Community Vs Neighborhood Analysis

1. What is the nature of community? How do you define neighborhood? What are the differences between community and neighborhood?

Sociology has a very real impact on our everyday lives. It influences relationships between people groups, choices they make, how their culture defines them, and other real-world factors. By examining the definition of community and neighborhood, the difference between the two, how selectively accessible economic resources impact lifestyle, stratification of metropolises by social class, the influence of urban sociological factors on Nashville, the settlement pattern of African Americans, and factors that produce social organization, the world around us is bigger.

2. What are the differences in lifestyles created

The community has had an unforgettable impact on the development of cultural values, and so should not be delegated to a small area. A community is a collection of individuals who share similar cultural values and traditions and act upon those values in such a way that the collective good of all is influenced. By contrast, a neighborhood is an area that can be defined on a city map. It is a collection of individuals that live in geographic proximity and often depend upon the same resources. Of course, this disparity in definitions leads to the question of how both communities and neighborhoods go through the process of formation. Often, both terms depend on a few core similarities. Sadly enough, in many cases, economic status is this defining similarity. Access to quality education and a good job is the defining factor that dictates which neighborhood a person can live. Is it a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood? Is it a posh, peaceful neighborhood? A person's access to economic resources dictates. This, of course, is quickly reflected in the organization of metropolis centers in the United States. The phrase ‘inner city' is often associated with crime and, in general, a place that outsiders don't want to walk through after dark. As the rings of social stratification go outward, neighborhoods get richer and richer. Social stratification can be seen so clearly in this example.

3. The sociospatial approach

The settlement patterns of African-Americans historically have been studied in detail:

"When did race become so consequential for where people lived? Research on the 1930s and 1940s makes clear that there was class variation within the ghetto at that time, but that both middle class and working-class blacks were unable to escape its grasp … entrapment was a new development, and that previously ‘well-to-do African Americans’ had been more able to find housing commensurate with their social status” (Logan, Zhang & Shertzer, 2015, p. 9)

As is evidence by this peer-reviewed journal article, there are multiple factors that influence the settlement patterns of African-Americans. Firstly, their initial location has a significant influence. The normal family and job ties exist, of course, but there are other factors. When minority groups are statistically and historically paid less than their white counterparts, it makes their social and geographic mobility much, much less. Also, racism plays an ugly part in limiting locations that African Americans choose to move to. Thus, settlement patterns do dictate, in many cases, that people tend to relocate within neighborhoods of people who share their same ethnic and cultural traditions and