I’ve been getting into social epidemiology which tends to use the notion of neighbourhood a lot. But what exactly is a neighbourhood? In an urban setting there are no defining lines and people can have vastly different neighbourhoods even if they live next door to each other. That why I like the approach of asking people to map out their neighbourhood themselves (via Flowing Data):

It’s a great idea but I see two problems with it . One is that you’re asking people who have volunteered for your study to take quite a bit of time and thought to fill this out. The second is how does this information fit into a computer? It would be hard to find a way to analyze data like this.

What would your neighbourhood look like? I think the extremities of my neighbourhood would be defined by a fruit and vegetable shop, a hockey rink and a cafe. Nothing else I need out of like except food, tea and outdoor hockey.