Crowding, Conflict, and Neighborhood Regulation

Neighborhoods are physical places. They are geographical locations in which people live side by side in a wide range of physical arrangements. This spatial proximity inevitably produces certain kinds of intrusions or annoyances among the households that share the space. Intrusions may take the form of noises, smells, or visually observable messes. They may be produced by mobile members of households such as dogs and children, or they may result from the social interdependence of people who live together. In American neighborhoods, at least, the appearance and upkeep of one person’s house makes a statement about the other houses in that neighborhood and the nature of the neighborhood as a whole. People who live together in neighborhoods must find some way to regulate that part of their lives that they share; they must learn to deal with these inevitable intrusions and annoyances. Most of the time, in most neighborhoods, residents find ways to cooperate, to reciprocate, and to develop shared rules and techniques for managing dogs, noise, children, neatness, and so forth. But occasionally these systems of neighborhood regulation fail, and conflicts erupt.