Where does your neighborhood end?
by Urban Omnibus January 6th, 2009 |
The question may seem innocuous, tied up in clichés of place marketing and nauseating acronyms and portmanteaux (SoBro anyone?), but at a moment in which notions of appropriate scale and contextual architecture are fightin’ words, neighborhood boundaries can make or break urban propositions. The press tells us Atlantic Yards is in Downtown Brooklyn. Would the debate be different if we understood the footprint to be in Prospect Heights? After September 11th, funds were released for the residential, commercial and cultural development of Lower Manhattan. How would growth and investment patterns differ with an alternative definition of where Lower Manhattan begins and ends? Any real estate broker on Craigslist will claim Park Slope extends to Prospect Ave. But if a crime is reported on 16th and 4th, she will lose no time in claiming it took place in Sunset Park, a world away from your dreamy two-bedroom. Over the next couple months, we’ll be collecting answers to this vexing question – a question everyone seems to have an opinion about – and then we’ll plot the answers against “official” definitions from real estate, city planning, criminal justice, and electoral agencies.
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You should do a calculation based on the square blocks people submit to see *how small* our neighborhoods are. Mine’s about 50– actually, a bigger number than I thought.
When I first moved to Brooklyn in 2002, I lived on Wyckoff between Court and Smith which falls in between a lot of neighborhood names on most maps. Most recent maps show “Cobble Hill” on one side of Court St and “Boerum hill” on the other side of Smith St. I was sort of fascinated with whether folks who had been there longer thought of it as Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, or Boerum Hill. (Let alone the laughable BoCoCa, the more general South Brooklyn, or the pre-BQE sense that it was all Red Hook).
Our street had a block party and I interviewed as many of my neighbors as I could. I asked them their address; what they called the neighborhood; when they moved here; what they liked about it; and how it had changed. I took their photo, recorder their responses — always wanted to make an interactive web map from it but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I heard some great stories about pushcart vendors on Columbia Street and the rough days of Smith Street. To my surprise, most people actually called it Cobble Hill, even the old timers on the block. Better for real estate values?
Lindsay – How many responses did you collect?
I’d have to go back and look at the digital files — probably 12-16 or so. My block isn’t huge….It wasn’t meant to have any research significance, was a personal exploration.