Today took me to the Gardenside area, roughly along Parker’s Mill Road just south of Versailles Road.  This neighborhood had quite a mix of houses, from modest ranches, to more elaborate, more sprawling ranches, to larger 2-story types and on to houses that probably qualify as McMansions.  With the exception of the McMansions, the area appears to have been built in the 1950’s and into the 1960’s.   All of the houses were nice enough, though none were really notable.

The odd thing today: I had really hoped that I would see the neighborhood’s inhabitants in full force on this very pleasant fall day, but I probably walked a full mile before encountering anyone who wasn’t in a car.  This was especially mystifying by the McMansions and there acre-plus plots.  Eventually, as I started to pass smaller homes, I started to see more people and even at one point had a pleasant conversation.

There were certain parts of this neighborhood that appealed to me at an unconscious level.  That is, it felt “right” to me despite lacking features that I think are pretty important, like safe routes to parks and commercial corridors.  I can recall a comment that a realtor once made to me, that once a client says a house reminds him of where he grew up, the realtor knows the house search is over.  I think about this often, especially when I face this cognitive dissonance between my gut reaction to a neighborhood and my rational one.   Does this neighborhood have some aspect that reminds me of “home” somehow, or was it the smell of dry leaves and the occasional whiff of laundry drying?  My best guess is that there is some magic ratio involving street width or house setbacks that l really like, and this neighborhood (especially the more southern portions) was built close to that ratio.