How is a neighborhood born? It’s a New York pastime to gripe that neighborhoods are invented and defined by real estate brokers, developers and other city gatekeepers. But the more interesting truth may be that they are also reinvented and reinforced, refracted through race and class, by us.

This special double-sided gatefold section, originally published May 19, 2024, was created with the help of New Yorkers themselves who and is made up of more than 48,000 submissions from (very opinionated) readers on where neighborhoods begin and end.