ABSTRACT
A neighbourhood is defined as the area that surrounds someone's home or the people who live in this area. While neighbourhood remains a prominent point of analysis in contemporary studies, particularly urban studies, its delimitation remains unclear, and in any case there are always questions about whether it really matters in a globalised world. With the broadening of neighbourhoods to regional and global scales, further complexities are introduced. Here, strategic neighbourhoods multiply and contract, often encompassing diverse areas across multiple geographic spaces. Neighbourhoods are complicated by cultural landscapes that transcend boundaries and are constrained by political relationships that are ever changing. In certain senses, for an understanding of geopolitical neighbourhoods, mathematical definitions of the neighbourhood of a point, as a set of points where one can move some amount in any direction away from a point without leaving the set, seems more appropriate if the set itself is accepted as dynamic. Whether valuable or problematic, neighbourhoods remain a reality conceptually and in actual terms and it is assumed that prioritising and synergising relationships in the neighbourhood assumes significance and provides mutual benefit.
