Day 56-Youth and Wisdom

October 31, 2014 Marcel

Today I took another trip out along Bryan Station and walked through several smaller subdivisions. The big surprise here was the variety of housing ages (and sizes) that I encountered over a fairly short stretch with houses from the 1950’s and 60’s next to a subdivision with lots that have not yet been built.

There is a lesson here about growth patterns and maybe about entropy. This newest subdivision appears to have been cut off a neighboring parcel belonging to a church. In a lot of ways, this reminded me of the Pinehurst area from Day 16, and oddly enough, this neighborhood is listed under the same “neighborhood” name by the assessor’s office. The other Pinehurst is close but it’s not obviously connected and my belief at the time I walked it was that it was cut off a privately-owned property (so perhaps using the same name is a simple convention for the assessor?) But there are similarities, in that both appear to have been divided off larger properties, not exactly as infill but almost having the affect of a small infill project. Anyway, I think this area’s strength is in the range of housing ages, something made possible by this subdivision of larger parcels.

Subdivision of property is interesting though. It’s never as easy to assemble pieces back together as it is to subdivide. It usually takes concerted effort. It reminds me of watching oil in a pot of boiling water while it separates and then recombines. And so, I would say that watching the development patterns of Lexington is sort of like watching that oil. (This is true of any city, really, but particularly Lexington because of the value of the agricultural lands surrounding it.) Larger parcels get broken down and sometimes these are broken immediately into small pieces like house lots. Other times they are medium-size parcels, an agricultural reserve, a church, maybe a house with acreage. These midsized lots can be broken down further and often, eventually, they are. And this is sort of fascinating. Looking at the map of this area, there are places where this sort of thing could easily happen again.

Among all of this, I found among a couple of my snapshots a couple of photos of similar scenes in different subdivisions. I think seeing these two photos side by side is a nice way to show the impact of setbacks on the “feel” of a street.

View of a street in Northwood constructed in the 1950's — View of a street in Northwood constructed in the 1950’s

The first photo is from the Northwood neighborhood. Here the houses are mostly 1 or 1-1/2 floors. Houses are set relatively close to the sidewalk. The street feels cozy.

View of a street in Kenawood constructed in the 1960's. — View of a street in Kenawood constructed in the 1960’s.

The second photo is from the Kenawood neighborhood, just across Bryan Station. This area was built only a little later, in the early 1960’s. Houses are ranch style houses, so they are probably close in size, but they are set back further from the street. This street feels more open. The difference is subtle and other elements, like street-parked cars and trees, have an impact as well.

A final though. I took advantage of this walk today to walk through the area I first wrote about on Day 5. One of the questions I had at that time was whether my expectations about political leanings would be borne out by the yard signs that would inevitably appear. As it turns out, sort of. That neighborhood seems to be pretty evenly mixed, befitting of the mixed signals I was getting then!

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Day 55-Negative Space

October 29, 2014 Marcel

Today’s walk took me to a residential area just north of Man O’War near Armstrong Mill Road. The homes here were a little deceptive, in that I noticed that several houses didn’t have garages facing the street, so I overestimated their age. The houses here turn out to be “2-story” ranch type houses from the 1970’s and early 80’s.

There weren’t a lot of surprises here. This neighborhood seemed to be about in the center of all the informal metrics I’ve been tracking: playfulness of Halloween decorations, political leanings based on yard signs, number of people walking/running/biking. I think my favorite thing may have been a stretch of sidewalk that had been power-washed to draw sometimes intricate patters on the sidewalk. I was also intrigued by the topography; houses in the back of the neighborhood had utility poles in the backyard that were low enough to indicate a fairly steep, deep depression. I think it would be fascinating to see, for lack of a better term, a “negative space” map of the city, showing these backyards that back up to each other and the way utility lines run through the city.

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Day 54-Water Features

October 28, 2014 Marcel

Today’s walk took me to Lansdowne, specifically the southwest corner of the neighborhood near Tate’s Creek and Malabu. This was mostly residential, an area with large lots with ranch houses along with several apartment buildings located along Malabu and townhomes along Overbrook Fountain. Most of the homes here date from the 1960’s, though the townhomes along Overbrook Fountain were added in the 1990’s and the condos on that street are even newer. The condos and townhomes had some unique features including an out-of-use pool and an odd fountain, both apparently in disrepair despite their relative youth.

A typical stretch of road in the Landsdowne area

The area with single family homes was similar to some of the Gardenside areas from Day 52, but somehow more inviting, a little more interesting. The mix of single family and multifamily homes follows what I’m beginning to see is a common formula to try to balance density (this appears in other neighborhoods, including Gardenside, though it isn’t always apparent from my route). One noticeable difference between today and Sunday is that today, I saw people walking, jogging, biking despite the light rain in higher numbers. Is there something structurally that makes these activities more comfortable here? Comparing Malabu and Lansdowne to Parker’s Mill, I would say yes. A defined curb makes these streets feel “slower” and more accessible to bikes and pedestrians (sidewalks help too, along the busier streets). Combine the setbacks and house heights from those parts of Gardenside where they were ideal with feeder routes that feel as safe as Malabu and you’d have a pretty pedestrian friendly neighborhood.

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Day 53-Parking Woes

October 27, 2014 Marcel

Today I took a quick trip through the Eastwood neighborhood, near Liberty and Fortune Drive. This was a residential neighborhood, and most of the houses were townhouses, with some small houses as I moved further from Fortune. These seem to be relatively young, mostly early 2000’s homes.

With this area being dominated by multifamily homes and thus fairly dense, one thing that stood out was parking. Parking appeared to be a big problem here. No Parking signs were all over the place, in front of mailboxes, in front of trash cans, in front of private spaces. And cars were everywhere, too, even in the middle of the day. What do these people do when then want to invite company over? The interesting thing is that there really didn’t appear to be a lack of spaces, with units having garages in most cases, and often a second dedicated space. There were additional visitor spaces too. So how many car spaces does a family living in a townhouse need?

I was reminded of something I saw recently about a residential parking garage in Portland that is well under capacity. And while there are a lot of differences between downtown Portland and Lexington outside of New Circle Road, clearly there are conditions where people survive, get to work, get groceries, all presumably contentedly and with something less than 2 cars per family. To an extent, we understand what those conditions are and they usually involve “density” and “transit” which are four-letter words in many places. So part of the question for a city like Lexington may be whether it is desirable to create those conditions, and part of the question may be, if so, could they be created in a specific location such as this one.

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Day 52-A Golden Ratio

October 26, 2014 Marcel

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.