Therefore:
Help people to define the neighborhoods they live in, not more than 300 yards across, with no more than 400 or 500 inhabitants. In existing cities, encourage local groups to organize themselves to form such neighborhoods. Give the neighborhoods some degree of autonomy as far as taxes and land controls are concerned. Keep major roads outside these neighborhoods.
max. population of 500
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| max diameter of 300 yards |
Mark the neighborhood, above all, by gateways wherever main paths enter it—main gateways (53)—and by modest boundaries of non-residential land between the neighborhoods—neighborhood boundary (15). Keep major roads within these boundaries —parallel roads (23) ; give the neighborhood a visible center, perhaps a common or a green—accessible green (6o)—or a small public square (61); and arrange houses and workshops within the neighborhood in clusters of about a dozen at a time— HOUSE CLUSTER (37), WORK COMMUNITY (41). . . .
A PATTERN LANGUAGE
want to lay out a green according to this pattern, you must not only follow the instructions which describe the pattern itself, but must also try to embed the green within an identifiable neighborhood or in some subculture boundary, and in a way that helps to form quiet backs3 and then you must work to complete the green by building in some positive outdoor space, tree places, and a garden wall.
In short, no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world, only to the extent that is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.
This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole 3 and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it.
Now we explain the nature of the relation between problems and solutions, within the individual patterns.
Each solution is stated in such a way that it gives the essential field of relationships needed to solve the problem, but in a very general and abstract way—so that you can solve the problem for yourself, in your own way, by adapting it to your preferences, and the local conditions at the place where you are making it.
For this reason, we have tried to write each solution in a way which imposes nothing on you. It contains only those essentials which cannot be avoided if you really
| 15 NEIGHBORHOOD BOUNDARY* |
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86
. . . the physical boundary needed to protect subcultures from one another, and to allow their ways of life to be unique and idiosyncratic, is guaranteed, for a community of 7000 (12), by the pattern subculture boundary (13). But a second, smaller kind of boundary is needed to create the smaller identifiable NEIGHBORHOOD (iq).
The strength of the boundary is essential to a neighborhood. If the boundary is too weak the neighborhood will not be able to maintain its own identifiable character.
The cell wall of an organic ceil is, in most cases, as large as, or larger, than the cell interior. It is not a surface which divides inside from outside, but a coherent entity in its own right, which preserves the functional integrity of the cell and also provides for a multitude of transactions between the cell interior and the ambient fluids.
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| Cell with cell walclass="underline" The cell wall is a place in its own right. |
We have already argued, in subculture boundary (13), that a human group, with a specific life style, needs a boundary around it to protect its idiosyncrasies from encroachment and dilution by surrounding ways of life. This subculture boundary,
then, functions just like a cell wall—it protects the subculture and creates space for its transactions with surrounding functions.
The argument applies as strongly to an individual neighborhood, which is a subculture in microcosm.
However, where the subculture boundaries require wide swaths of land and commercial and industrial activity, the neighborhood boundaries can be much more modest. Indeed it is not possible for a neighborhood of 500 or more to bound itself with shops and streets and community facilities; there simply aren’t enough to go around. Of course, the few neighborhood shops there are— the street cafe (88), the corner crocery (89)—will help to form the edge of the neighborhood, but by and large the boundary of neighborhoods will have to come from a completely different morphological principle.
From observations of neighborhoods that succeed in being well-defined, both physically and in the minds of the townspeople, we have learned that the single most important feature of a neighborhood’s boundary is restricted access into the neighborhood: neighborhoods that are successfully defined have definite and relatively few paths and roads leading into them.
For example, here is a map of the Etna Street neighborhood in Berkeley.
Our neighborhood, compared with a typical part of a grid system.
There are only seven roads into this neighborhood, compared with the fourteen which there would be in a typical part of the street grid. The other roads all dead end in T junctions immediately at the edge of the neighborhood. Thus, while the Etna Street neighborhood is not literally walled off from the community, access into it is subtly restricted. The result is that people do not come into the neighborhood by car unless they have
15 NEIGHBORHOOD BOUNDARY
business there 5 and when people are in the neighborhood, they recognize that they are in a distinct part of town. Of course, the neighborhood was not “created” deliberately. It was an area of Berkeley which has become an identifiable neighborhood because of this accident in the street system.
An extreme example of this principle is the Fuggerei in Augsburg, illustrated in identifiable neighborhood (14). The Fuggerei is entirely bounded by the backs of buildings and walls, and the paths into it are narrow, marked by gateways.
Indeed, if access is restricted, this means, by definition, that those few points where access is possible, will come to have special importance. In one way or another, subtly, or more obviously, they will be gateways, which mark the passage into the neighborhood. We discuss this more fully in main gateways (53). But the fact is that every successful neighborhood is identifiable because it has some kind of gateways which mark its boundaries: the boundary comes alive in peoples’ minds because they recognize the gateways.