'Whaur are you Fae' - Neighbourhood identity in Stirling, over time and place

Douglas Roberson, James Smyth, Ian McIntosh

A new study examining neighbourhood identity has just been published by JRF. Neighbourhood identity is core to understanding both diversity and cohesion. Such an identity is established at a very early stage of each neighbourhood’s history, and proved resilient to change. Such identities were underpinned by social class and status – which was sometimes based on historic male employment patterns – as well as physical characteristics, including housing style, type and tenure. There was evidence of internal differentiation in each neighbourhood, often through minute differences between households, streets and, in the past, male occupations. It was also shown that external perceptions of a neighbourhoods identity were often stronger and more of a caricature than those held by people who lived there, and this has major implications in relation to their perceived popularity.

Family networks, friends and neighbours were given differing degrees of importance in people’s notions of what created a sense of community, and consequently their perceptions of cohesion or diversity. However, their presence helped sustain a sense of community and people’s own sense of involvement within that community. Notions of community were constructed through familiar, everyday social interactions within various localised settings, which were often enough to give people a powerful sense of place attachment and belonging. In each neighbourhood, respondents interviewed for the study suggested notions of community were declining in response to an ever-increasing individualism. Many respondents saw women as playing the core role in sustaining community, through their family and child-rearing roles in local neighbourhoods. With greater numbers of women now working, this role in binding communities was felt to have declined. Similar cohesion influences were provided by elderly residents who held a historic perspective as to what the community had once been, a resource draw on by many current residents.

The report, based on a recent JRF funded project, details the construction of neighbourhood identity, its relationship to social class and status, through a blending of historic and qualitative research methods. The three neighbourhoods examined were located within the Scottish city of Stirling. This work has major implications for renewal programmes, the creation of 'mixed communities' as well as planning and governance policies. A copy of the full report can be downloaded from: http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/details.asp?pubID=946