Neighborhoods are the basic building block of a city or a town. In 1929, Clarence Perry documented what he called the neighborhood unit and his diagram remains very useful. That diagram has been updated several times since including this one from Doug Farr's book, Sustainable Urbanism.
It works like this. When you have one neighborhood standing alone among the farms or along the shore or in the woods or the wilderness, that's a village. When growth leads to several of these neighborhoods positioned tightly together, you get a town.
And with even more neighborhoods, a city. In this way, both small towns and big cities like Paris or New York or Washington are all cities made of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods vary a lot. But they have five basic characteristics. We keep these five things in mind when planning a new neighborhood, or when carefully updating or restoring an existing one.
First, a proper neighborhood has an identifiable center and edge. You know, when you've arrived at the heart of a neighborhood, for instance. Second, it's limited in size. About five minutes walk from center to edge. That's an easy distance to navigate without driving.
Next. It has a mix of land uses and building types and housing types and prices. That variety allows for some of life's basic daily needs to be satisfied within the neighborhood. An old rule of thumb says, if you can buy a quart of milk within five minutes walk, that's a more livable neighborhood.
The neighborhood should also have an integrated network of walkable streets. Last, it should have some of its best sites reserved for civic purposes. like public buildings and gathering places, neighborhoods.
They're number five on my list of town planning stuff everyone needs to know. For more information, visit the Dover Coal YouTube channel or DoverCole.com or take a look at Doug Farr's book, Sustainable Urbanism.