For our Neighborhoods Walkabout, our group visited the neighborhood known as Liberty Wells. This neighborhood includes the homes directly surrounding Liberty Park (see map). Liberty Wells is an eclectic neighborhood. Each house has its own style, with personal touches.
Often houses that were side-by-side, with similar architecture would look drastically different through color, small design changes, landscaping, and personal details. This can be seen particularly in this picture. These homes have virtually identical builds, simply mirrored. However, because of slight changes, like color, roof pitch above the porches, and window details, they have entirely different characters.
By block, houses tend to have similar profiles and mass, whether it be bungalow, or victorian or colonial inspired. No house is more than 2 stories tall, and most are just one. Houses are grouped closely together, with long, skinny lots. After noticing many "For Rent" signs and looking at the mail boxes, we realized that many of the homes had been subdivided into apartments. Most homes are far from the street, with the sidewalk closer to the homes than to the street. While some houses did have fences, most did not. A combination of sidewalk proximity to the houses and fenceless yards created a welcoming, communal environment.
Liberty Park is framed by four busy streets. Due to traffic, they are all very wide, with multiple lanes in each direction. However, as you branch off into the neighborhoods, the roads become increasingly small and intimate, we even found a dirt road. There is a high amount of car traffic. In the park itself, there are many people walking for sport by themselves, with children, or with dogs. In the neighborhood itself, the foot traffic decreased, but we still saw people out walking around.
vely neighborhood. It has an upper class yet personable feel to it. The buildings were constructed of nice materials built in a outdoor mall fashion. The shopping district has several unique storesthat may draw people from other areas in the city. This also gives the residents a feeling ownership that communities that have primarily big-box stores don't provide. There was plenty of sidewalk space that invite both socializing and street vending, though there weren't any vendors while we were there. However, this could represent a problem because the visitors may not be prone to be willing to travel the perceived distances to shop at the other stores in the area, and if the population is spare it could create a ghost town effect. There are sparse areas that allow the residents to sit and visit on the intersection. But there does appear to be a strong local community, withlight poles that have personal ads and other posts, and there are stores that encourage regular visits like the yoga studio. 9th and 9th is a very unique neighborhood that would be pleasant to live in.
