ABSTRACT
Neighborhoods are one of the basic building blocks of cities, modest-size physical units that make up the residential portion of the urban area and form the environment that we all inhabit every day. Planning and design at the neighborhood scale affect our daily lives, determining what facilities are available locally, how far we need to travel, and much about our opportunities for interacting with our neighbors. This is also the scale at which individual development projects occur – whether they are large new subdivisions or smaller, more incremental changes to the urban fabric. Relatively small design and planning decisions such as the width and design of streets, the size of blocks, the mix of land uses, and the location and nature of parks and public spaces can have huge implications in urban livability and sustainability.
