The Perfect Neighbourhood

[Yarrah]

I have just finished a large paper (75 pages) which I had to make to show I'm ready for my highschool exams. (ARGH, my first exam is Monday, I'm soooo nervous). The paper is about suburbs in my country and I did some research to find out what people consider to be the perfect neighbourhood and used that information to create the "perfect neighbourhood" (well, nothing's perfect, but at least my design is what the people I questioned want ).

But now I'm wondering if there is a difference between what people in the Netherlands consider as the perfect neighbourhood and what people in the USA consider to be the perfect neighbourhood.

So...what do you regard as the perfect neighbourhood? A green one, full of parks and wide green avenues or a neighbourhood full of magnificent skyscrapers? A very calm one, or a busy one? One with good, reliable public transport and car-free streets or one where you can go everywhere by car? Etc, etc.

PS: Sorry if my English is really bad

[coriolis]

My neighborhood is nice. We are in a small town of 2,000 people, approx 18 km from a medium size city of 30,000. I can drive, ride the bus, or bicycle to work. Our house is at the edge of a residential area and we can walk to several stores, including a 24-hour mini market, a pharmacy, a deli, several restaurants, and a dollar store. The kids can walk or ride thier bikes to school, to the swimming pool, and to their friends houses. There's a hospital 5 minutes away. The entire town is safe - crime is virtually nonexistant, and the police station is across the street. The mall is 3 miles away. There's no traffic congestion and no noise. The biggest problem we regularly have is that patrons of the chiropractor across the street sometimes park in front of our house, taking our parking space. I always thought that I'd want to live out in the country in an isolated location, but this location has a lot of advantages, especially with our kids. If we were out in the middle of nowhere, we'd be driving everywhere, and driving our kids around all the time.
We do live in a flood zone. During Ivan we got water in our basement but not in the house.

I don't know how I'd define perfect, but this is pretty good.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Walgreens?



A2K

[Janice]

Wow, Corolis, your town sounds perfect. Ours is a little more hectic. We live 3 blocks from the ocean and the street in front of our house is the main street to the beach. The horns are honking all the time, the cars and motorcycles are speeding to the beach and the people are throwing their trash out the window on their way home right in our yard.
A gated community would be nice..

[Stephanie]

It's so neat to see the many members we have from outside of the US. Welcome Yarrah!

My town includes a University - Rowan University. It was called Glassboro State College - my alma mater.

It was the host of the June 1967 US & USSR summit between President Johnson & Prime Minister Kosygin;

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/LBJ/glassboro1.html

The town was established in 1779 (I love history) and currently has over 19,000 residents - more during college semesters. There's a downtown section that's being re-vitalized in partnership with Rowan University. As with most of the other communities in Southern New Jersey that still has available land to build on, there are housing developments popping up all over - though Glassboro has pretty much run out of room. It's a 15 - 20 minute ride to Philadelphia, an hour away to Atlantic City and about 45 minutes to Delaware with many major roads and interstates nearby. There are the "bad sections" of course, but this town has been in the process of turning itself around for the past decade and it shows. It's not perfect, but I'm happy I'm here.

[alicia-w]

the perfect neighborhood for me is a nice house in the center of about 150 acres with no one else around.