Neighborhood is one of the most complex categories in cities. The identification of urban units is a relevant empirical problem that raises some theoretical and methodological questions. One of these issues is the uncertain relationship between toponymy, cartography, and the micro-local social units lived and practiced in “the scale of the everyday”. Mapping and naming do not have a clear correspondence with real urban places, with their fluid, elastic, situational, seasonal, multi-scalar contours, embedded in lively human experience, shaped throughout history and memories…it seems that the living matter of cities escapes from maps and, sometimes, toponymies. Inspired by critical toponymy and memory studies and based on ethnographic and historical research in two cities with different urban traditions I discuss the relationship between cartography and toponymy, at the level of intersections and negotiations between top-down “politics of place” and bottom-up practices such as inhabitants' mental maps, performative practices, memory narratives, feelings of belonging, among other sensorial and affective aspects. Emblematic neighborhoods, with well-known vernacular names that do not exist in maps in Lisbon, as well as no-named ethnic neighborhoods crossing administrative borders in Boston, are the contrastive cases in discussion. Neighborhoods in both cities are rooted in the materiality and immateriality of local urban life and are seen as informal 'places of identity' with problematic connections with the ‘formal city’.

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neighborhood,critical toponomy,memory studies