Abstract: This data set describes Neighborhood Clusters that have been used for community planning and related purposes in the District of Columbia for many years. It does not represent boundaries of District of Columbia neighborhoods. Cluster boundaries were established in the early 2000s based on the professional judgment of the staff of the Office of Planning as reasonably descriptive units of the City for planning purposes. Once created, these boundaries have been maintained unchanged to facilitate comparisons over time, and have been used by many city agencies and outside analysts for this purpose. (The exception is that 7 “additional” areas were added to fill the gaps in the original dataset, which omitted areas without significant neighborhood character such as Rock Creek Park, the National Mall, and the Naval Observatory.) The District of Columbia does not have official neighborhood boundaries. The Office of Planning provides a separate data layer containing Neighborhood Labels that it uses to place neighborhood names on its maps. No formal set of standards describes which neighborhoods are included in that dataset.Whereas neighborhood boundaries can be subjective and fluid over time, these Neighborhood Clusters represent a stable set of boundaries that can be used to describe conditions within the District of Columbia over time.

Purpose: Neighborhood Clusters