(size reference is drawn on the side of Cates Farm Rd. and Pathway Rd.)
(Drawing made with the aid of Google Maps)
My house, which is highlighted with the gold star on it, helps make up my block. My block is enclosed by four streets: Cates Farm Rd., Pathway Rd., Cobblestone Drive, and Rockgarden Rd. The block resides in Chapel Hill, NC which is a township, and has some suburban aspects, like repeating architecture, but also some rural aspects like big backyards, trees, foliage, and a decent amount of space between neighbors. I know that the architecture of houses on my block is repetitive like many suburban homes, although every house is not identical. On my block I know that the houses two from the left and right of my house have the same architectural base, although renovations have been made over the years to make the house more modern, such as doors between frames, or screen porches. Many houses on my street also have a fence, like suburban homes, although not every house, like ours. The fences are erected mostly out necessity to keep dogs in the property, although as new families have moved in over the past few years more fences have been erected than there was previously. The borders of each property are drawn in yellow, and many fences extended up to that point, or a little before it. The neighbors to the east of me, (212 Cates Farm Rd.) had a fence installed since they moved in for their dog, and since they left a new family moved in and the fence remained up for the new family’s dog. The fence reaches my chest, and when I speak with the neighbor, I am able to lean on it as I speak with them. On the other side of my house (to the west at 208 Cates Farm rd.) my neighbors have a fence which also reaches a little below my chest, and when I talk with them, I also lean against the fence and rest my hands upon it. Talking with my neighbors across their fence since Covid-19 has been the only way to communicate with them in person. When I was a kid, I also saw a lot of my neighbors because I enjoyed walking through my neighborhood’s woods, which extends behind every person’s backyard on my block. As a kid I never recognized that the woods behind people’s houses were a part of their property when they weren’t fenced in, and as a kid it was a semi-public space. However, now as an older teenager/adult I recognize that those spaces are semi-private and the freedom that I had as a kid walking through those woods I no longer have, as homeowners would question why I was there. The spaces which have always been semi-public are front lawns and no front lawn in my neighborhood has a fence in front of it. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of children are now most likely only exploring the spaces in their backyards, but most likely not venturing into the woods behind their next-door neighbors’ house or extended neighbors’ houses. There are also woods which are not part of a property deed for a homeowner on this block. The opening to this space from the street is between Rockgarden Rd. and Garden Gate Rd. on Cates Farm Rd. These spaces are semi-public, as anyone can go there without being illegally on someone else’s property, but also not public, because it would not be considered socially acceptable to the residents who live on Rockgarden Rd. or Garden Gate Rd. to have a complete stranger who doesn’t live in the neighborhood traips around only a few feet behind their backyard not having any particular business being there. I have noticed people who live on Rockgarden or Garden Gate take their dog out to use the bathroom or sniff around in that wooded area before, but only people who owned a house three. Part of this no-man’s-land is between my house and the house south mine on Garden Gate, the house more North than the other house at the end of the cul-de-sac on Garden Gate. Between our two houses through this land is a path, which helps those neighbors reach Cates Farm Road to walk their dog, and when their children were younger, they used the path to get to reach Cates Farm rd. faster on their walk to school in the morning. This path is mostly used by them, as we both created the path for the purpose of them using it, although I have occasionally noticed other neighbors using it, but not with the same frequency as the neighbors who the path was originally intended for. This path between our two houses should be considered a path, as defined by Kevin Lynch, because it has “an obvious functional necessity” and there is an obvious starting and ending point.1 However, the path is not a part of a wider gridded network of paths. In addition to this path, there are edges that define the neighborhood, but because my block connects to a lot of other blocks to create the neighborhood, the edges of the neighborhood are with the busier streets, instead of with other blocks. One of these busy streets is to the west of Cates Farm Rd., which is not depicted in the map, but which serves as an edge to that side of my block and all other block that expand south of my block.