Downtowns and
Neighborhoods
Downtowns and neighborhoods
are the two main types of development in urban areas. Others include college campuses and
industrial areas.
Downtowns are the hub, not
only of a town or city, but of the region. They are the primary location of retail,
business, entertainment, government, and eduation, but they also include residential uses.
Neighborhoods are primarily residential areas, but also include commercial uses such as
grocery stores, restaurants and small offices, clustered around transit stops or along
arterial roads. Elementary schools are located in neighborhoods, and are small enough that
most students can walk to school.
Downtowns are more densely
developed than the neighborhoods that surround them, so residential uses mostly take the
form of apartments and hotels, whereas neighborhoods have a mix of row houses, detached
houses and apartments. Downtown buildings, whether retail, office or residential, are
nearly always built right up to the sidewalk, whereas buildings in neighborhoods may be
set back from the sidewalk by a few feet.
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|
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| Shops and restaurants in downtown Chapel
Hill, NC. |
|
A Chapel Hill neighborhood, just a couple of
blocks away from the photo on the left. |
Downtown is the most
accessible point in the region. Neighborhoods are located along roads and transit routes
that converge downtown. Inter-city buses and trains only stop downtown. Because downtowns
are located at the historic centers of towns and cities, they often have excellent river
and sea access.
Downtown streets require more
amenities than neighborhood streets: benches, trashcans, telephones, maps and police
patrols. Public spaces cater to a different mix of people depending on their location: a
downtown plaza will attract tourists, office workers and shoppers. A neighborhood park
mostly attracts people who live there, and is a major meeting place.
A city neighborhood may
function in a similar way to a small town or village where everyone can walk to a central
commercial area with a transit stop. However, it would be wrong to consider the two to be
analogous: Neighborhoods merge into one another and their downtown seamlessly, whereas
villages are much more self contained.
A large city may have multiple
downtowns. For example, in addition to a central area which is very much the commercial
core of Southern England, London has a number of secondary cores such as Wood Green,
Croydon and Hammersmith, which have department stores, major office buildings and
theatres, and are located at major interchanges between transit routes.
