'Where my neighborhood ends': subjective constructions of a Social Housing Neighborhood

This study draws upon cognitive maps and in-depth interviews with 15 unemployed women residing in a Portuguese social housing neighborhood (Bairro de Contumil) to examine their subjective construction of the neighborhood’s boundaries. Due to the internal homogeneity (socioeconomic and architectonic) of Social Housing Neighborhoods (SHN) in Portugal, one could assume that the boundaries of the SHN would be unanimously drawn by its residents. Against this expectation, the mental maps of the interviewees vary substantially and none of the participants limits her neighborhood definition to the social housing area. Consistent among the participants are the reasons guiding the inclusion and exclusion of spaces in their neighborhood definitions. The study uses place attachment and place identity theory to shed light on how emotional connections with place and humans guide the residents' boundary work. The in-depth interviews reveal complex relations between place attachment, human relations, spatial cognition, and the use of space.