Neighborhood

Activity 1
Activity 2
Activity 3
Activity 4
Activity 5
Activity 6
Activity 7
Activity 8
Activity 9
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Cities are made up of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are places in which people know each other. Knowing your neighbors begins simply by meeting the people who live on either side of you or across the street. You may attend a neighborhood school and meet other families in the area. You may become familiar with the people in the drugstore, grocery store, hardware store, coffee shop, or local bakery. As you begin to know people you can help each other. Borrow a cup of sugar, make a meal for a sick person nearby, shovel the walk of an elderly person, dog sit, or house sit if people travel. Knowing your neighbors is one way of knowing a neighborhood.

A city’s downtown or central core often starts at the crossing of two roads, a leading bridge connecting two sides of a river, or a parallel road along foothills, mountains, or a waterfront. Businesses, civic and governmental, hotels, convention centers, religious structures, and museums attract residents and anchor the economic and cultural identity in the center. Surrounding the downtown are often mixed-use neighborhoods of homes and businesses, residential neighborhoods, historical neighborhoods, and industrial neighborhoods, Surrounding the historic central cores are often industrial neighborhoods, first-tier historical neighborhoods, mixed-use neighborhoods of homes and businesses, residential neighborhoods, and eventually suburban areas. Most languages contain the word ‘neighborhood’. Know your neighborhood!

Activity 1 – Identify Neighborhood Boundaries

Where does your neighborhood begin and where does it end? Originally landforms such as lakes or mountains formed boundaries or edges between areas of a city. When humans began to build walled cities, there were neighborhoods inside of the wall and neighborhoods outside of the walls. As traffic increased across key bridges, roads, and waterways served as liquid and land thoroughfares of goods and people. Today cities have many neighborhoods or districts. Each one has a historical past, a present, and an imagined future. The Historic Preservation Journey has a Historic District designation Activity that stresses known boundaries of place built by specific people during a specific time range with specific intentions.

Activity 2 – Take a Scavenger Hunt in Your Neighborhood

Research your neighborhood. Use the Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt to learn about where you live. Ask yourself what the residents need and where the new service location could be. Ask other people for their opinions. Make a list of positives and negatives. Using a screen capture of the district, imagine what could be built there to improve the area. Suggest three new things and place them on the map.

Activity 3 – Map Key routes into and through your Neighborhood

Activity 4 – Important Buildings and Buildings Types

Activity 5 – Tree Canopies in Neighborhoods

Activity 6 – Parks and Recreation

Activity 7 – Key Neighborhood Amenities

Activity 8 – Find your City's Neighborhoods

Activity 9 – Walking Your Neighborhood

An excellent way to discover a neighborhood is to begin walking. Walking, you recognize houses and maybe even apartment buildings where people live. You may find preschools, elementary, middle, and high school. Green squares, parks, and recreational fields may offer places to bike, sit, play sports, and meet others. You might come upon commercial buildings like grocery stores, coffee shops, a book store, barbers, and beauty salons. You might find a branch library, a bread store, a hardware store, and even restaurants. You may come upon edges of the neighborhood where a commercial corridor runs, a river and a park, a forested area, or a train line. Try drawing a map of your neighborhood? Label key edges and civic buildings.