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Subdivision walls may be one of the hardest nuts to crack when we’re trying to retrofit suburbia into a more connected community.
The motivation is understandable. Anyone who has spent time in an apartment with cranky neighbors complaining about your every move dreams of a little plot of your own to stretch out and get some peace and quiet. I remember my introverted husband tut-tutting about zero lot line neighborhoods. Of course, the HOA, the wall, and the occasional gate or two are intended to assure the consistency that maintains the value of your investment. Too often, it becomes a stifling, frustrating fiefdom where people drive into their garages and close them before they even get out of their cars. Gated communities can even get additional issues with crime just because thieves believe there’s something of value there to steal.
HOA’s have an interesting history.
They began as a response to the ever increasing scale of residential development. A developer comes in with a “project” that will increase the size of your community by 25% overnight. The extra tax revenue is welcome (because you haven’t looked at the long term costs) but there’s no way you can keep up with code enforcement now. Of course, new development should shoulder its own costs, so the easiest thing to do is require them to do their own code enforcement. The wall just makes the lines easier to see and gives homeowners protection from outsiders that will mess up their (HOA required) maintenance and drive through their quiet neighborhood streets. Honestly, I’m not sure why someone hasn’t sued cities for dereliction of duty when the required HOA becomes overly draconian.
The Long Subdivision Road Problem
Of course, cities want good connectivity, but subdivisions are designed to shelter people from through traffic. That leads to this kind of thing:
This is a stub-out that sits at the end of a mile long subdivision. On the left is the dregs of a failed orange grove. There are no other through paths north/south, so it would be an ideal cut-through (thus the gate). There should be an entire network of streets between these two east-west corridors, but developers don’t build cities, they build housing projects. Having one driveway for 300 houses isn’t ideal, so the city required this stub-out for fire access. That was all well and good, but the old orange grove had already been bought by the local school board, who built an elementary school there. For several years, the kids who went to that school had to drive (or be bussed) 2 1/2 miles to get to the school they could see from their front yard. Today, they have a walk path through the fence and a crosswalk, but the speeds on Hackney Prairie Road are not ideal and the traffic everywhere is terrible.
The real problem for walking and biking:
This lack of connectivity is killing our ability to connect with each other face to face and these subdivision walls are a big part of the problem. The retail industry has shifted its geographic spacing so you’re never more than a mile from a grocery store as the crow flies, but we are not crows. The subdivision walls may still mean a 2 or 3 mile trip to get there—and that’s too far to walk. Not only that, but the lack of redundancy in the street network means traffic is bad everywhere else. What would have been useful network within the neighborhoods is now a tax burden for the city that provides no greater good. It should not surprise you if these subdivision streets become the last priority for maintenance—if they’re gated, they will have to do their own maintenance. In the meantime, we drive everywhere—and community can’t be built from the dashboard of a car.
So what can we do about it?
Of course, it’s easiest to deal with this before the houses go in the ground. There are a few examples of pedestrian and bicycle connectivity being built into a subdivision before the walls go up—usually because a local planner required it. Of course, Davis, California provides the gold standard. 55 years ago, they developed multiple distinct subdivisions, all connected by a bikeway greenbelt that makes nearly every home in Davis accessible to the town center by bike within a mile or two. These trails run behind houses! They even planted almond trees all along the trail that provide a secondary revenue stream for the city.
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Proactively Planning Pedestrian Pathways
(Who doesn’t love an occasional alliteration!) I’ve found a few connections in my own area that caused me to stop and smile. Here’s a walk path through a subdivision wall.
I talked to the planner that required this. The developer provided the green space the city required, but it wasn’t accessible to any of the people who lived there. Not good. My good friend, Kelly Randall, demanded they make a walk connection there and it also works as a great pass-through for kids walking to the local middle school down the street. What makes this work is the fence on both sides of the trail and a wide enough opening so that it doesn’t feel insecure. Many multifamily communities that but up against shopping centers end up with similar connections that have gates or locks to keep people feeling secure and keep trouble to a minimum.
Breaking down subdivision walls will not be easy. It may not even be possible for another generation, but keeping them from becoming barriers is something planners can require up front, even if the network the developer suggests is less than ideal.
Up next:
I will actually break down and start writing the next series later this week. I promise. Right now I’m in the middle of designing LEGO buildings that are durable enough to survive airline travel—no small feat.
Let me know what you want to talk about next. (and ignore any random Substack generated pressure to subscribe or monetize this—It’s gladly free!)