We want to find out the natural neighbourhoods in Edinburgh - where people believe they live rather than the wards and catchments that may be the official mapping lines of the city. We'd like to layer our existing data with other data sets to start seeing the patterns firstly of areas, and then the flow between these areas and begin to see patterns of activity and where there is a lot of activity or only a little.
The following lists some potential uses for a new set of natural neighbourhood boundaries for the Council and its partners:
Services across all agencies will use NNs when planning service boundaries and allocating resources. Current service area boundaries often take account of natural neighbourhoods but the extent of these neighbourhoods varies markedly between agencies and even services.
The use of a single set of NN boundaries by all agencies will help unravel the “spatial spaghetti” created by the myriad of service boundaries currently used within the city. Many of the current service boundaries tend not to be customer centred but are based on historical service provision or defunct electoral geographies.
MDM can use the new boundaries to ensure that all the feeder systems reference a shared geography. This common spatial vocabulary will help foster a greater understanding between services, promote a more joined-up and targeted approach to local service provision and make it much easier for customers to find the right services.
NNs will provide meaningful spatial units with which to communicate with citizens; we’re far more likely to successfully engage with local residents if we refer to areas of the city that actually mean something to them. The current set of generic names such as “South Central NP” has little resonance outwith EP agencies.
By the same token people are more likely to identify with and take part in local initiatives if they feel that it’ll be their “patch” which will see the benefit.
In the second half of 2014, the Council is likely to be asked the Local Government Boundary Commission to submit a set of natural neighbourhood boundaries in order to inform the Fifth General Review of Wards. This provides an opportunity for the new set of NNs to influence the shape of the new wards and ultimately base the whole hierarchy of community planning boundaries on real communities.
The bottom-up nature of the consultation process should mean that citizens will be more likely to feel connected with the new wards – this may generate a sense of ownership ultimately encourage people to take a greater interest in the design and delivery of Council services and to engage more fully in the democratic process.
Communities of interest websites such as streetbank.com could use the NNs to allow users to search for goods and services using geographies which are meaningful than postcodes or “as-the-crow flies” distances from their home.
Research data used to inform policy and strategy initiatives could be readily aggregated to natural neighbourhoods. Examples of currently available data sets include Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics and Census 2011. Crucially all EP partners would have the option of using a shared set of geographic building blocks.
Preliminary findings from the NN project will inform the joint response by CEC and NHS Lothian to the ongoing consultation on datazones by the Scottish Government.
These activities can be viewed as self-reinforcing; the more uses the boundaries are put to, the more useful they will become.