What distinguishes a great neighborhood from the merely meh?
It's a difficult question, encompassing everything from physical
attributes such as good design to the right number of parks and public
gathering places.
We asked urban planners, a geographer, an architect and real-estate
agents to pinpoint some of the common threads that put an area on the
map for buyers and visitors.
Is it a charming Main Street, good schools or an abundance of
interesting shops, restaurants and other diversions? What elements
conspire to create great neighborhoods such as the
Pearl District in Portland, Ore., Boston's
Back Bay or Fells Point in Baltimore?
People and place
If you ask Fred Kent, founder and president of the nonprofit
Project for Public Spaces, it's people, not developers, who create the next big place.
"It's always a bunch of individuals coming in who think the potential
for their community is bigger," Kent says. "They have this feeling that
something has happened there and start to do little things that
collectively add up to a big thing."
That might include a shoe-repair shop owner sprucing up his storefront, a
coin laundry adding an attached coffee shop or a resident putting in a
park bench on the corner to allow people to stop and talk.
"These twists give a signal that something is going on here. Pretty soon
other people put a bench on the street," Kent says. And voilà, he says,
revitalization is born.
In many areas, this urban renewal is started by artists – those who need
to live cheaply to pursue their craft but want to be close to cultural
and physical amenities.
Just look at the decades-old revitalization of downtown Portland, Maine,
says Andrew Schiller, geographer and CEO of Location Inc., which
operates the
NeighborhoodScout
website. Its downtown was once so empty that city officials refused to
plow the snow from its streets during the winter. Then artists from the
local college started moving into old warehouses along the waterfront,
stringing up outdoor lights and opening their galleries to visitors. It
was the beginning of a thriving city.
Ditto for once-moribund Asbury Park, N.J., with its beautiful Victorian
architecture that has been turned around by creative entrepreneurs in
the past decade.
Elements that encourage interaction – parks, boardwalks, public plazas
and wide sidewalks – serve as people magnets, Kent says. Best of all are
sidewalks on a community's main street that run between café seating
and storefront window displays, allowing people to walk dogs, greet
neighbors and people watch. Add things such as weekly farmers markets,
civic-association pancake breakfasts and multidimensional establishments
that offer opportunities to linger, such as a coffee shop with art
displays, a lively bulletin board and outdoor café seating, and you've
got the beginnings of a great neighborhood hub.
These are the places you take friends and family when you want to show them the neighborhood, planners say.
"People attract people," Kent says, so when businesses triangulate in
one place, such as a theater, bookstore and art gallery, they give
people reason to stick around.
Indeed, Kent's group, the PPS, advocates "The Power of 10" for
neighborhoods – capitalizing on the 10 most important and useful places,
such as the local post office, coffee shop or park. The more things
that can be clustered around these places, the PPS says, the more
central and beloved a neighborhood will become.
Location, location, locationOf course, few people
are going to settle in a neighborhood if it doesn't have access to
well-paying jobs, Schiller says. "The places that have the most value
and that gentrified first were those closest to, or have access to,
high-paying jobs. They went up the fastest and the farthest," he says.
That, he says, is why you see neighborhoods revitalized near the subway lines into Manhattan such as Brooklyn's
Park Slope or Williamsburg districts, or those by light rail, such as South Pasadena, Calif.
Indeed, planners say access to good public transportation can turn even
some suburbs into hot areas. A study released earlier this year by the
American Public Transportation Association and the National Association
of Realtors showed that between 2006 and 2011, home values performed 42%
better on average if the homes were within a half-mile of public
transportation with high-frequency service, such as subway, light rail
or bus rapid transit. Residents in those areas had better access to jobs
and lower transportation costs, leaving them with more money to enjoy
neighborhood amenities.
Another perk: Transit stations often attract retail shops, services and
dining, giving some suburbs without a real downtown a place to walk and
linger.
Another study cited in the APTA report found that buyers in the suburbs
of Portland, Ore., paid more for houses in neighborhoods with more
connected street networks, smaller blocks and pedestrian access to
commercial shops and services and light-rail stations.
Let's not forget schools"By and large, the
highest-value home prices in America are found in school districts of
very high quality," Schiller says, preferably those with access to
high-paying jobs.
These areas, such as the Boston commuter suburbs of Newton and
Brookline,
are the blue-chip stocks of neighborhoods, even for people without
kids, because they attract people with higher levels of education, who
tend to be more active in preserving community value.
Good schools and walkability are two of the biggest themes in
neighborhood videos that real-estate agent Sue Adler of Short Hills,
N.J., uses on her website to sell homes in her area. The videos of these
commuter towns show quaint main streets and residents talking about
taking a quick stroll over to parks, bars, shops and theaters in their
free time.
"With millennials entering the marketplace, volatile gas prices and
fringe suburban home prices in decline, the demand for walkable
neighborhoods has outstripped supply in most of the U.S.," says
Christopher B. Leinberger, nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution, in a
survey (PDF) that ranked the walkability of America's cities and neighborhoods.
What makes people want to pull over and walk in a neighborhood?Reid
Ewing, director of the Metropolitan Research Center at the University
of Utah, says a whole host of elements serve as magnets to draw people
out of their cars. Items near the top of the list are:
- Short blocks with relatively narrow streets and wide sidewalks.
- Ample windows at eye level that let you see activity or displays inside as well as entryways, courtyards and arcades.
- Human-scale lighting, benches and signs.
- Tree-lined streets that provide a sense of buffer from street traffic and a comfortable canopy overhead.
- Landmarks such as fountains, historic theaters, gazebos or clock towers.
- A complexity of architecture, building materials and color — at
least on the first couple of building levels — as well as a mix of
building uses.
In other words, cookie-cutter big-box stores and row after row of
parking lots aren't found in many of America's great neighborhoods.
"A neighborhood will draw people if it's providing the opportunity for
interaction with a backdrop of design that is enjoyable to look at,"
says Lauri Moffet-Fehlberg, principal with Dahlin Group Architecture
Planning in Pleasanton, Calif.
And interaction is key to people's satisfaction with their communities.
If people are happy and engaged with their community, they are more
involved with its activities and work harder to protect it,
Moffet-Fehlberg says.
Schiller remembers visiting a friend in Jupiter, Fla., who lived in a
beautiful Cape Cod-style planned development. While it looked beautiful,
he said, his friends who lived there felt isolated and unhappy because
it was such a long drive from employment and other social and cultural
amenities.
Slide show: Top 10 American home styles
"The streets were empty," he says.
Can you engineer a great community?
While Kent and many other planners say that a great neighborhood
usually evolves organically with its residents, Ewing says that even
master-planned developments can become big draws, such as the Kentlands
planned community in Gaithersburg, Md., or the
Grove, a mixed retail and residential development in Los Angeles.
In these areas, complementary design, rich amenities and public spaces
encourage engagement among residents and visitors with places to stroll,
eat and play.
Some of the best developments, Moffet-Fehlberg says, incorporate an
area's history or topography to make them feel more real, such as the
Grove's location around L.A.'s
Original Farmers Market, a historic landmark.
And it helps if the mix of amenities and activities is attractive to younger and older generations alike, Schiller says.
The next generation of great neighborhoodsMany of the best neighborhoods are yet to come, Ewing says, as cities encourage more creative development in urban areas.
"We expect that two-thirds of the development on the ground in 2050 will
be built between now and then," Ewing says. "There is a tremendous
potential to redevelop certain areas differently."
Indeed, some of tomorrow's popular neighborhoods will likely spring from former blight.
"Communities can go from being the hero to the goat to the hero all over again," Moffet-Fehlberg says.
