This just in…UrbanMapping, the guys who provide neighborhood data to local search companies, have just launched a free API. According to their CEO, Ian White, this means you can send them a lat/long and they will send you the associated neighborhood points contained within.
Ian White’s Urban Mapping provides neighborhood data to local search companies meaning when you search for “Starbucks in Soho”, chances are the search engine you’re using uses Urban Mapping’s data to figure out where “Soho” is. Neighborhoods are weird things, most of them do not have defined boundaries of where they start and stop. I sort of know what I’m talking about when I say the “West Village” of NYC but chances are my definition is different than yours.