A Simple Question: What Is It That We Really Need From The Neighborhood Where We Live?

Most of us share a general, intuitive understanding of the qualities we would like to have in the neighborhood around us. It is not very complicated.

A sense of privacy -- we are left alone when we want to be alone. Friendly people who know you, and whom you greet and occasionally talk to. Safety -- safety from violence, from theft. Physical safety from traffic and noise. Safety for children. Safety at night. A beautiful place -- something which lifts your heart when you walk around or look out of the window. Intimate and personal. Physical safety from traffic and noise. Safety for children. Trees and gardens. A place to sit in public that is really a wonderful place. Streets and public places where everyone feels at home, instead of where nobody feels at home. Uniqueness of the neighborhood, so we know it when we are home and when we get home. Water, perhaps..

And, of course, we also hope for these qualities in a newly built neighborhood, or in a refurbished neighborhood. This is the dream, one might say, of every developer. A developer with a conscience, who dreams of building neighborhoods, hopes and wishes to build for people, something that has these qualities.

Yet we all know that developers, rarely – perhaps if we are more honest, never -- reach this ideal. There is something about the way that things are set up, in the process of building houses, that prevents it, perhaps even virtually forbids it.

The reason is not hard to find. Making a neighborhood which has these qualities, is a human process. It is generated by a long chain of human events, involving respect for people, respect for one another, respect for land and place, and respect for age-old ways of making things: the origin of every genuine human structure. Above all it comes from the land, and it comes from the people.

When successful, it binds land and people together, into a social-spatial fabric or tapestry. When we list the items at the beginning of this section, it is that fabric or tapestry, of which we are dreaming. We will never get that kind of neighborhood, unless we consciously set out to make that fabric. The fabric must be generated by the processes we use. And in the processes we support, that try to build houses and public space and neighborhoods, it is this tapestry and fabric that must be generated. Without it, nothing valuable can ensue. With it, the neighborhood has a very strong chance of life.

Building that fabric, successfully, in modern society, is what this paper is about.