Great Neighborhoods:
How to Bring Them Home
Introduction - Table of Contents - (696 KB)
Chapter 1: Why Great Neighborhoods? - (2655 KB)
Chapter 2: People and Their Homes - (3239 KB)
Chapter 3: A Neighborhood is More than Homes - (3420 KB)
Chapter 4: Fitting the Pieces Together - (4919 KB)
Chapter 5: Modern Land Development Patterns - (1244 KB)
Chapter 6: Making Great Neighborhoods Happen - (1832 KB)
Appendix A: Energy Efficiency for Great Neighborhoods - (163 KB)
Appendix B, Endnotes, & Glossary: Making Great Neighborhoods Happen (245 KB)
The 1000 Friends Great Neighborhoods Project is intended to help teach the
residents and developers in Wisconsin about the social, environmental and
economic benefits of building compact, mixed-use, aesthetically appealing
neighborhoods; and to offer professional and layperson guidance for how to
advocate for and create these neighborhoods.
Great neighborhoods are the cornerstone of healthy communities
They
provide vitality, personality, character, and life-blood to the larger
community. Yet we have forgotten how to build great neighborhoods. Too
often we build residential zones where people wake up and go to sleep – but do not
stay to work, learn and play. The places where children learn and play, where
adults work, where we shop – these places are too often far apart from
one another and require an increasingly long car-ride to get there. We started
building communities like this after World War II in order to escape the
dirty industrial city and find respite in the country. We built massive freeway
systems to aid in our escape and we separated the residential, commercial
and industrial sections of our communities.
Although we have solved many of our industrial pollution problems, we now must face the social, environmental, health and economic impacts of the zoning decisions made decades ago. Conventional subdivisions require that we get in our cars in order to run the simplest of errands, our children can’t walk to school, we have developed far more land than our population growth would suggest we should and haphazard development and increased driving are now primary air and water pollutants. A transportation system designed solely for cars has created unsafe streets for pedestrians, and virtually complete auto dependency reduces opportunities for walking, contributing to obesity and resulting health problems. Ironically, until very recently, building compact, efficient, mixed-use neighborhoods that use less land and require far less driving was illegal.
In 1999, the state passed the most sweeping land use legislation in a generation, Smart Growth, in order to address these challenges. The principle goal of the law was to encourage all of Wisconsin’s communities to create long-term comprehensive plans for their growth. The law also required the development of a traditional neighborhood ordinance and requires all communities of population 12,500 or greater to have this ordinance on their books so that building a traditional neighborhood – designed to strengthen community bonds – is no longer illegal.
The primary, tangible outcome of the Great Neighborhoods Project is the development of the Great Neighborhoods: How to bring them Home handbook. This centerpiece project will provide the impetus to share ideas with developers, residents and local officials in Dane County – both in the development of this piece and in its distribution. Currently, no handbook like the one we propose exists for the talented and committed planning and development community in Dane County. The conversations we share and the final handbook will ideally serve as resources for a long time, and if successful, can and should be replicated for other communities across the state.
Additionally,
many of the outcomes of this project will be intangible and long-term.
Neighborhoods built according to the principles and guidelines of this
program will simply feel like cohesive, vibrant places for
the families and individuals who live there. The basic structure of these
places will increase the opportunity for social interaction – something
we rarely think about when building conventional residential areas. We
will also design the program to engage citizens and developers in conversations
about the intangible benefits of healthy neighborhoods and smart growth.
We will pilot our Great Neighborhoods project in Dane County, Wisconsin
and plan to take it to other counties throughout the state as well.
Great Neighborhoods: How to Bring them Home was made possible with funding from Madison Gas & Electric, the Madison Community Foundation, the Dane County Better Urban Infill Development (BUILD) program and 1000 Friends of Wisconsin.
1000 Friends of Wisconsin
16 N. Carroll Street, Suite 810 Madison
WI 53703 608.259.1000