At Kentlands, New Urbanism Has Unlocked a Sense of Community

By Katherine Salant
Saturday, November 3, 2007

Can a sense of community, that elusive quality that home buyers everywhere say they want, be created by the way a housing development is laid out?

Architects and land planners say yes.

If you rearrange the pieces of the suburban landscape, get people out of their cars by providing shopping and other destinations within walking distance, and create a network of links between houses, homeowners will be "connected," they say.

This approach is known as new urbanism, neotraditional design or traditional neighborhood design. The most famous practitioners are the Florida husband-and-wife architect team of Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Such communities have been built across the United States in the past two decades. One of the best known is Kentlands, near Gaithersburg, conceived in 1988.

Such neighborhoods are radically different from a conventional subdivision.

For starters, they can be three to seven times as dense. The houses are close to each other and to the street. Most have a front porch or stoop, garages are accessed from a rear alley, and there are sidewalks everywhere. Individual lots and yards are small, leaving a generous portion of the total acreage for public spaces such as pocket parks, village greens, tot lots and jogging paths. House sizes vary, single-family houses and townhouses are intermingled, and condos and apartments can be part of the mix.

But does a traditional neighborhood design really create a strong sense of community? How can you tell? After all, this is not an obvious visual characteristic; it's a perception.

Kentlands is almost 20 years old. If the theory works, it would be evident by now there.

After extensive interviews with six Kentlands homeowners, I believe the answer to the community question is clearly "yes."

Of course, six people is a minuscule fraction of the Kentlands' several thousand residents. However, my conclusion echoes that of Joongsub Kim, an architecture professor at Lawrence Technical University in Southfield, Mich., who has lived in and studied the dynamics of Kentlands and a nearby conventional subdivision for 10 years. He has interviewed more than 425 households in both communities.

Clyde Horton, a resident since 1993, said the degree of socializing is obvious now, but in the early days, no one knew how it would work out. The only thing obvious to buyers then was that it was different from anyplace they had lived before.

Not all the residents are highly social by nature, said Larry Dildine, who has lived in the neighborhood for nine years. "For shy people, Kentlands is a very good place because you don't have to make a big effort to know people."

Kim, who characterized himself as "somewhat reserved," said, "When you walk down the street, you see all the activity and you feel like you want to be a part of it."

How does the layout produce this effect? Though planners would never describe it this way, traditional neighborhood design is a party-planning principle writ large. The key word is proximity.

When an experienced party planner organizes a social event for 50 to 100 people who don't know each other, she puts the group in a slightly undersize room. With shared purpose and proximity, most people can overcome their hesitation to talk with a stranger.

The party dynamic works even better if the group can sprawl through several smaller rooms. People will naturally divide into small groups, and conversations are easier. If you hear something interesting, you can join in without feeling that you're intruding.

The design of Kentlands encourages the same type of encounter outdoors, with a series of interconnected outdoor spaces, or "rooms," that are smaller and cozier than in a conventional suburb. The streets are narrower, and the distance from the sidewalk to the front porches can be as little as six feet, Kim said.

As residents describe their daily routines, the potential for casual socializing is everywhere. Owners of adjacent front porches visit with each other, Kim noted, and the porches are so close to the sidewalk that residents and passersby cannot help but say hello.

Moving the garage to the rear opened up another place for people to congregate. In the alleys, adults socialize and kids play, skateboard and learn to ride bikes. On some blocks, residents have alley parties.

A few households keep two cars in their garages, but most people park one car on the street in front of their house, which provides another opportunity to chat with neighbors.

The sidewalks are a venue for socializing and exercising. John McCutcheon, who lives near two of the three lakes in Kentlands, said he sees 30 to 40 people power walking, jogging and biking every day, alone and in small groups.

Some people drive to the shopping center at the edge of the neighborhood, but many residents walk unless they're buying something heavy. Dildine said his household follows a "10-pound" rule: "We take the car if we're buying more than 10 pounds to carry home."

With so many eyes on the street, parents are comfortable letting younger children go out on their own. Especially because they know if their kids misbehave or forget to wear a bike helmet, they'll soon hear about it. Teenagers, who often want to get out of the house long before they are old enough to drive, can walk to the multiplex or to get ice cream or pizza.

All the socializing has led to lasting friendships. Horton, who grew up in a small Southern town, said: "It feels like many people are kin. We've supported each other through divorce, deaths, severe illness and organ transplants. When one mom lost her hair from chemotherapy, all the dads, including me, cut our hair so her son wouldn't be scared."

Kim said that the proximity can have its downside. Many residents talked about the lack of privacy -- "we're so close, we can see what the next-door neighbors are having for dinner" -- and a few families left for this reason.

But he observed the opposite phenomenon in the nearby conventional neighborhood he studied. Those residents valued their privacy but envied the sidewalks and social networks of Kentlands.

So far, he concluded, architects and land planners haven't figured out how to satisfy both these basic needs in the same neighborhood.

Katherine Salant can be contacted via her Web site,http://www.katherinesalant.com.

Copyright 2007 Katherine Salant