In a post on his Neighborhoods blog, Kevin Harris refers to an interesting side effect of neighbourhood design.
Eric Klinenberg noticed that some areas of the city had considerably higher death rates than other areas. He found that in two comparable districts, one (South Lawndale) had four fatalities per 100,000 whereas adjacent North Lawndale had a death rate ten times higher.
'In North Lawndale... elderly people were not accustomed to walking in their district because there was almost nothing for them to walk to. It was a commercial and social desert, almost devoid of stores and other gathering places... They feared strangers who came to check on them.'
In South Lawndale, by contrast, elderly residents had air-conditioned local stores and knew their local storekeepers, they had plenty of places to go to and were accustomed to going there. They were also more likely to trust those who came to visit.
See Jane Jacobs, Dark age ahead, 2004, p81-87.
