Neighborhoods & Communities

To study neighborhoods and communities is quite a task for anyone that is trying to do so. What makes it so hard is the multiple factors that must be accounted for, and the wide range of differing beliefs about the definition of each. In this article alone I am presented with a plethora of differing approaches of how to study them, and what needs to be studied. After reading it in fact, I am still unsure of what really makes up a neighborhood or a community. Some people like to focus on physical properties whereas others rely more heavily on social and psychological factors instead. The hardest part is finding a compromise and settling on one definition. The article also focused on the politics and rules that go into creating a neighborhood. Planning commissions and zoning ordinances are just a few of the terms that I am now familiar with that depict the physical appearance. However, these topics do not interest me as much as looking deeper into the social aspects. It is interesting to look at how the community and housing plans can affect how people interact and communicate. Most builders probably don’t even count this as a concern when they build wide scale subdivisions, but ignoring it will only cause problems down the road when the residents are not happy. Altogether, I want to learn how to be more thoughtful in my design so that I don’t create places that ignore the people, but rather embrace them.

Design should embrace what is already naturally their, because sometimes community has already been given to us.