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My idea of the micro-neighborhood roughly maps to census tracts reported by the US Census Bureau: each time I’ve moved apartments, I’ve lived in the same neighborhood but a different census tract. I hope this multi-city view offers useful context and lets us draw some interesting comparisons. This post explores the micro-neighborhoods across six West Coast cities: Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose. We might describe our cities differently if we focused on micro-neighborhoods just a few blocks in size, where we’re more likely to interact with our neighbors and where the built environment has a tangible effect on everyday life. That overview gives some context for our neighborhood-it’s about twice as dense as Seattle overall-but it fails to differentiate the single-family mansions surrounding Volunteer Park from the dense and highly walkable blocks near the light rail station. There are about 32,000 people spread over 1.6 square miles of Capitol Hill, for a population density of 20,000 people per square mile. Those differences got me thinking about the scale at which we understand cities. Three blocks was close enough to haul boxes by hand, but far enough to change the ways I experienced the neighborhood: the closest groceries/coffee/restaurant, the best bike routes, and the neighbors and landmarks I saw daily. How do Seattle micro-neighborhoods compare to other West Coast cities?ĭuring the time I’ve lived in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, I’ve changed apartments twice, moving about three blocks south each time.
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