are deeply
involved with their neighbors, some with friends a
continent away, and others with both near and dis-
tant associates’. Later, Wellman (1999) echoed this
conclusion with a critique of the equation of neigh-
bourhood with community: personal networks be-
yond the border of the neighbourhood can easily be
the basis for new communities.
These studies have an important methodologi-
cal consequence: research into community feeling
and social capital should not focus on the neighbour-
hood alone (Wissink and Hazelzet 2012). After all,
while community feeling and social capital within
the neighbourhood diminishes, community devel-
opment and social capital outside neighbourhoods
might increase. Thus, the assumed disappearance of
community and social capital might in actual fact
be a re-territorialization, and this only comes into
view with studies surpassing the neighbourhood
boundary.
Living at the same place does not automatically
mean living together
There is a growing body of literature on the inter-
action of different social groups within neighbour-
hoods (see also Bolt and van Kempen 2013). This
research seems to indicate that mixed neighbour-
hoods do not automatically result in frequent con-
tacts or mixed social networks (Arthurson 2012),
thus undermining assumptions regarding the cre-
ation of bridging social capital. Researchers find
limited interaction between renters and owners or
between different income groups in mixed urban
neighbourhoods (Jupp 1999; Atkinson and Kintrea
2000; van Beckhoven and van Kempen 2003;
Kleinhans et al. 2007; Arthurson 2012; Wissink and
Hazelzet 2012; Lelévrier 2013).
Also in the USA, researchers find limited
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 RONALD VAN KEMPEN AND BART WISSINK
interaction between different income groups in
mixed neighbourhoods (e.g. de Souza Briggs 1998;
Rosenbaum et al. 1998; Brophy and Smith 1997;
Popkin et al. 2002; Joseph and Chaskin 2010). Not
only are new (higher-income) residents unenthu-
siastic about new contacts; often the older (low-­
income) residents are also not interested. They often
have an extensive and longstanding social network
within the neighbourhood and there seems to be no
room for new contacts. Wissink and Hazelzet (2012)
come to similar conclusions in Tokyo, Japan. Based
on this research it seems questionable that mixed
neighbour­hoods will automatically lead to mixed
social networks, or to bridging social capital (van
Eijk 2010). A divided neighbourhood is a more log-
ical result than a more cohesive community (Wood
and Vamplew 1999).
Other realms: work, school, and public places
Neighbourhood research assumes that neighbour-
hoods are important places to establish contacts.
But contacts can also emerge elsewhere. There is
some budding research into these alternative meet-
ing places, including new public spaces (Hajer and
Reijndorp 2001), consumption spaces (Clammer
1997), workplaces (Mollenhorst 2009; Strömgren
et al. 2014), and schools (Pérez Prieto et al. 2003).
Contacts at the workplace may develop because
at least a number of the colleagues are “just like
you”. Often, they do not only have similar jobs,
but they may also share other interests. The work-
place thus offers interesting opportunities to de-
velop social contacts. Superficial social contacts
on the work floor may develop into social relation-
ships, companion­ships, friendships, joint activities
and information flows (Ettema and Kwan 2010).
This potential importance of the workplace for
social networks is especially pronounced in Asia
(Hazelzet and Wissink 2012; Wissink and Hazelzet
2012). At the same time, recent research increas-
ingly studies potential reasons for workplace seg-
regation as well (Bygren 2013; Strömgren et al.
2014).
While the social life of children is often lim-
ited to the neighbourhood, children also spend
a considerable amount of their time during the
week in school. Like the workplace, the school of-
fers opportunities for contacts and the individual
child may take up this opportunity or not. While
the primary school is often close to home, imply-
ing a direct relationship with the neighbourhood,
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Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
subsequent educational institutions often are lo-
cated further away which may lead to social con-
tacts with children from other neighbourhoods. On
top of this, schools might also be an important loca-
tion for parents to meet new contacts (Pérez Prieto
et al. 2003).
Meeting places, inside and outside the neigh-
bourhood can have specific locations. The street
pavement, a community centre, the sports club, the
square, the park, the half-pipe, or a specific place in
front of a particular shop may be the meeting place
for specific social groups that do not necessarily
live around these places. Recent research especially
studies the effects of encounters during public trans-
portation (Hutchinson 2000; Kennedy 2004; Bissell
2013). Phillips (2007) points out that a strong focus
on neighbour­hood-level data might totally miss this
point, because clearly such meeting places are on a
lower spatial scale. The ethnic segregation of social
networks, reflected in separate activity locations in
physical space as well as virtual space, can reinforce
itself: people generally go to places where they can
meet familiar people as well as organizations that
are readily accessible (Ünlü Yücesoy 2006).
Towards a new research agenda for
neighbourhood research
Around the world, neighbourhood policies are in-
troduced to ameliorate – often severe – social prob-
lems. Against the background of this political role
of the neighbourhood, it might be understandable
that there is a clear ideological divide in neighbour-
hood research, between believers in the neighbour-
hood as a solution for social problems, and critics
of such policies. We have observed that this polar-
ization seems especially pronounced in relation to
research into residential segregation, where much
research seems to assume that residential segrega-
tion as such is bad. However, we also argued that
there are different reasons to criticize residential
segregation. In some places, like most cities in the
USA, the quality of urban services and thus urban
futures is directly linked to residential neighbour-
hoods but in others it is not. In such cities, the effects
of segregation can still be negative but these effects
have to be researched empirically. Against this back-
ground, we believe that neighbourhood research has
continued relevance, but that more sophisticated re-
search is needed to track the contemporary role of
the neighbourhood.
© The authors 2014
 BETWEEN PLACES AND FLOWS
The changing importance of residential location
We have seen that critics have been questioning the
importance of the residential neighbourhood since
the late 1950s. There are various reasons why this
argument is all the more relevant today. First, the
mobility of people has been steadily increasing over
the last decades. In the UK, for instance, passenger
miles increased by 30 per cent in the 1990s (Amin
and Thrift 2002, p. 43). Second, the introduction of
the Internet and other communication technologies
like smart phones and new software applications
like Skype and WhatsApp allow people to main-
tain relationships with people at a distance in new
ways, creating additional alternatives to social rela-
tionships with neighbours (Wellman 2001; Bertolini
and Dijst 2003; Schwanen et al. 2006). Third, in-
creased international migration results in radically
new sets of “neighbours”. Many migrants remain
linked to others far away (e.g. Vertovec 2004), re-
sulting in transnational social spaces (Glick-Schiller
et al. 1992; Faist 2000). And the same goes for trans-
national communities of managers and profession-
als. Many of these engage in localized practices, but
at the same time they have contacts with many peo-
ple outside the local communities, from their home
country, and often also from elsewhere (Beaverstock
2002, 2005).
The results of these developments are enor-
mous. Rofe (2003) argues that this causes the ero-
sion of space as a determinant of social relationships;
Scholte (1996) observes the emergence of a non-
territorial cartography of life; and Helen Couclelis
(2009, p. 1558) states that the ‘problem is the fact
that the traditionally reliable correspondence be-
tween activity on the one hand, and geographic lo-
cation and time on the other, can no longer be taken
for granted in the ICT age’. People can work at their
office desk, but also at home, or – through all kinds
of mobile devices – in trains, planes, and automo-
biles. Friends can be contacted in the middle of
the night through email, either from home or from
a hotel room. Family members at the other end of
the world may be contacted directly through the
Internet, regardless of time differences. Potential ri-
oters may activate each other without costs through
WhatsApp. Obviously, these changes will be differ-
ent for different groups, and research should indi-
cate how.
In such a dynamic world and with such dy-
namic lives, the place where one resides will of-
ten be only one issue amongst others. It is therefore
just one possibility to study social life through the
© The authors 2014
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
location of residence. It will however significantly
add to our knowledge of the development of social
contacts and friendships and their effects on aspects
like social cohesion and social mobility, if we do not
start from places, but from people’s activities, fol-
lowing their trajectories through time and space.
Thus, Cummins et al. (2007, p. 1830) argue that
‘we have to be much more careful in thinking how
“context” should be measured and move towards a
more flexible and fluid approach to exposure assess-
ment’. Wong and Shaw (2011, p. 142) say the same
in different words: ‘Focusing on just one socio-­
geographical space exclusively very much ignores
the potential moderating effects brought by the ex-
posure to other population groups in other relevant
spaces’.
Social contacts, friendships, experiences, opin-
ions and attitudes emerge in many places: in the res-
idential neighbourhood, in other neighbourhoods,
but also at the workplace, at school, in the holiday
resort, at airports, in public transport, and in the vir-
tual world (Wong and Shaw 2011). And people do
not only maintain face-to-face contacts; they also
phone, write, drive, ride, fly, and surf the Internet
(Wellman 2001; Rogers 2005; Böcker 2010).
Research that starts from residential location alone,
therefore, is too narrow to find out how people or-
ganize their lives, and where contacts take place.
According to Wong and Shaw (2011), this might
have interesting consequences for neighbourhood
policies of racial-­ethnic mixing aiming to change
the exposure of neighbourhood residents to differ-
ent groups. If neighbourhood residents have many
activities outside of their neighbourhood, such pol-
icies might be largely ineffective, or, alternatively,
highly unnecessary. Thus, there is a need for new
visions on the role of the neighbourhood for resi-
dents. The new mobilities paradigm provides one of
the possible means to develop such a vision.
The new mobilities paradigm
Over the last decade or so, attention within various
social science disciplines for the movement of peo-
ple, goods and ideas has resulted in a string of pub-
lications on mobilities. John Urry (2007), one of the
main proponents of this new perspective, argues
that endless streams of people, goods, information
and ideas travel the world every day. This world of
flux sharply contrasts with dominant perspectives in
the social sciences that for long focus on durability
and stasis (Urry 2000, 2007; Sheller and Urry 2006;
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 RONALD VAN KEMPEN AND BART WISSINK
Cresswell and Merriman 2011a). Science usually
works with closed spatial categories, like societies,
states, regions, cities, and neighbourhoods (Giddens
1984; Urry 2000). Typically, space comes into view
as a result of the analysis of statistics for these geo-
graphical entities, a research strategy similar to the
segregation research discussed above. Mobility, the
mobiles themselves, and their practices meanwhile
escape attention. This only started to change in the
1970s, when a spatial turn in the social sciences re-
sulted in attention for the spatiality of the social, and
for the social in geography (Gregory and Urry 1985).
However, this transition is all but complete, and, as
Cresswell and Merriman (2011b, p. 4) recently ar-
gued, ‘it is still the case that geographical knowl-
edge often assumes a stable point of view, a world of
places and boundaries and territories rooted in time
and bounded in space’.
The new mobilities paradigm results from criti-
cism on this focus on stasis and the disregard for mo-
bility and the mobiles (Hannam et al. 2006; Sheller
and Urry 2006; Cresswell and Merriman 2011a).
On the one hand, it argues against a “sedentarist”
view that treats stability, meaning and place as nor-
mal and distance, change and placelessness as ab-
normal. ‘The mobilities paradigm … emphasises
that all places are tied into at least thin networks of
connections that stretch beyond each such place and
mean that nowhere can be an “island”’ (Sheller and
Urry 2006, p. 209). On the other hand, Sheller and
Urry (2006) also criticize “nomadic” perspectives
that suggest that everything is liquid. Instead, they
argue that de-territorialization is followed by re-­
territorialization and new concentrations. Mobiles
are bound in highly uneven networks that connect
certain nodes but not others, while access is regu-
lated. ‘Thus the new paradigm attempts to account
for not only the quickening of liquidity within some
realms but also the concomitant patterns of concen-
tration that create zones of connectivity, centrality,
and empowerment in some cases, and of discon-
nection, social exclusion, and inaudibility in other
cases’ (Sheller and Urry 2006, p. 210).
As Sheller and Urry (2006, p. 208) argue, ‘ac-
counting for mobilities in the fullest sense chal-
lenges social science to change both the objects of
it inquiries and the methodologies for research’.
And this is happening in a quickly growing stream
of publications on mobilities that include various
books and journal articles in a new specialized jour-
nal – Mobilities (Hannam et al. 2006) – as well as in
other journals like Geography Compass. Cresswell
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Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
and Merriman (2011a) make a useful distinction be-
tween practices, spaces and subjects that can help
to characterize this research. Publications on sub-
jects engage with such diverse figures as the com-
muter, the tourist, the migrant, and the vagabond;
texts on spaces especially focus on nodes of net-
works – or “moorings” – and include descriptions
of roads, bridges, petrol stations, airports, immigra-
tion stations (but for an analysis that does not fo-
cus on moorings, see Pinder 2011); and analyses of
practices study the social through walking, running,
dancing, riding, driving, travelling, and flying.
Thus, mobility research so far clearly focuses on
flows, movements and connections. And places are
mainly interpreted as moorings or nodes in networks
of mobility. However, as we argued before, people
often do live in places and they approach their world
through spatial categories like the city, the nation or,
indeed, the neighbour­hood. In our opinion, the mo-
bilities paradigm can also be used as a perspective
to reinterpret such spaces like cities and neighbour-
hoods – the closed spatial categories that were the
object of traditional sedentarist research – as the lo-
cations of various nodes that are part of diverse mo-
bilities with different scales and timings (Wissink
2013). We believe that such a focus of the mobili-
ties paradigm on traditional spatial categories like
the neighbourhood – in addition to studies of mobil-
ity as object – will help to establish its full potential.
With that in mind, we return to the neighbourhood.
Mobilities and the neighbourhood: subjects,
places, and practices
Governments around the world try to fix urban social
problems through neighbourhood policies. We have
argued that such policies might be warranted where
institutional differentiation causes a direct effect of
residential location for the quality of urban services
of residents. However, where such institutional sort-
ing is not prominent, neighbourhood policies might
be less effective, or indeed necessary. We have ar-
gued that research can help to establish this poten-
tial importance of neighbourhood policies, provided
that it takes the relevance of mobilities into account.
However, with Forrest (2008, p. 129) we observe lit-
tle intellectual excitement for research into the ‘sta-
ble and familiar notions we tend to associate with
ideas of neighbourhood’. There is limited attention
for an “old fashioned” topic like the neighbourhood
from the new mobilities paradigm. In view of the po-
litical relevance of the neighbourhood, we feel that
© The authors 2014
 BETWEEN PLACES AND FLOWS
this should change. Mobility research should pay
attention to the neighbourhood as well; and neigh-
bourhood researchers should incorporate the impli-
cations of the new mobilities paradigm. We have to
re-imagine the neighbourhood from a new mobili-
ties perspective in order to accommodate adequate
empirical research.
A first step in such a re-imagination implies not
to approach the neighbourhood as a closed space,
to be studied through aggregate statistics alone (the
usual approach of research into residential segre-
gation and neighbourhood effects). Such a seden-
tarist view should be complemented with research
with a focus on mobilities. A focus on the neigh-
bourhood alone is insufficient in times of increas-
ing mobilities. Following Cresswell and Merriman
(2011a), we have to place the subjects, spaces,
and practices of the neighbourhood in the context
of flows. Regarding subjects (the residents), we
should not only focus on neighbours and their ac-
tivities in the neighbourhood, but instead we should
study residents in relation to other mobiles as well,
each with activity patterns inside and outside of
the neighbourhood, and with identities relating to
the neighbourhood as well as to other places: other
neighbourhoods, other cities, the rest of the world.
As a place, the neighbourhood should be seen as the
location of a multitude of nodes that relate to a diver-
sity of mobilities and activities on a variety of spa-
tial and temporal scales. We should not only focus
on the practice of neighbouring and related forms of
social capital and social cohesion, but also focus on
a wider selection of social practices – inside and out-
side of the neighbourhood. We will briefly elaborate
on this below.
Subjects People have multiple identifications and a
varying part of these relate to the neighbourhood.
They may work or go to school outside the neigh-
bourhood, they go out in different parts of the city
and even in other cities, they visit festivals else­where
in the country or even abroad, immigrants visit rela-
tives in their home countries for weeks in a row or go
to religious places (e.g. Mekka) to worship together.
Thus they receive stimuli from a lot of different peo-
ple in numerous settings, of which the neighbour-
hood is only one. We should therefore not only study
people as residents of neighbourhoods, but also as
workers, visitors, long-distance travellers, shop-
pers, commuters, and so forth. These different roles
potentially support new meetings and new identi-
fications beyond the residential neighbourhood. At
© The authors 2014
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
the same time, we should have special attention for
variations between groups: some people might be
“more” neighbours than others.
Places Research into the neighbourhood as a place
should focus on all places within the neighbour-
hood where people can meet, such as streets, street
corners, squares, parks, shops, bus stops, and com-
munity centres. Who uses those places? Which prac-
tices do take place here? How does interaction take
place? Who talks to whom? And what are the differ-
ences between these places? Additionally, it is also
important to focus on places outside the neighbour-
hood, places that form parts of mobilities stretch-
ing beyond the neighbourhood with opportunities to
meet others and potentially create social capital. For
instance, there might be an adjacent petrol station, or
a shopping mall. Thus, research into the neighbour­
hood as a place should be positioned within the
wider research of moorings – inside and outside of
the neighbourhood. To give an example, research
should target the role of the neighbourhood school in
the social reproduction of children, but it should also
look at the role of sports clubs, which are often lo-
cated outside the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, there
should be special attention for the way in which dif-
ferent groups use these different places.
Research into these places should have special
attention for the huge differences between cities in
different parts of the world. For instance, the struc-
ture of Dubai (UAE) is determined by a network of
highways. The petrol stations that form part of this
network have developed into nodes, harbouring an
extensive collection of shops and restaurants. In
view of the extreme heat in this city, it makes sense
to visit these restaurants; this also generates ample
opportunities for meetings. In this spatial setting,
residential neighbourhoods will probably play a dif-
ferent role. Similarly, Iossifova (2009) shows how
the transitional zones between homogeneous – and
walled – neighbourhoods in Shanghai develop into
mixed meeting places. Such places have to be stud-
ied in order to understand the effects of residential
segregation in Shanghai for the daily lives of resi-
dents. The same phenomenon exists at wet markets
in suburban Bangkok.
Practices Neighbourhood research should focus on
practices as well. This should obviously focus on
neigh­bouring, the organization of block parties and
barbeques, and walks to the neighbourhood school,
but it should also study commuting and travelling
103
 RONALD VAN KEMPEN AND BART WISSINK
outside the neighbourhood. Furthermore, this re-
search should focus on practices of neighbours as
well as practices involving people not living in the
neighbourhood. Again, as with places, there might
be huge differences between cities. For instance, in
Hong Kong it would certainly be relevant to study
the everyday practices that take place on the “podia”
of residential buildings, like the meetings between
domestic helpers who often get together here. But
research should also include everyday commutes by
public transport, a highly mixed social space in this
hyper dense city where almost everybody uses the
MTR metro system, creating ample opportunities
for meetings and confrontations with others.
These examples make clear that a study of the
neighbourhood that wants to infuse neighbourhood
policies with adequate knowledge through the ap-
plication of the new mobilities paradigm results
in a huge expansion of the scope of the research,
moving it far beyond the description of, for exam-
ple, patterns of ethnic segregation, or the statistical
search for neighbourhood effects. Research should
not only focus on neighbourhood spaces, subjects or
practices; each of these should be positioned within
their wider networks inside and outside neighbour-
hoods. There should also be attention on variations
between cities, and between different groups within
the same city. The new possibilities of digital de-
vises and related technologies – like GPS – could
play an enormous role in the development of new re-
search methods to conduct such research. With that
conclusion, the stage is set.
Conclusion
National and municipal governments around the
world recurrently formulate neighbourhood policies
that should help to tackle serious social problems.
These policies are accompanied by neighbour-
hood research with a highly ideological character:
believers in neighbourhood policies and critics of
such policies seem to be firmly enrolled in opposing
camps and do not communicate with each other ef-
fectively. We have argued that in some institutional
settings, residency in neighbourhoods directly im-
pacts the quality of urban services, and that in such
settings residential segregation will always have
a negative effect for residents in underprivileged
neighbourhoods. But we also observed that this di-
rect relationship does not exist everywhere, and that
in these alternative cases, it is an empirical question
if the effects of neighbourhoods are negative or not.
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Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
Therefore, we argued that neighbourhood research
has continued relevance, but at the same time we
stressed that such research should be adjusted to the
contemporary mobile society. It was the aim of this
article to develop an agenda for neighbourhood re-
search befitting such a reality of mobilities. In order
to reach this aim, we set out to answer the follow-
ing research questions: What is the relevance of the
neighbourhood in an era of increased mobility?
How should the neighbourhood be conceptualized
for adequate neighbourhood research?
Through our discussion of the opposing per-
spectives on the relevance of the neighbourhood,
we have taken a critical look at research that exclu-
sively focuses on the neighbourhood, on neighbour-
ing or on neighbours. In response to the first part
of the research question, we concluded that the res-
idential neighbourhood is still relevant in various
ways, but at the same time, we observed that peo-
ple do not organize their lives completely around
the home. Employing the new mobilities paradigm,
we have argued that with increased mobilities, more
so than ever, people take part in multiple practices,
visiting multiple places, and meeting many people.
Therefore, in response to the second part of the re-
search question, we have suggested that we should
re-imagine the neighbourhood, as the location of
the moorings of many mobilities with very different
scales, many of these extending beyond the neigh-
bourhood. Neighbourhood research should be posi-
tioned in this context of multiple mobilities.
Of course, it still is an empirical question if all
groups are increasingly mobile. Poor people and
some ethnic groups probably do live more locally
than those with higher incomes, as do the elderly
and children compared with middle-aged residents.
The neighbourhood will be more relevant for some
groups than for others. But we also have to study
these groups with an open mind. Immigrants may
have transnational lives, low-income people do tran-
scend the borders of the neighbourhood, the elderly
are much more mobile (physically and virtually)
than two decades ago, and children may be taken by
their parents to places all over the city for all kinds of
activities. The variation in the participation in mul-
tiple mobilities by different groups and in different
cities should be an explicit part of new research, and
this research should not exclusively focus on the res-
idential neighbourhood.
What is clearly lacking in current research is a
precise understanding of where, when, and how con-
tacts develop. We need to know where individuals do
© The authors 2014
 BETWEEN PLACES AND FLOWS
actually live, meet, and develop their social contacts.
Contacts may occur in all kinds of spatial settings at
different spatial scales. Meetings may become in-
creasingly virtual through an increasing abundance
of electronic devices. Research into the various lo-
cations of people (in a physical or virtual sense) at
different times, and into the co-presence of others,
creates an understanding of oppor­tunities for con-
tacts that a calculation of the statistical probability
of meetings on the basis of residential concentration
levels simply cannot give. Thus, not surprisingly,
Phillips (2007, p. 1153) argues that ‘[t]he time may
be coming for research into ethnic segregation to
shift its gaze to incorporate spheres of interaction
(e.g. work, virtual spaces and social networks) that
transcend residential space’. The place where one
resides is steadily losing its importance. This simple
observation forms a good starting point for further
discussions among urban researchers about their
own present and future work on neighbourhoods.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Gideon Bolt, Martin
Dijst, Ray Forrest and Tim Schwanen for their com-
ments on earlier versions of this article.
Ronald van Kempen
Faculty of Geosciences
Utrecht University
PO Box 80.115
3508 TC Utrecht
The Netherlands
Email: r.vankempen@uu.nl
Bart Wissink
Department of Public Policy
City University of Hong Kong
Tat Chee Avenue
Kowloon
Hong Kong
Email: bartwissink@me.com
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