Neighborhood

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.

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.

Neighborhoods, as places to live, learn, work, and play, develop a series of alleys, streets, avenues, boulevards, and corridors. These ever-widening thorough fares become transit systems for people, goods, and services. Take a look at Streets Journey to see the various types and widths of walkable, bikeable, streets in your neighborhoods. Does your neighborhood have cross walks? Does your neighborhood have protected bike lanes? As you make a map of your neighborhood, explore the Green Streets Journey to see other ways to activate safe streets and safe intersections. Label the key entrances to your neighborhood and the major streets. Upload your neighborhood map to the gallery!

Your neighborhood will have records of the first buildings and homes. Often these first buildings and homes set the standards for creating the Neighborhood center, or place where people can come together to meet and to have special events. Centers may include a Village Hall, a Library, a Garden Center, a central park. Commercial districts will also have grocery stores, bakeries, hardware, restaurants, coffee shops, and bookstores. Districts may include elementary, middle, high school, and universities.

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.