GoodHood: Austin Neighborhood Rides
Not long ago as I was doing some design research on what makes good urban signage, I found an image that had the word "GoodHood" put into the sidewalk. I love the idea of claiming your hood as good! In an effort to do my due diligence in trying to experience my neighborhood by bike, car, walking and riding (transportation), I met up with my colleague Jacob to do a neighborhood ride-about.
Living Out Front
In my life I have lived in a lot of places. I was born in Ohio and lived there until I was 5. One of the memories I have as a child was that of all of the neighborhood kids playing in the street in front of our houses. The street was the meeting place where all neighborhood activities took place. After Ohio, we moved to Columbia, South Carolina where our house was much larger and on a very large piece of land in the woods. It was suburban but also very wooded, backing up to a lake. We spent every day outside playing in the woods and in the neighborhood. We didn't play on the street as much, but rather in the park behind our house. When I turned 10 we moved to El Paso, Texas.
Amsterdam + Suburbs
Here at URBS we look at regions and believe that our cities and suburbs are co-dependent. Many of our older suburbs were really small towns with a downtown and communities of people who lived and worked right there in their town. Over the years as our cities declined and our suburbs grew so did our design of houses in them. The houses became larger and the suburbs became car based. These car based suburbs in many cases have re-created car based cities.