link to map because moodle wasn't letting me link to the image.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EA5syyDFXi-sYVmwMv6JjQWv3L9Oi8H0/view?usp=sharing
Emily Whitten
1 October 2020
Assignment 1.3
I chose to expand my original map of my town common to the surrounding areas. I was surprised as I was capturing the neighborhood that the center of town actually ended up being a border to my neighborhood. The neighborhood elementary school, Johnson, is actually what I would consider to be the center of my neighborhood. The shops in the immediate downtown area I do consider to be part of my neighborhood, but the ones after the train station I do not. While doing this exercise I mostly noticed similarities to the kind of nuclear neighborhood that Perry was describing in “The Neighborhood Unit,” with a school being the central focus to the neighborhood, parks nearby, although not absurdly gendered as his are, and some shopping and dining options within walking distance in the neighborhood. All of my neighborhood is walkable and that is a key part of it. Growing up I could walk or bike to everyone’s houses, and children are trusted pretty early on to go freely around the neighborhood, often bound by the larger streets.
The core of my neighborhood is constrained by two longer roads, Route 27, or South Main Street, and Pond Street. This is also largely helped by how the districting happens for Johnson Elementary School, there are a few stragglers on the other side of Pond St. I decided to separate out the actual streets I consider a part of my core neighborhood because I realised that a simple boundary line would exclude stragglers that I consider part of my neighborhood because I knew people who lived there, or spent enough time there personally. There is a broader outline of my neighborhood, which more or less lines up exactly with the districting of Johnson.
It’s also interesting to me to see where the low income housing is in my town, and how included in my neighborhood they are. I didn’t highlight some streets by Forest Ave. Ext. which is primarily low income housing, and I don’t consider these streets as truly a part of my neighborhood. There is some other low income housing in the downtown area, and then others in a different part of town, closer to our mall which is about two miles west from the center of town. The actual wealthy part of my town is the only part that gets a distinction in name of “South Natick,” and it’s a mix of old farm money and new money McMansion type constructions. This distinction within my town allows for my neighborhood to feel as though they are not affluent. That said, there are also pockets of wealth in my neighborhood. According to Census Reporter, Natick has a median household income of $109,490 with 23% of the town having a household income of under $50k a year, and 22% making over $200k a year.[1] Johnson Elementary school was the only elementary school in the district to receive Title 1 funding until about five years ago when two of the other four started qualifying because of the increased low income housing elsewhere in town.
Putting my town common into context made me rethink how my town is structured, especially in terms of Perry’s conceptions of a neighborhood. The common is a central gathering place, as I noted in my last write up. My small selection of streets provides many differences to compare, especially within a larger town context, but it was surprisingly hard to find data for it on census reporting websites, the larger cities next to my town are the points of interest in my county data, which will be something to keep in mind for the assignments that follow.
Works Cited
U.S. Census Bureau (2018). American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Retrieved from Census Reporter Profile page for Natick town, Middlesex County, MA http://censusreporter.org/profiles/06000US2501743895-natick-town-middlesex-county-ma/