The idea is simple:  just count the number of trick-or-treaters at your door on Halloween night and you’ll get a measure of how child friendly your neighborhood is the whole year.  Certainly, it’s quite simplistic, but I would agree that neighborhoods with lots of trick-or-treaters tend to have lots of children who are comfortable being outside in their neighborhood.

What’s your trick-or-treater index?  Where do you live?  What do you think of this as a measure of the child friendliness?

If homebuyers intuitively “get” how these attributes might create community, community-seeking homebuyers will want to live in a New Urbanist development like The Waters.

From what I observed, this is exactly what happened.  Many of the first residents of The Waters I spoke with, who moved in two years ago, explained to me that they were looking for a place where residents would have close social bonds with one another, and they believed that the New Urbanist concepts described to them would result in a tight community.

These first residents have a very special feeling that also contributes to the community spirit at The Waters.  I’ll call this the “pioneer effect” because these residents feel like pioneers.  They came looking for community, but they came before there was any community.  In addition, they all moved in there around the same time.  So, they’re evangelists for The Waters, much like people who bought the first Apple Macintosh computers in the 1980s became evangelists for the Mac.

I experienced this pioneer effect firsthand in my visit at The Waters.  These first residents were intently interested in explaining to me what makes the community spirit at The Waters so great.  They are clearly evangelistic salespeople for their community.  Twice during my late afternoon walk, people I never met before asked me if I was “the guy from Playborhood,” and then took the time and interest to their personal experience at The Waters.

In addition, in the videos about community on The Waters’ site early residents absolutely gush about how great it is there.  Nathan Norris, the head of marketing who managed the creation of these videos, told me he was amazed at how overwhelmingly positive people came across in the videos. 

The word of mouth marketing of these first residents is the best form of marketing because it’s highly distributed and inherently authentic.  As Nathan Norris realizes, it’s The Waters’ greatest asset, and it gives that development a great opportunity to “scale” its strong community spirit from its present first village to the seven villages eventually planned for The Waters.
[I visited The Waters, a fledgling ”New Urbanist” community in Alabama, in early February.  This is the last in a series of four articles about my visit there.  The first three are The Waters: A Very Tight-Knit Community, The Waters: Kids’ Lives, and The Waters: How Town Planning and Architecture Help Create Community.]

Anyone who ever studied elementary economics can understand one of the primary reasons for the success of community spirit at The Waters:  The supply of homes that are marketed for the great community around them is very low, while demand for these homes is very high.  In fact, in the Playborhood survey we found that a large proportion of parents would be willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars, and many even hundreds of thousands of dollars, for a home with better neighborhood play prospects than their current home.

So, if a new development markets itself well as having great community spirit, it can attract lots and lots of families who want this.  These families ”self-select” by buying homes at this development.  Thus, the development ends up with a bunch of community-minded families, and, voila!, a neighborhood with great community spirit is born.

Low or No Fences:  There are few fences at The Waters, and those that exist are very short - say 2-feet high.  Thus, it’s easy to see people in their yards, and it’s also easy to look through yards to other streets and homes.

Small Yards (front, back, and side):  Houses are very close to the street, so front yards are small or nonexistent.  Side and back yards are small as well.  This makes it easier for people to see their neighbors when they walk outside their houses.

Narrow Streets:  It’s very difficult for cars to go speeding through streets in The Waters because they are very narrow.  And, because people are often walking on the street, cars often have to stop.  Like in many old European cities, pedestrians can rule the streets at The Waters.

Integrated Retail Center:  Retail shops are integrated into every village plan in an area called “Town Square.” The Waters made sure that a food market + restaurant was at Lucas Point from the beginning, even though there weren’t (and still aren’t) enough residents there to support it.  Thus, The Waters subsidizes its food market + restaurant, The Market.  Also in Town Square is a YMCA gym.  So, residents can buy food products, eat a meal, have a drink, and work out at a gym without getting in their cars.

Integrated Recreation Facilities:  The Waters boasts tennis courts, lakes with plentiful fish, a play structure, and a swimming pool all within easy walking distance to residences.

Numerous Great Common Spaces:  Courtyards, open fields, docks, and common lake shore land including a sandy beach are very prominent and are well-used by residents.

No Cul-de-Sacs:  Cul-de-sacs are highly desirable in many suburban towns because they are the only places where cars don’t speed by and endanger pedestrians.  However, at The Waters, pedestrians rule over cars pretty much everywhere.  So, cul-de-sacs are not needed as a sanctuary for pedestrians, and every house has pedestrians walking by.

Big Porches:  Residents live a great deal on their porches, particularly during summer evenings, when it’s not uncommon for neighbors or passers-by to come over and pull up a chair.

[I visited The Waters, a fledgling ”New Urbanist” community in Alabama, in early February.  This is the third in a series of four articles about my visit there.  The first two are The Waters: A Very Tight-Knit Community and The Waters: Kids’ Lives.]

I admit that I was skeptical of New Urbanist claims that town planning and architecture could, by themselves, play a strong role in creating community ties.  However, after visiting The Waters, I’m a believer.  Even though the number of children below 12 is average or below average - 30 for 110 residences - kids play far more here than in other communities in North America.

There are other important factors that have contributed to this outcome which I will discuss in the next and final article on The Waters, but in this article, I describe some of the most important features of The Waters’ design that create community:

What’s interesting is that, while kids at The Waters have very active social lives with each other, the community doesn’t have a particularly high density of kids.  The community currently has 30 children between 0 and 12 in a community of 110 homes.  That’s probably a bit below average for the United States, but because homes are so close together and because the kids are allowed to roam rather freely, they get together rather frequently.

The only real downside to kids lives at The Waters is that they have no neighborhood school, so parents have to drive them to various schools in the Montgomery, AL area.  Thus, kids there don’t walk to school, and they don’t have a shared school experience.

The developers of The Waters are currently working very hard to bring a neighborhood elementary school there.  They have designated a location, and are working with other local officials to make it happen.  The earliest this school would open, if it does indeed clear the remaining political hurdles, would be Fall of 2009.
[I visited The Waters, a fledgling ”New Urbanist” community in Alabama, in early February.  This is the second in a series of four articles about my visit there.  The first one is The Waters: A Very Tight-Knit Community.]

The Waters truly is a “Kids’ Paradise,"as they claim in their marketing literature.  Kids have a great life outside, throughout the community.  I can confirm this from my own observations even though I was there in the middle of winter.  Residents assured me that I would see even more kid outdoor activity if I were there in the summer.

In the day I was there, I saw many, many instances of kids wandering on their own, comfortable and safe.  Certainly, parents are very involved in their kids’ lives there, but they don’t hover over them the way they do in most places.  In fact, parents routinely “pinch-hit” for each other, watching each other’s kids.

Even I, a total outsider, was greeted by many people during my solo strolls through The Waters.  Note that some of these weren’t just polite hellos to a stranger.  At least two people greeted me by asking me if I was “the guy from Playborhood,” and then proceeded to talk about the Playborhood ideal of kids playing outside and how great a community feeling The Waters has.  And a few others struck up a conversation after meeting me just once, when they were introduced to me by Nathan the evening before.

Besides the amount of social interactions I witnessed at The Waters, the other phenomenon I want to convey is the spirit of spontaneity there. 

In The Waters’ video about community (click on the image above to see it), resident Amy Neuenschwander says, “There’s no need for planning ahead if we live within walking distance of each other.  So, you hang out at the pool on a Saturday, and at about 4 o’clock, everybody starts getting hungry and we decide whose house to go to.  All families just come together, and ‘bring what you have.’ It’s very easy to enjoy each other’s company when it’s that low-stress.  The kids entertain each other and the parents all get to have parent night, too.”

This isn’t just propaganda - I saw all sorts of spontaneous gatherings in the one day I was there.

Residents tell me that on summer evenings, many people gather outside The Market, the restaurant & cafe in The Waters’ Town Square, and drink and talk past midnight.  Even in the winter, when I was there, the interior of The Market is often full.  In either case, summer or winter, groups of people at The Market aren’t autonomous islands like they are in most American restaurants.  Rather, people in different groups know each other, so groups expand and contract as some people hop from conversation to conversation.

Indeed, The Waters has an incredible sense of community, and in three upcoming articles I’ll be discussing the causes and effects of this in more detail.  I’ll be discussing:  1) kids’ lives, 2) how town planning and architecture help create the community spirit there, and 3) how the self-selection of community-minded residents contributes to The Waters’ community spirit.
[I visited The Waters, a fledgling ”New Urbanist” community in Alabama, in early February.  This is the first in a series of four articles about my visit there.]

I spent only one and a half days at The Waters, but in that time, I had more interactions on the street with neighbors than I’ve had in the seven months since I moved to my current home in Palo Alto, CA. 

My host there, Nathan Norris, said “hello” to pretty much everyone he saw, and had at least a short chat with at least a third of them.  He probably had at least a half dozen conversations with different people during the hour and a half he walked me around on the one morning I was there.  Sure, Nathan is one of the founders of The Waters and is a resident there, so he should be popular, but he wasn’t the only one talking to people there. 

In fact, I’d venture to say that very few people were alone in the various outdoor venues I witnessed. 

In addition, though, they have a kind and wise teacher right there who is ready to answer any question, and whose every answer leads us to ask more questions.  Karen studied biology in college and is a former teacher.  Walking through her garden with her, I was struck by how many questions I had for her on a subject that never appealed to me as a student.

How does trash become fertilizer in a compost pile?  What function to worms play in a garden?  Can ducks understand us when we talk?  When is the best time of year to pick fruit from her 17 different fruit trees? 

I felt like a toddler seeing a garden for the first time.  Come to think of it, in my 45 years, perhaps I’d never really seen a garden before Karen showed me hers. 

You can read more about Karen Harwood and her Dana Meadows Organic Children’s Garden in a Palo Alto Weekly article written in 2003.
[NOTE:  Karen Harwell, the topic of this article, will be a panelist at the Neighborhood Play Forum in Palo Alto on January 23.]

I just met the woman of my dreams last week.  No, my wife has nothing to worry about.  I met the woman I’d most like to live next to.  Her name is Karen Harwood, and she lives on Dana Avenue in Palo Alto, CA.

You see, my wife and I have been searching for a house in a Palo Alto or Menlo Park Playborhood for over two years.  We want to live in a neighborhood where lots of children roam outside playing, independent of their parents. 

Karen has singlehandedly created this environment in her one-sixth of an acre yard, the “Dana Meadows Organic Children’s Garden.” That small amount of space, less the space for her house, is the home of seventeen different fruit trees, numerous vegetable plants, ducks, and bee hives.  It also contains many facilities that make it sustainable like a compost pile and worm pile.

His 9-year-old brother thought it was a grand idea, however. He rounded up a couple of local friends on the phone and they ran down the street knocking on doors. Within minutes the game was on – the street’s two yellow “kids at play” men were in position and the perfect props had been found in dad’s soccer referee flags and some sidewalk chalk.

And, thankfully, it wasn’t just the one driver passing through who looked on benevolently – everybody slowed down and seemed to appreciate the kids’ prerogative to play outside. One even looked sheepish and shouted “sorry” to me as she put a brief stop to the game while driving by.

Needless to say my pre-teen was soon immersed in the game and several parents looked on with pleasure. There’s not much else that gives 21st-century parents that glow of happiness than watching their kids behave like 19th-century children. (Or even mid-20th century children. Let’s just say pre-TV children.)

A couple of the adults eagerly volunteered to stand in for kids who had to be scooped off to archery class or needed a bathroom break. One father couldn’t resist offering strategic tips, periodically shouting out instructions to the kids (who largely ignored him). Another case of parental over-involvement? Perhaps, but when I asked him what the rules of the game were, he responded: “I have no idea!”

What was certain was that the children were having a ball—strangely you just don’t see that sort of exhilaration on the faces of kids playing “Mario Kart Doubledash”—and their parents were thrilled.

Now I can only hope that this type of spontaneous event will be repeated—and regularly. For it’s clear to me that my family lives in a near perfect “playborhood” and it would be bordering on the tragic if we didn’t take advantage of that fact to the full.

The car slowed to a near halt and the driver rolled down his window. This looked ominous. He had just had to negotiate a gang of neighborhood kids who had taken over the street and he wanted to speak to me. “I don’t know,” he said, “you just can’t speed anywhere anymore.” He was smiling.

When I take my afternoon walk down the street, I’ve witnessed these older boys creating their own fun with boys (and a girl) of all ages. They set their own boundaries and call their own plays. I paused one afternoon to watch a four-foot-tall third grader try to tag a six-foot eighth grader as he passed the ball. The pass was incomplete. The kids put their scrimmage lines back together and tried again. No grown-ups were out there growling at the kids, exhorting them to win or telling them how to play better and harder. These boys were just having fun. Isn’t that what sports are supposed to be about?

Even though the kids played with freedom and abandon, I knew that the mom was in the house and ready to spring into action if someone got hurt or tempers flared out of control. Maybe that’s part of the magic. The boys know this is a safe place to play. Their busy parents can be confident that they’re dropping their sons off at a home with a caring adult. As my friend once said to me, “I’m all over them like a hot tamale. I’ve got to keep my eye on them. I feel responsible.” But you don’t see her hovering or yelling at them. She’s just there.

Yet, I can’t help but feel that it’s her attitude and her husband’s that make their house what I call the magic magnet house. They and the other parents in the neighborhood pact have tried to teach their kids to be responsible and respectful. They’ve explained the difference between right and wrong. Then, the parents step back and let the kids go out and apply what they’ve learned. I’ve seen the older kids literally watch out for the younger ones. I’ve hired these kids to help me dig up roots in my garden, collect my papers and walk my dog. My neighbor has hired them to lift heavy boxes. They work hard.

When I see the littler kids down the street, I feel that they, too, will grow up to have more of a sense of self-worth and responsibility than the children who are programmed non-stop. These neighborhood kids are getting the value of unstructured play — outside, in fresh air, no matter the weather. These little kids make up ever-changing game scenarios and charge around in seemingly random fashion. Sure, they fall down and get hurt. But isn’t that how they learn resilience? Moms and dads are there to make sure the kids don’t blunder into the street. Isn’t that how kids begin to learn limits?

In talking to friends who live in other parts of town, I’ve learned that my street is thankfully not unique. One young dad told me that he is sensing a backlash against over-programming kids. Despite the image of Darien being filled with overbearing, sports-crazed parents and kids pressured into non-stop practices and games, some parents are just saying, “No.” Instead, they’re encouraging old fashioned pick-up baseball games, hide-and-seek, and even catching frogs in ponds.

So while I see the swarms of kids playing in soccer teams at Cherry Lawn, I also see tons of smaller children playing randomly in the playground and neighborhood dads tossing balls with groups of boys and girls. These are not scheduled play dates. This is just fun. It’s the wonder of childhood.

In this season of wish lists and ads telling us what we “must have,” I’m hoping more parents will think twice, draw the line and give kids what they really need: the miracle of love and a little freedom to just be kids.

Wyn Lydecker is a freelance writer and owner of Upstart Business Planning. She uses her 30 years of experience in marketing and entrepreneurial business planning to consult with business owners and craft clear, dynamic strategic plans and marketing documents. Her business plans answer the questions investors ask most. Wyn has also been a contributor to the Darien Times for the past 15 years, writing on local hot topics in Darien, CT. She holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA in Economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Learn more at her Web sites: [url=http://www.wynlydecker.com]http://www.wynlydecker.com[/url] and [url=http://www.upstartbusinessplanning.com]http://www.upstartbusinessplanning.com[/url].  This article was adapted from her original post on the Darien Times web site.
[Editor’s Note:  I don’t know if it’s just Wyn Lydecker’s wonderful writing, but I’m in love with Birch Road in Darien, CT now.  I’ll have to keep my eye on homes for sale there… ; ) ]

When Friday afternoon rolls around, two front yards in my neighborhood come alive with activity. Just a few houses away, I can expect to see up to a dozen kids ranging from third graders to middle schoolers running around, kicking a soccer ball, throwing a football or flicking lacrosse sticks. Farther down the street, a gaggle of pre-schoolers and kindergartners are happily playing imaginary games, tossing balls and riding on toy vehicles under the watchful eyes of parents.

<a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&om=1&msa=0&am;…

This is pretty much the only way Marco has real fun play with other kids.  Sure, we do playdates with other families, but the kids don’t really let their hair down the way Marco and his cousins do. 

That’s because real fun play, or “unstructured play,” is most likely to happen when adults are comfortable letting their kids play without scrutiny.  That is most likely to occur at one of the kid’s houses, or in a neighborhood around the kids’ houses.

So, when school’s in session for Marco’s cousins in Pittsburgh, we’re stuck here in our “nice neighborhood” without opportunities for him to play, even though kids just like his cousins live right here.
My family and I live in a “nice neighborhood” in Palo Alto, CA.  Some kids live around here, including 1) two early elementary school-aged kids next door, 2) a sixth grader a couple doors down from there, and 3) three toddler boys across the street.

Our 3-1/2 year old son Marco and I frequently play in our front yard and along the sidewalk, but it’s quite lonely out there.  We never see 1) because they have a big fence and either stay behind it or drive away, we hardly see 2) even though his parents are good friends of ours because he’s super-busy with football, basketball, and sleepovers, and members of 3)’s house have only answered the door once out of at least six times we’ve gone over and knocked on the door.

My wife and I have resorted to importing Marco’s five cousins here from Pittsburgh, PA twice in the past few months so he can have playmates around.  They were just here over Christmas.

The Palio of Siena, the subject of the video above, is the culmination of life in the contradas.  In that video, I describe my personal experience joining one contrada, La Torre, and living through the experience of a lifetime there during the Palio of August 16, 2005.  It’s called “The Ecstasy After the Agony.” Be forewarned:  it’s 27 minutes long, but I do think it’s quite fascinating…

[By the way, if you want me to write more about Siena’s contradas - for instance, kids’ life there - *please* ask.  I’m very passionate about this, but I don’t want to overload you with this topic if it seems a bit tangential.  In the meantime, you can read up on it in the seminal book on the Palio. One of the co-authors, Alessandro Falassi, plays a prominent part in the video.]