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Urban Planning 101 Via a New Haven Block

This article in the NY Times Real Estate section does a really good job at summing up why neighborhood character is an important part of determining the social urban, using the author's New Haven block. And although it talks about a Connecticut city, the article is an excellent description of the reasons why many have been drawn to North Brooklyn. The only two missing are the waterfront and a mix of residential and work spaces. And New Haven seems to have much more livable streets than we do.

Excerpts from the article and comparisons to Greenpoint and Williamsburg after the jump. Read more...

On the Character and Mixture of Buildings

Partly, it's the houses, a terrifically appealing mix of stately and modest, small and medium and big, very old and just plain old. They have a family resemblance, and many of them were even built on the same plan, but they've all been through enough owners, with the attendant additions, customizations and refittings, that each has its own character.


Kent Street, Greenpoint (photo by Bitchcakes via creative commons license)

The original farmhouse across the street from where I live is a two-story Italianate built in the mid-1870s, but most houses on the street are of a different vintage, dating to around the time of the Great War. There are a few Arts and Crafts cottages, like mine, which was built in 1930, and several three-story, multifamily houses, where the street's minority of renters live. The rich can afford to live elsewhere, but the poor might get a foothold on our street. I don't ask my neighbors what they earn, but the housing stock is conducive to economic diversity.

Most houses are for families to buy and raise children in, but some of the rental units are occupied by single people or the retired. We have a coffee shop and an elementary school too.

On Street Design

When I began thinking about what makes my street work, I knew that this variety helped. But I also knew that my untrained eye was missing a lot, so I asked Dolores Hayden, a Yale professor of architecture who writes about public space, to walk with me down West Rock Avenue. What, I asked her, seemed right about our street?


Bedford Avenue (Photo by Drayton via creative commons license)

"Look at these sidewalks" was the first thing she said, as we embarked from my house heading north toward West Elm. "First of all, you have them. Second, they're wide enough for people to walk down two or three across, or with a stroller or a dog." In other words, she was saying, it's not enough to have a sidewalk--if it's narrow, then when people approach, their urge is to squeeze past. On our street, I told her, I had seen children and dogs plop down and sit for half an hour on the sidewalk while the grown-ups talked. "Exactly," she said. "And you have a planting strip too, and people can plant things on it." And it's true that many of our street's avid gardeners don't just work the backs and sides of houses: they use their front yards, especially if their grass has gotten sparse.

On Traffic & Livable Streets

At the corner of West Elm, Hayden looked in both directions and said she was curious what the streets parallel to West Rock were like. "Are they busier streets?" she asked.

"Much," I said. "Central Avenue goes all the way through from Whalley to Route 34, so if you're looking to get across town, you take Central. And Yale Avenue"--which both intersects West Rock and then curves to be parallel to it--"also goes all the way through, and past the Yale Bowl and the other athletic fields. So a lot of trucks use it."

"See, that's important," Hayden said. "You're surrounded by two streets that take up a lot of your traffic. That makes this street quieter. And people like to have conversations on quiet streets."

Williamsburg Walks on Bedford Avenue (photo by Mikebot)

On Socializing

Hayden noted that most of the houses on the street had porches, which I knew was supposed to be a good thing. "But do people use them?" she asked. Yes, I said. It was something I'd always noticed, but it wasn't until Hayden asked that it occurred to me that a porch alone doesn't mean much. People have to use their porches, and use isn't automatic. People are more inclined to use their porches if they can speak to passers-by--which means that the low traffic density makes the porches more desirable to use, because sitting on the porch isn't just a breath of fresh air; it's also a chance for conversation... The school, the porch, the quiet, the short distance to the street: they create the perfect conditions for the kind of friendly, frequent intercourse that brings neighbors together.

On Diversity of Ages

The right mix of ages, for example, can never last long. When Dolores Hayden and I were walking, she asked me about the ages of the people who lived on the street. There's a wide variety, I told her. There are 30 children on my block alone, and their parents are in their 30s and 40s and have moved here in the past 10 years. But then there are empty-nesters, like my neighbors the Knezeks and the Millers, who moved here with their young families in the early 1980s. And there are several residents who grew up on the street, including Helen Buck, who is 92 and has never lived anywhere else.

"That's good," Hayden said, "because you want the young people for the energy, of course. Then you want slightly older people, because they know the history, and they know how to get things done too, how to get a pothole fixed or negotiate the bureaucracy downtown. The retired people, they really know the history. Also, they're the eyes on the street: they're home during the day, they make the street feel inhabited."

On Ethnic and Religious Diversity

"There are reasons those of us who live here chose to live here," said Jack Paulishen..."I never have to worry," Jack said, leaning forward in his easy chair, "that when my son is a teenager, I'll get a call from a principal that my son yelled an ethnic slur at an Orthodox Jew. Or that he was upset that someone has two mommies. And the chance of me ending up next door to someone who doesn't share these values about diversity--the chance of me living next door to a bigot-- is pretty slim."


At the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge (photo by Genial23 via Creative Commons License)

Then, after his paean to diversity, he mentioned something different that drew him to West Rock Avenue. "There's also quite a few Catholics who like to live near their church," he added. "We bought this house thinking, Isn't this nice, we'll walk to church--when we get up early enough to go, that is."

I related to what Jack was saying: it's nice to be near people different, and it's also nice to be near people the same. I like that there are other Jews around — and other writers, other dads, other dog owners. I'm also glad there are gentiles, carpenters, gay couples, old people, black people and the dedicated cat lady who lives across the street.