I have to admit, listening to Peter Lovenheim talk about his book “In the Neighborhood, The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time”, spiked my planner’s radar. In his novel, the journalist, quite intentionally, well, the title is self-explanatory isn’t it? It sounded a bit hokey and contrived at first, as did the interview. Lovenheim explained that the only way to truly get to know someone and develop a real sense of intimacy and bond was to sleep in their home and shadow them for the day. But the real story is about the loss of intimacy and comfort among neighbors.
I have to admit, listening to Peter Lovenheim talk about his book "In the Neighborhood, The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time", spiked my planner's radar. In his novel, the journalist, quite intentionally, well, the title is self-explanatory isn't it? It sounded a bit hokey and contrived at first, as did the interview. Lovenheim explained that the only way to truly get to know someone and develop a real sense of intimacy and bond was to sleep in their home and shadow them for the day. But the real story is about the loss of intimacy and comfort among neighbors. Lovenheim's quest to understand why people who share the same street are unable to share anything else about themselves is actually a reflection of how our neighborhoods are designed and laid out.
A fellow blogger last month wrote that drawing ability was not a prerequisite for being a planner. But understanding spatial relationships certainly is. Lovenheim's neighborhood is a picturesque curving and undulating street, with stately homes which are set far back from the street. The house on the hill design had decreased opportunity for neighbors to casually meet and interact so Lovenheim quite deliberately befriended a handful of people, and matched them together to form a traditional unit of neighbors who could depend on each other through challenging times, what sociologists and planners referto as creating social capital.
What was most interesting to me was that almost all of the neighbors on Lovenheim's street had an intense need to be part of a community and a social network, but they didn't have the facilities to achieve it. One neighbor observed that public spaces have largely been privatized into commercial spaces. Think about the coffee shop, king Starbucks, bookstores. These are little self-contained units with a small entry fee. Another neighbor contrasted American neighborhoods to African tribal villages whose homes are traditionally organized around acentral space out of a primal need for survival. She observed that American neighborhoods are designed for privacy to fuel the prevailing ideology that we can survive alone. And then she suggests the antidote to this landscape of isolation parks! Brilliant.
We obviously can't retrofit our neighborhoods to the tribal village model, or wait for a creative type to take it upon himself to bring the neighbors together one sleepover at a time, but we can introduce more central spaces, parks, playgrounds, community gardens to our neighborhoods.
Oregon Passes Exemption to Urban Growth Boundary
Cities have a one-time chance to acquire new land for development in a bid to increase housing supply and affordability.
Where Urban Design Is Headed in 2024
A forecast of likely trends in urban design and architecture.
Savannah: A City of Planning Contrasts
From a human-scales, plaza-anchored grid to suburban sprawl, the oldest planned city in the United States has seen wildly different development patterns.
Washington Tribes Receive Resilience Funding
The 28 grants support projects including relocation efforts as coastal communities face the growing impacts of climate change.
Adaptive Reuse Bills Introduced in California Assembly
The legislation would expand eligibility for economic incentives and let cities loosen regulations to allow for more building conversions.
LA's Top Parks, Ranked
TimeOut just released its list of the top 26 parks in the L.A. area, which is home to some of the best green spaces around.
City of Rochester
Boston Harbor Now
City of Bellevue
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Birmingham, Alabama
City of Laramie, Wyoming
Colorado Department of Local Affairs
Write for Planetizen
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.