4 Ways to Build a Better Neighborhood

How to Build a Better Neighborhood

By Danielle Davis

Even if we haven’t actually experienced it, most of us have nostalgia for that perfect neighborhood, the one where people know each other, help each other, hang out together.

So what is the one ingredient necessary to create that kind of vibe on the streets where we actually live now, today? Face time. Or in this case, porch time.

I talked with Catherine Borek in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles to find out how to conjure community. Her street is full of face time. The cul de sac has a spirit anyone walking a dog there can feel. And one source of that spirit is Catherine’s wide, inviting Craftsman-style front porch.

While her previous street was a “point a to point b” kind of place, she describes the street where she and a number of new families moved in 2005 as a true destination.

“It’s a [place for] meandering,” she says. “There’ll be times when we walk around the circle, and it takes 10 minutes, other times it takes a full hour or hour and a half because we stop and talk to so many people along the way.”

When she went looking for a house to buy, she knew she wanted her family, husband and then one daughter, now two, to live in a place that feels like a village.

And it does. Formal gatherings bring together over half the renters and homeowners while a more core group of families hang there on the weekend, watch each other’s kids and scheme big ideas like bicycle races, parades, and matching t-shirts touting their street as the best in L.A.

Coach Bukie: Creating a Better Neighborhood

Watch the video, Coach Bukie: Creating a Better Neighborhood, above.

To inspire making your own neighborhood more neighborly, even if it’s an apartment building, here are ideas gleaned from Borek’s block:

Throw a party. For two years running, the street has thrown a Labor Day bash that goes from noon to midnight. Complete with relay races and egg tosses, live music and food, it’s an all out old-fashioned extravaganza of chilling together. And it works. Catherine describes the day after the first block party as euphoric. “Everyone was talking, and the kids were playing together. One neighbor threw open her window and yelled down to someone passing on the street.” There’s also an annual Halloween Party and occasional sports days in the park to fuel active, good times.