Can you identify a good or bad neighborhood by a street map alone?

[ofos]

Originally posted by Dan

What if it was just the street and railroad pattern alone, and no names or symbols that would be indicators (street names, institution and landmark names, religious symbols, and so on).

It would be a sorry map. Technically still a map but a poor one. That just offends my geographer/cartographer sensibilities.

Could you make some assumptions based on your historical knowledge of street layouts and the reasons for railroads being built where they are? Of course, you could. You could further make an educated guess where there were commercial or industrial areas based on their proximity to the railroads and major arterials and that "better" residential areas would not be located in those same locations.

[Chet]

Originally posted by Maister

This thread is an excellent exercise in pattern recognition - a skill most planners have in abundance.

Funny. When I moved from Milwaukee to the Gulf Coast, alot of my location decisions were google based. I chose an area 10 minutes from the beach but that isn't in danger until Cat 5, I mapped routes to work, checked census info, reviewed evac routes (turns out my co-workers gave be better back-routes anyway).

This might be a cultural thing near the MX border, but the first 15minutes of local news is always stabbings, shootings, drug busts, then the rest is high school sports.

[Dave F]

In larger cities, I would look for the part of town that has no tourist attractions or major institutions, such as universities, zoos, museums or major shopping centers. Hospitals do not seem to be an indicator, unless you see a hospital in an area that has no other "featured" landmarks--that is the sign of a bad neighborhood.

I think of this approach because during the 1996 Olympics, the tourist maps that were distributed generally deleted local street detail of the southern 40% or so of the city! This angered many African-American community leaders to no end, as the area deleted was almost entirely African-American and very low income. However, the area deleted truly had no major points of interest, save the ampitheater. Even the major African-American heritage sites, which were shown on the maps, were north of the usual cutoff line that was roughly a mile or so south of the olympic stadium (now Turner Field).

This approach may not always work, as some cities--Baltimore and Washington, for instance--have some major institutions or historic attractions that are in rough areas.

[Chet]

LOL The "east side" is wrong. In Milwaukee the east side is "fashionable"

If I has to look at a map, I'd judge the grid. If I could go further, the internet. The police web site. ETC.

[Jazzman]

Originally posted by Dave F

In larger cities, I would look for the part of town that has no tourist attractions or major institutions, such as universities, zoos, museums or major shopping centers. Hospitals do not seem to be an indicator, unless you see a hospital in an area that has no other "featured" landmarks--that is the sign of a bad neighborhood.

I think of this approach because during the 1996 Olympics, the tourist maps that were distributed generally deleted local street detail of the southern 40% or so of the city! This angered many African-American community leaders to no end, as the area deleted was almost entirely African-American and very low income. However, the area deleted truly had no major points of interest, save the ampitheater. Even the major African-American heritage sites, which were shown on the maps, were north of the usual cutoff line that was roughly a mile or so south of the olympic stadium (now Turner Field).

This approach may not always work, as some cities--Baltimore and Washington, for instance--have some major institutions or historic attractions that are in rough areas.

Many cities are like this. Even in my hometown of Birmingham, I can think of several, most notably Rickwood Field (the oldest baseball stadium in America). Rickwood Field is on the west side of Birmingham, not far from where I grew up, that is rampant with drugs, gangs,and crime (I should know, I grew up over there).

There's also a historic antebellum home in the area, though that particular neighborhood is slightly nicer. It's one of those nice neighborhoods that exist in a bubble though - it's a decent neighborhood but it's surrounded on all sides by virtual warzones.

[jmello]

Parts of the thread are really treading on thin ice.

While reading the posts on here, I was trying to correlate many of the indicators to New England cities to no avail. Let's take Boston and Providence as examples. Their most crime-ridden and poverty-stricken areas are far from the downtown cores. This always amazed tourists from the South and Midwest, who would be leary of straying too far from the CBDs on foot.

Many of the rougher neighborhoods in these two cities were developed as streetcar suburbs during the Victorian era with curvelinear streets, abundant parks and large houses on hillsides. Many of the areas that were developed as workforce housing (Providence's West Side and Boston's South End) have gentrified and are now some of the most wealthy neighborhoods, despite being extremely dense and primarily composed of triple-deckers.

One thing that stands out in Boston is that the slums have terrible access to rapid transit. Plot the MBTA rapid transit system on a map and you'll see a huge gap in south-central Boston between the Orange Line to the west and the Red Line to the east. This corridor, generally centered on Blue Hill Avenue, contains Boston's most down-trodden neighborhoods.

Providence, which does not have a rapid transit system, has much more dispersed slums. Generally, the city's far west and far south sides are the most crime-ridden and poverty-stricken. Some would say that the slums actually outnumber the stable areas within the city limits. The East Side, up on College Hill, is the most wealthly. I think this is obvious on a map.

[Dave F]

jmello:

Having been to Providence, it kind of proves my method in reverse. That is, the area on the east side of where downtown, two national universities, a historic district and a major shopping center come together is located in a good part of town. In other words, it would be highly unlikely that this cluster would be in a rough part of town. I saw this cluster on a map on a day when I was going to be passing through Providence, stopped in this area, got out and walked around for several hours and was glad I did.

Jazzman:

I know what you refer to in Birmingham. A band I was in once played at the Nick in Birmingham--a hip rock music club that was straight across a dimly-lit street from a housing project. That was a surprise, to say the least.