Design Keys for Pocket Neighborhoods

A key for a good life is to be part of a community. The best communities are pocket neighborhoods. Architect Ross Chapin has discovered 11 key design principles for strong pocket neighborhoods.

These design keys are the keys for happiness. If they are strongly integrated into the design, people will be happy, and as a consequence love their pocket of life and fellow pocket neighbors. They are like nourishment, or strong stitches to keep the pocket together. If the stitches or sewing are weak, there might appear a hole in the pocket neighborhood, where people risk to fall out.

For Chapin's designs these 11 design keys are of course strongly integrated into the design everywhere. For less talented designers they might be very unevenly distributed, with one corner of the neighborhood with a strong appearance of these design keys, while in the other corner they might be almost entirely wiped out. 

Often one can identify these parts of the pocket neighborhood as those poorly loved and neglected. Then it's about not to blame these misfortuned neighbors for not caring about the neighborhood, because they are not to be blamed, they are just victims of poor design.

The responsibility of the neighborhood as a whole is then to identify the design keys poorly integrated or maybe entirely lacking in these parts of the neighborhood. For then collectively doing everything for strengthening these core principles, and implementing those missing.

The key design principles for successful pocket neighborhoods are to be found at the pages 64-69 in Ross Chapin's book "Pocket Neighborhoods".