The Relationship between Self-reported Definitions of Urban Neighbourhood and Respondent Characteristics: A Study of Cardiff, UK

During the past few years, there has been renewed interest in the issues and problems over using administrative and statistical spatial units as proxies for residential and workplace neighbourhoods in academic and policy research. This paper investigates the relationships between neighbourhoods defined by 693 people living or working in Cardiff. Differences between resident- and workplace-defined neighbourhoods were identified and the degree to which these varied was analysed with respect to personal characteristics such as gender, age, ethnic group and time spent in the neighbourhood. Young and retired people both have the largest neighbourhoods, possibly because both have more time to spend in their local area than other age groups. Gender differences were evident in the neighbourhoods of respondents who both live and work in an area, with females having larger neighbourhoods than males; this may reflect the types of employment undertaken by females who live and work in the same place. People living or working in close spatial proximity did not necessarily share the same neighbourhood definitions despite having similar personal characteristics.