[LostInTheZone]

being that the latest incarnation of the Philadelphia Murder Thread is probably going to totter about in ignorance and borderline racism for a few more days till someone speaks their mind a little too frankly and it's closed, I thought this deserved its own dicussion. WARNING: this might be a bit esoteric and has only to do only tangentially has to do with skyscrapers.

After reading Jane Jacobs, I've started to believe that part of the problem, the reason so much of the city went to shit, is due to the street layout. Large swaths of the city are made up of monotonous, anti-pedestrian tract housing, with long thin blocks that isolate people from their neighbors on the next street over, like Harlem blocks she talked about in Death and Life. It contributes to social deterioration and stifles commerce. Such places rarely spontaneously unslum, to use her phrase.

compare:

west side of South Philly: stagnant and crime-ridden:

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/1894/picture9rf3.png

east side of South Philly: more varied, better-proportioned blocks, vibrant street life and rising property values.

http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/4020/picture10im7.png

we can see why Passyunk avenue developed into a vibrant retail corridor, while Point Breeze avenue did not. The rigid grid prohibits freedom of movement and creates a repetitive landscape.

an even better illustration: Kensington & Fishtown:

both of these were Irish working class neighborhoods that suffered from deindustialization. One fell apart, the other got poorer but remained cohesive:

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/1187/picture11pq8.png

This is a consequence of one being developed on the standard city grid survey, and the other growing up more gradually, producing a more organic, pedestrian layout. The collusion between corrupt city government and developers looking to make a buck created larger problems than sinking houses in Logan- much of the city was built up too quickly with no regard for the future. So perhaps in addition to all the community-based solutions I offered the LAST time this came up, perhaps the city should also try and cut through new streets in the bombed-out areas, since there wouldn't be much need for demolition.

[Double L]

I can give you plenty of examples of highly prosperous grid-system neighborhoods in Houston's inner loop. One of em was so stuck up they didn't even want light rail in their neighborhood.

I like grid systems. They are efficient for understanding directions, movement and an efficient system for future lane expansion.

[LostInTheZone]

more examples of how structural problems affect the city as much as cultural ones:

Parkside: filtered down the socioeconomic ladder from German brewmasters, to bourgeois Jews, down to blacks. The neighborhood is full of some of the most fabulous Victorian architecture in the city:

http://phillyskyline.com/hoods/west/parkside/parkside_mansionstree.jpg

and it fronts Fairmount park:

http://phillyskyline.com/hoods/west/parkside/parkside_pleasetouchmemhall.jpg

But it never attracted a second generation of building investment and declined in every phase of its existence:

http://phillyskyline.com/hoods/west/parkside/parkside_freedryzoob.jpg

It's caught between the border vacuums created by the park and railroad tracks, cut off from the pedestrian grid. It suffers from long blocks and too many dead-end streets:

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/7672/picture8uc7.png

the only reason the houses fronting the park are nice is because they were recently restored by a very noble non-profit. More pics and info from Sasso here (http://phillyskyline.com/hoods/west/parkside/).

Southwest Philly: arguably the worst slum in the city, currently:

http://phillyskyline.com/hoods/southwest/kingsessing/king_rowlines.jpg

(http://phillyskyline.com/hoods/southwest/kingsessing/)

your archetypical "gray area": built under early-20th-century single use zoning. Endless narrow lanes of tract housing set back behind increasingly shabby, unmaintained dinky front yards, and a bare smattering of retail. Click picture for Sasso phototour of the area.

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/2747/picture12ul1.png

now, look at the difference between the lower left and upper right areas of this shot. Above the railroad tracks is one of those West Philly "streetcar suburbs" we all love (Spruce Hill? I always forget where the boundaries are). The blocks are much more square and allow for more freedom of movement. This neighborhood attracted several generations of victorians and some 20th century apartment houses. It's much friendlier to pedestrians and allows for greater freedom of movement and interaction with neighbors. When the white bourgeois abandoned this neighborhood, blacks moved in, but it didn't turn into a slum. It was home to middle-class black folk who kept up their houses. It still is, and it's gentrifying. A friend of mine rented a few rooms from a couple of old ladies in a huge Victorian near 49th and Springfield. They were the last remnants of a commune that had bought the place in the 60s. They told me that when the hippies moved in, the blacks in the neighborhood were worried about the white kids lowering their property values.

.

[LostInTheZone]

Upper Darby: an example of the "made safe by money" concept:

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/8430/picture13mn9.png

formerly a very high-status suburb and shopping district built around a transit hub. These blocks are even longer than the ones in Philly. The effect when this area had money was to create quiet residential lanes. Today's sleepy residential lane is tomorrow's isolated, crime-prone street, though. This can be seen in the long blocks in Manhattan- now they've been made safe by money, and they're once again sought after by people who don't want a lot of pedestrians walking by their front window. As for Upper Darby, it lost status to newer areas, no new investment was made, and currently it's declining, despite having fantastic housing stock. Crime is up, house values are down, white flight in progress. The gorgeous art-deco shopping district around 69th street is passed over in favor of the King of Prussia mall, and has a lot more low-rent shops. If Philadelphia ever developed a dynamic economy that made close-in suburban housing valuable again for its proximity to transit, Upper Darby would once again attract people who would buy into the neighborhood for the quality of its real estate, much like the blocks leading off Central Park West gentrified under the relentless pressure of the Manhattan real estate market, despite their structural deficiencies..

[LostInTheZone]

I can give you plenty of examples of highly prosperous grid-system neighborhoods in Houston's inner loop. One of em was so stuck up they didn't even want light rail in their neighborhood.

I like grid systems. They are efficient for understanding directions, movement and an efficient system for future lane expansion.

it's not the grid, it's the shape of the blocks. see the other posts. And by all means, post pictures and maps. This is very applicable to other cities.

[fflint]

Most all San Francisco neighborhorhoods are gridded, including fabulously wealthy ones like Billionaire's Row. For what it's worth.

[Double L]

I'd say that yes, there is a correlation between quality of transit and quality of the neighborhood and bad transit can stifle investment into a neighborhood.

I'm not understanding your argument, are you for or against grid systems? What do you consider a good block size? How are you drawing this connection between street layout and crime? Are you connecting this to crime or neighborhood growth?

[LostInTheZone]

^long, narrow blocks inhibit pedestrian activity, stifle commerce, and prevent people from getting to know their neighbors and forming tight-knit communities, and lead to a stagnant neighborhood that will only attract new investment under duress from a hot real estate market. That's the thesis.

Most all San Francisco neighborhorhoods are gridded, including fabulously wealthy ones like Billionaire's Row. For what it's worth.

and most of san francisco is made up of small blocks with lots of visual interruptions and landmarks provided by the grid spilling over the hills. Jacobs cited it as an example is Death and Life many times.

compare the north-of-Market blocks with the south-of-Market blocks though, or Potrero Hill to Telegraph Hill, and you might notice something.

[fangorangutang]

I think a lot of it also just has to do with the mobility of people and capital in the US, as well as policies, as we've discussed in so many other threads regarding US ghettos...yes, the long, narrow blocks have the effect of isolating people from neighboring blocks and stifling commerce, and repetitive or monotonous architecture can add to that effect, but I wouldn't attribute the decline of certain streets and neighborhoods as much to that as I would general patterns experienced by most US cities.

Also, in that satellite pic of the Philadelphia streets, most of those blocks are actually short compared to San Francisco streets, and are on a much less consistent grid than most of San Francisco. Just check Google Maps and look at the scales...The average SF blocks looks like it's about 200 x 700 or 800 feet, while most of Philly's look about 100-150 x 500-600.

[Kilgore Trout]

the grid system is irrelevent. i don't know why everyone gets so hung up about it because whether the streets are gridded or not has very little to do with streetlife.

what really matters is the length of the blocks. if you have short blocks in all directions there is an abundance of possible walking routes. there are no mid-block dead zones and pedestrians have an easier and more pleasant time of getting around. this was what jane jacobs was talking about when she compared the village (mostly a grid, remember, just on an angle) with harlem.

that said, i think it's silly to reduce something so complex as neighbourhood vibrancy to a simple equation of long blocks = dead streets. it's not as straightforward as that. there are plenty of neighbourhoods with long blocks that do just fine. uptown manhattan is a good example and so are many of london's victorian suburbs.

[Double L]

I think you've got a good discovery here. Although I'd imagine it is not only the length but also the width which is a factor. Tighter street systems will create more interaction opportunities and more density then further spaced out ones.

One factor would most certainly be the cost of building extra streets.

[Dear Leader VI]

I don't contribute grid layout to urban decay around the United States, which really is just an effect of suburban sprawl and socio-economics. However, I think grid layout certainly plays a major role in determining which neighborhoods become slums and which ones become gentrified.

[Terminus]

I too do not believe that street configuration, in itself, is the only determinant of an area's current state, with more complex systems being more vital than the grid iron. In fact, one could argue that the latter should be experiencing more investment today do to their regular form and efficiency to build on (as measured by propencity to support standard building types without modification for odd angles).

This, I do concur that certain configurations can take a place to the next level of success, particularly to the extent that street kinks create termini and deflected vistas. Most will agree that, when buildings are properly placed, such pattern is much more attractive than the endless grid. They can also be more intimate, thus commanding higher values.

However, in a depressed neighborhood these same physical traits can actually depress values to the extent that they support criminal activities. To me this suggests that design, in itself, is not the sole determinant of “success,” but rather one of the features that can exacerbate existing trends.

[Attrill]

I think any layout (grid, radial, etc.) works, but proximity to public transportation combined with medium traffic arterial roads with commercial development is more important than anything.

[LostInTheZone]

the grid system is irrelevent. i don't know why everyone gets so hung up about it because whether the streets are gridded or not has very little to do with streetlife.

what really matters is the length of the blocks. if you have short blocks in all directions there is an abundance of possible walking routes. there are no mid-block dead zones and pedestrians have an easier and more pleasant time of getting around. this was what jane jacobs was talking about when she compared the village (mostly a grid, remember, just on an angle) with harlem.

that said, i think it's silly to reduce something so complex as neighbourhood vibrancy to a simple equation of long blocks = dead streets. it's not as straightforward as that. there are plenty of neighbourhoods with long blocks that do just fine. uptown manhattan is a good example and so are many of london's victorian suburbs.

obviously there are tons of other factors involved. They get plenty of discussion on here. But this is an aspect that isn't talked about as much.

Just looking around live local, it's worth noting that perennial underperformers Buffalo, Detroit, and Pittsburgh are FULL of neighborhoods with long blocks:

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/9808/picture15yx8.png

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6623/picture16sm9.png

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/2893/picture17qi0.png

[tackledspoon]

I don't have the time to make a large post in this thread, though I'd love to. I'd say that one factor equally important to street length is continuity. Not only does continuity offer a good view in every direction, which has its obvious saftey benefits, but it encourages the people who live on that particular street to use it as a walking route instead of heading over to a long, continuous street and then going on their way. Short, discontinuous streets act as feeders that are generally devoid of activity and, more importantly eyes. The best neighborhood is one in which every street is a suitable part of a walking route.

[Rufus]

I see the length of blocks as being a very minor issue. I mean, yes it matters, but not as much as isolation. Think the Hill district in Pittsburgh and other neighborhoods especially surrounded by industrial zones. Bridesburg in Philly comes to mind, but in this case its insularity has helped retain the tight-knitness of the community. There really are so many variables factoring in that it's not clear-cut what decides the fate of a neighborhood. I just don't think you can generalize much about the effect that the street layout has on a place.

Also, I wouldn't lump Pittsburgh in with the perennial underperformers, but that's besides the point.

[Xelebes]

I think it has more to do with "penetration" instead of "interaction". How long does it take to get anywhere instead of "oh, how many different paths can I take?" Along the lines of "How long does it take me to get to my friend's house for that house party?"

[tackledspoon]

I think it has more to do with "penetration" instead of "interaction". How long does it take to get anywhere instead of "oh, how many different paths can I take?" Along the lines of "How long does it take me to get to my friend's house for that house party?"

What does that have to do with vibrancy or safety? That's an issue of convenience that says nothing about pedestrian traffic rates, interaction, retail etc...

[BTinSF]

compare the north-of-Market blocks with the south-of-Market blocks though, or Potrero Hill to Telegraph Hill, and you might notice something.


South of Market, street gridwise, is reminiscent of most of Manhattan with the wide avenues crossed by narrower streets making shorter blocks. It hasn't held Manhattan back and it is not currently holding SOMA back. That area is booming. The historic contrast with North of market probably has to do with SOMA being flat and more sutibale to becoming the city's industrial area which it became. But now that we have a post-industrial economy, it is being reincarnated with some of the city's most expensive multi-family housing. So how does this prove your thesis?

[LostInTheZone]

tackledspoon hit on it a bit. I'll try a small example: West 8th Street and West 9th Street in Greenwich Village:

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/6084/picture23ku8.png

8th street is lined with shops for its whole run from St Marks to 6th avenue. It gets a lot of pedestrian through traffic, and it's connected by small blocks to other active retail streets east, south, and west of the square.

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/7030/picture22kj1.png

West 9th street, however, is a quiet residential street. The long block acts as a wall preventing any pedestrian spillover from busy West 8th street. Walking up MacDougal from the busy blocks below the square, that's the effect: hitting a wall, and you have to turn left or right, but can't continue north. This is great in Greenwich Village, and adds to its variety of blocks and streetscapes.

However, lets say that this was a different neighborhood, and 8th street is an open-air drug market, and 9th street is a tight-knit block of the sort of tough old biddies who would chase drug dealers off their stoop with broomsticks. While the long block-wall insulates the old biddies from the dangerous activity of the drug market on the other side of the block, it also prevents them from getting to know their neighbors over there and organizing to fight off the dealers. This is why in so much of North Philly, the quality of the streetscape changes drastically from block to block.

[Alta California]

Allright, the discussion here seems to have a severe East Coast cities bias. It was Jane Jacobs Life and Death book that turned me to a career in urban planning. As an Angeleno, I want to test how the "block length correlates with shitty neighborhoods generally" theory for the cities of So Cal.

Launched the Google Earth and located this Detroit section that Lost in the Zone considered harmed by the length of blocks. (I'm not familiar with Pittsburgh. What's a Buffalo?) It turned that the longest blocks on this picture are between 1,500 to 2,300 feet long!
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6623/picture16sm9.png


Also as you can see, while the longest block are practically green parks, tiny brown houses dot the smallest blocks which are less than 1,000 ft. in length. (Looking at aerials of Detroit, btw, was shocking.)

To further prove that point, just up to street on Jefferson Ave. is Grosse Pointe Farms. Since everything I know about the Detroit suburb is from the movie Grosse Pointe Blank, this is a posh place with the longest block length of no more than 1,200 ft, on average less than 1,000 feet according to G. Earth.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/170/414347737_4f2eb3851a.jpg

Now to Los Angeles....

The next two hoods are Bevery Hills and Hancock Park. They're rich. They also block lengths that average out to 1,000 ft. Because there's a correlation between wealthy neighborhoods and being on a mountain, incredibly long serpentine blocks for even wealthier neighborhoods are common.

Be'erly Hills

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/180/414347722_b63639cadb.jpg

Hancock Park

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/182/414347756_cbcd5bc383.jpg


Compare them to Westlake and South LA. They're not the best neighborhoods. Instead of saying "ghetto", how about "redevelopment areas"? This is where it gets interesting. Westlake below has an average block length that 600-800 feet. It is one the city's original suburb and hip place. South LA (the city dropped the "Central") just below it combine long and short blocks within a short distance of one another. The longs ones though never reach Detroit proportions, 1,300 ft. is about the average for long, 600 ft. for short and all about as deadly as Detroit.

Westlake

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/177/414347703_1672433feb.jpg

South LA

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/124/414347685_decdc1a408.jpg


The lesson: At least for L.A., all kinds of neighborhoods can be found with just about any kind of street system it has.

[LostInTheZone]

^great post alta california. I also noticed that Oakland has longer blocks than most of San Francisco. Has anyone ever gone at a comparison from that angle, given that so much of Oakland stagnated while San Francisco improved over time?

[seaskyfan]

I believe that the slums of the future will have include the cul de sacs featured in many mid-century and later subdivisions. They take the challenges you mention about the long blocks in these Philly neighborhoods (isolation, limited contact with neighbors, single use) and combine them with more limited vehicular access and no safe pedestrian access.

[hudkina]

I don't think street layout has anything to do with vibrancy. Hamtramck, a suburb of Detroit completely surrounded by the central city has very long blocks and could be called nothing but vibrant. It's not wealthy, but it's a strong working-class city with a huge immigrant population. In fact the reason why it is vibrant is because of its immigrant population. I'd say the biggest reason some of Detroit's neighborhoods failed was because the wasn't a large influx of immigrants to take over where the middle-class families fled. The only area in Detroit where there has been a constant stream of new immigrants (hispanic) is in Southwest Detroit, where there are also large blocks in a very vibrant atmosphere.

Here is a pic of Hamtramck with its mega-blocks:
http://www.downriverdetroit.net/hamtramck.jpg

And here is a pic of Southwest Detroit with its mega-blocks:
http://www.downriverdetroit.net/waynecounty/southwestdetroit.jpg

And even still, if you look at Poletown on Detroit's near eastside, most of the blocks are smaller and "pedestrian-friendly" and that area is probably the worst in the city as far as abandonment and vacant lots are concerned.

[hudkina]

BTW, I just wanted to show this picture of a street in Hamtramck:

http://www.downriverdetroit.net/hamtramck3.jpg

There are over 40 houses between the two sidestreets!

This is what it looks like from the street-level:

http://www.downriverdetroit.net/waynecounty/hamtramck/046.jpg

[Lucky Luke]

It's all about Feng Shuei mate. The energy just stagnates in those Philly projects...

[pdxstreetcar]

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6623/picture16sm9.png
When I was browsing aerials of Detroit recently I noticed this same neighborhood and thought the exact same thing. While I have seen some long blocks that are successful and short blocks that are decayed, seeing this certainly reinforced the point made in Death & Life, especially when you notice that just a little further east the blocks are much shorter and the fabric is much much more healthy.

[Crawford]

It has nothing to do with blocks. The area on the right of the photo (east of Alter Road) is Grosse Pointe, which is a fairly wealthy suburb. The devastation begins when one crosses over the city limits into Detroit.

There are some intact Detroit blocks bordering Grosse Pointe, but they are a little north of this photo.

[keninhalifax]

Surely block length and street layout will not necessitate either neighbourhood vibrancy or stagnance, but if we look at historical examples of street patterns throughout North America, those with more varied structures and shorter blocks do tend to spawn more vibrant civics. This correlation is very pronounced and shouldn't be ignored. Jacobs was right to point to behaviouralism as a neglected aspect of city planning -- that city plans which neglect the true behavioural patterns of humans will create problematic districts.

Of course, all kinds of geographic, historical, and sociological factors go in to determining neighbourhood vibrancy. Back Bay in Boston, for instance, has much longer blocks than did the earlier-settled parts of the city, but Back Bay was also conceived as an escape for the the city's élite, and the ancillary services and cultural activities that make the district so attractive today quickly followed. Meanwhile, the North End, despite its highly varied street pattern, did experience decades of neglect (no matter what Jacobs said), partially because of the Central Artery expressway, but also because of the historical circumstances surrounding its populations.

[passdoubt]

I think it's reaching to try to pin down block length as a significant factor in neighborhood decline.

In Philadelphia, as in a number of other cities, I'd point to trends in peoples' architectural and lifestyle preferences as greater factors. Remember when Society Hill was a slum? People used to think those buildings were obsolete (some still do). It took some time for enough yuppies to move in and call them "historic."

South Philly east of Broad is older than west of Broad. The n'hoods west of Broad were mostly built later, and built very quickly as affordable housing for laborers. Although the rows look similar, I think this is the bigger factor. They're old enough to be considered obsolete by people that want modern housing, but not old enough to be considered historic for the niche market. You could also point to the resiliance of the Italian-American community in South Philly. Whereas middle to upper class Irish, African Americans, and Jews have a long history of leaving their old neighborhoods when they could afford to, more South Philly Italians hung on later (until the exodus to South Jersey picked up in the latter half of the 20th century). The eastern half of the South Philly is being passed on to Asian immigrants and yuppies today.

Again, there just isn't demand for yuppies to gut rehab those shabby 1910s-1940s rowhouses in the Southwest and Northeast. That's why those n'hoods are declining. Give it 100 years before somebody will treasure that architecture.

I think isolation is a factor-- especially when you're talking about places like Parkside-- and block length has an affect on it. But those are just outliers in the grand scheme of things. In Philly if the houses are extremely old or extremely new, the n'hood is least likely to be a "slum." The further you get from each extreme the more likely it is.

[fever]

I get the impression that vibrancy is being assessed by the number of vacant lots in cities that stopped growing. If there is consistently high demand for real estate confined to a fixed area, like parts of New York or San Francisco, real estate will be well maintained more generally because of the high cost of land. These districts are more resilient because of the shortage of land and resulting high real estate prices in addition to any resilience provided by the layout of their streets.

Street layout will be a more significant factor in cities with unlimited real estate and cities suffering from a prolonged economic downturn coupled with a lack of immigration. And then it would apply mostly in mixed use districts or near retail strips in which walking distance matters. I'm not sure it would matter much if everyone drives. There, isolation is valued over connectivity.

To bring up a local example, Vancouver's most depressed neighbourhood has its smallest blocks and plenty of property crime, but it's also arguably its most vibrant.

[LostInTheZone]

I get the impression that vibrancy is being assessed by the number of vacant lots in cities that stopped growing. If there is consistently high demand for real estate confined to a fixed area, like parts of New York or San Francisco, real estate will be well maintained more generally because of the high cost of land. These districts are more resilient because of the shortage of land and resulting high real estate prices in addition to any resilience provided by the layout of their streets.

To bring up a local example, Vancouver's most depressed neighbourhood has its smallest blocks and plenty of property crime, but it's also arguably its most vibrant.

^well said. Small blocks can make the difference between a teeming slum and a scary, dead, abandoned slum. Think of the Lower East Side back in the day, or San Francisco's Tenderloin today. There are lots of socio-historical reasons that those neighborhoods are/were that way, but they always had active street life. One thing they have in common is a lot of transient, low-class residents. Such places are well set up to unslum as they start attracting permanent residents with the means to invest in the community.

Street layout will be a more significant factor in cities with unlimited real estate and cities suffering from a prolonged economic downturn coupled with a lack of immigration. And then it would apply mostly in mixed use districts or near retail strips in which walking distance matters. I'm not sure it would matter much if everyone drives. There, isolation is valued over connectivity.

true again. No centrally located neighborhood with good housing stock can escape an overheated market like SF or NY. But it's worth remembering that as recently as 10 or 15 years ago, Chelsea was considered a dangerous neighborhood. Hell's Kitchen was a notorious slum for its entire existence up until about 1999. When NYC as a whole went to shit, it's important to note the neighborhoods that remained resilient, attracted new development, and extended their property values at the fringes:

http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/7669/picture12ai2.th.png (http://img125.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture12ai2.png)http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/5237/sohogn5.th.png (http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sohogn5.png)http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/2919/littleitalychinatowndf9.th.png (http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=littleitalychinatowndf9.png)http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/994/midtowneastvd9.th.png (http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=midtowneastvd9.png)
(the Village, SoHo, Chintown-Little Italy, East Midtown/UES)

and what neighborhoods declined the hardest:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/8937/bushwickbedstuyfm0.th.png (http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bushwickbedstuyfm0.png)http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/2905/alphabetcityhb5.th.png (http://img299.imageshack.us/my.php?image=alphabetcityhb5.png)http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/259/southbronxef6.th.png (http://img299.imageshack.us/my.php?image=southbronxef6.png)http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/1053/centralharlemof6.th.png (http://img341.imageshack.us/my.php?image=centralharlemof6.png)http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/8058/midtownwestbt8.th.png (http://img341.imageshack.us/my.php?image=midtownwestbt8.png)
(Bushwick/Bed-Stuy, Alphabet City, South Bronx, Central Harlem, Midtown West/Hells Kitchen)

a strong economy can sustain any sort of neighborhood setup. But when Buffalo's long blocks of semidetached tract housing are no longer valuable because of deindustrialization, they sit and stagnate. When SoHo loft space became cheap and available because industry had moved on, it was taken over by artists for work space, but then gradually they settled, formed a tight community that was able to organize to fight expressways, and today it's a busy shopping district. The neighborhood was full of solid buildings and was well-laid-out to be reused. The long-stagnant neighborhood around Buffalo Central Station (in the lower right corner of the shot I used) is made up of space very inflexibly designed to house workers commuting by trolley to central factories. It can never find a second life as a community of artists or an immigrant neighborhood with lots of retail, because it's not set up to wander around in. Pedestrians are sorted out into long lanes branching off radials that would take them to working and shopping areas in OTHER parts of the city. Buffalo may not have the culture of violence that Philly or Detroit has, but even when there was lots of employment, its neighborhoods were never known for having active street life. Once the economy and transit that sustained this tract housing was gone, it was functionally useless, and there was really no reason for people to stay, and no reason for new people to move in. Such a neighborhood will be passed to people further and further down the socioeconomic ladder until it's completely abandoned, unless there's a citywide revival (like in NYC) that makes ALL convenient housing valuable. But it's unlikely that it would ever be valued on its own merits.

Again, no one's saying that block layout is the sole factor, this is obviously untrue. But like Kilgore said, the correlation is too strong to ignore.

[Evergrey]

hey, that's my neighborhood!
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/2893/picture17qi0.png

one difference you might notice from aerial observation is that Pittsburgh's grids are quite small in comparison to the relentless gridding of Buffalo, Detroit and Philadelphia... Pittsburgh is basically composed of a quilt of small clashing grids... running into each other at different orientations, featuring irregular block sizes and shapes and major arterials that slice through grid structures... this is due to the turbulant topography of the city... many areas of the city aren't in grid format... but have random "organic" street layouts that conform to hills, slopes and valleys... the city's structural layout is precisely one reason I've always felt that Pittsburgh has maintained a good bit of neighborhood vibrancy (and comparatively low crime) despite the region suffering many of the same problems of de-industrialization that have afflicted Buffalo, Detroit and and Philadelphia...

the areas on this image offer a good cross-section of the city as a whole... from the posh upper-class areas of Shadyside and Point Breeze... to the strong middle-class (and active business district) of Bloomfield and Friendship... to the long-suffering but rebounding East Liberty... to the long-suffering and still languishing Garfield... mansions to modest rowhouses... white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods... etc.

[LostInTheZone]

great post Evergrey, you raise some great points. I would also point out that one of the few neighborhoods I know of in Pittsburgh that has active street life, the South Side, also has one of of its smallest block grids. Looking back on that post, Pittsburgh really shouldn't be thrown in with Buffalo and Detroit, it's an older city with different development patterns. While I think that long blocks are part of what holds Pittsburgh back, the city grew up in a much more complicated fashion than the other two examples that blew up very quickly after the turn of the century.

Newark, NJ would have been a much better example:

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/8283/picture1hc2.png

A not-so-bad part of Newark- The Ironbound:

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/33/picture2pm6.png

This is a Iberian/Italian neighborhood east of downtown Newark on the other side of the Amtrak mainline. It survived largely because of its insularity; it's walled off from the rest of the city by the train tracks, river, and an industrial area to the south. It's also got access to Manhattan via PATH from Penn Station in the upper left. It should be noted though, that while this neighborhood still has a fair few long blocks, most of them are smaller than the standard grid blocks that make up most of the city, and the layout is more varied; it's an older neighborhood with more mixed-use streets, instead of the semidetached tract housing that Newark is known for.

[Evergrey]

Looking back on that post, Pittsburgh really shouldn't be thrown in with Buffalo and Detroit, it's an older city with different development patterns.

That's a good point too... the Great Lakes cities were basically the next wave of cities that blew up after the interior river cities like Pittsburgh and Cincinnati... and there are significant structural differences... neighborhood composition, street layout, architecture (mostly brick in the Pittsburghs and mostly wood frame in the Buffalos), etc. Check out Rochester, Cleveland, Toledo, Milwaukee... maybe even Chicago... and I would assume you would find a similar gridded "long block" layout to Buffalo and Detroit. This was probably an easy and inexpensive way to deal with the rapid expansion caused by industrial boom of the early 1900s and the resultant waves of working-class migrants... simple long block grids, seperation of uses (compared to the older cities), cheap wood-frame housing... which incidently is a further impediment to the renaissance of these Great Lakes cities... the old housing just isn't attractive enough for rehabbing and investment...

[Attrill]

That's a good point too... the Great Lakes cities were basically the next wave of cities that blew up after the interior river cities like Pittsburgh and Cincinnati... and there are significant structural differences... neighborhood composition, street layout, architecture (mostly brick in the Pittsburghs and mostly wood frame in the Buffalos), etc. Check out Rochester, Cleveland, Toledo, Milwaukee... maybe even Chicago... and I would assume you would find a similar gridded "long block" layout to Buffalo and Detroit. This was probably an easy and inexpensive way to deal with the rapid expansion caused by industrial boom of the early 1900s and the resultant waves of working-class migrants... simple long block grids, seperation of uses (compared to the older cities), cheap wood-frame housing... which incidently is a further impediment to the renaissance of these Great Lakes cities... the old housing just isn't attractive enough for rehabbing and investment...

I don't think Chicago fits that definition. Most blocks are about 20 houses long and the housing stock is a mix. There are a lot of frame houses that could (and are) torn down, but the classic Chicago workers' houses are the brick bungalows and Worker's Cottages. I own a 2 story Worker's Cottage built in 1879 that is rock solid and can basically be completely gutted on the inside without any structural effects. It's a very sturdy and versatile building that can be easily adapted to any layout.

[sf_eddo]

In San Francisco, Union Square is on the same grid as the Tenderloin is on the same grid as Pacific Heights is on the same grid as the Haight. All of these neighborhoods are quite different in feel, vibrancy, and look.

South of Market does have a different grid (longer blocks, elevated freeway running through it, more industry, etc) but even different parts of South of Market have opposite feels in terms of vibrancy and gentrification.

[holladay]

integrated building uses are as important as block sizes and orientations. neighborhoods that mix housing and businesses are doing much better nowadays than those that are just housing (maybe during the days of urban renewal it was the inverse, i dont know). the presence of corner stores, pubs, and arterial commercial strips are what gives a neighborhood its vitality. for communities that want to undergo revivals, attracting new businesses to these outlets is key.

[tackledspoon]

integrated building uses are as important as block sizes and orientations. neighborhoods that mix housing and businesses are doing much better nowadays than those that are just housing (maybe during the days of urban renewal it was the inverse, i dont know). the presence of corner stores, pubs, and arterial commercial strips are what gives a neighborhood its vitality. for communities that want to undergo revivals, attracting new businesses to these outlets is key.
This comment was definitely missing from the thread. The neighborhoods that came back hardest in New York were mostly low/mid rise neighborhoods with integrated, street level storefronts (Upper West Side, the Village, "The East Village," Williamsburg etc...). People need a good reason to occupy a street and what better reason than to run an errand, window shop, grab a bite to eat, etcetera? Even more than block length and continuity, integration of housing and business is very important- it keeps eyes on the street at all times. Unless a neighborhood is so far gone that people have given up altogether, you're not going to get a whole lot of crimes committed on a street full of potential witnesses.
The combination of continuity, short block length and storefronts is a winner. People will have plenty of destinations and an equal number of walking routes to take to them.
One more note- local businesses are always better than chain stores for this purpose because they breed a sense of community and camaraderie. The employees and owners of a local business are more likely to come from the neighborhood or a nearby neighborhood and thus have a vested interest in getting to know patrons, keeping the area around the store clean, treating people well and acting as a bit of a watchdog. A Starbucks or Subway draws its managers and employees from outside of the neighborhood. They come in for work, "put up" with people for a few hours and then go home. Like a dead end street, many chain stores act as places that you leave and enter for only one reason, without much positive interaction along the way.

[zilfondel]

Street length really doesn't affect streetlife so much, as long as the scale is a reasonable one. How long are the NYC blocks? over 800 feet or thereabouts?

What matters far more is the population and distinctiveness of a neighborhood. To make it complete, you need public spaces, ground floor retail and a mix of uses. A pedestrian realm is key - that's why European cities are so nice.

Density is also a key to urban vibrancy - while 100 years ago you might have crammed 6+ people into a small house, today you might only have 1 or 2 people living in the same space. Just to keep densities the same, we need to build taller, as densities have gone lower. This is one of hte reasons for Vancouver's success - they try to cram as many people into their neighborhoods, within walking distance of the commercial streets that are integrated into every neighborhood. These commercial streets in turn are fronted by mixed-use buildings with office, residential and retail.

Another very important and overlooked issue is that you need to keep the rich and middle class people in the neighborhood so that they can keep reinvesting into it. Since everything people build eventually decays and falls apart, somebody's got to pay for it. And it only takes a few years of neglect for a building to be well on its way to a bombed-out building.