Neighbourhoods and social cohesion: Experiences from Europe

In recent years, neighbourhoods have become the key spatial scale for policy intervention. Yet as policy makers focus at his localised level, they need a clear understanding of the nature and causes of social exclusion. The purpose of this paper is to draw on the preliminary findings of a European Commission project named NEHOM (Neighbourhood Housing Models) that examined the characteristics of twenty-six socially excluded neighbourhoods across Europe. An in-depth examination of this different array of neighbourhoods confirms much of the theorising about the nature of social exclusion and the way that economic, social and cultural processes of exclusion reinforce one another. Distinguishable groupings of neighbourhoods are emerging from the research and the differences between them appear to be attributed to the nature and functioning of the housing tenure, cultural identity of the residence and the overall level of turnover and hence commitment to the neighbourhood. The paper concludes by suggesting that policy initiatives attempting to rebuild social capital and promote social cohesion will only be effective if they have a full appreciation of the interplay of these complex dynamics.