Halloween is my favourite holiday for many reasons. On top of loving to dress up each year, a big reason is it's the holiday most dependent on how we design and build our communities.
In city planning and design, there's an old saying about the "Trick-or-Treat Test." It's often brought up in the context in suburban home design: Can kids easily find the front door to your house, or must they poke behind the huge multi-car garage, past the parking asphalt, to ring your bell?
Homes that fail this Trick-or-Treat Test aren't exactly welcoming, and not just on Halloween. Many such homes seem to be designed to have poor relationships to the street, and the neighbourhood beyond, year-round. Perhaps it's just that the size and location of the garage is seen as more important to the house design than the front door - but what does that say about our community's values?
A Halloween-friendly 'hood though is more than just front door-design. Is your neighbourhood a great place for kids to get a big candy haul on Halloween night? How quickly, easily and safely can kids move from house to house? Do parents actually drive from other communities to yours, because it's a more fruitful candy-collecting location?
When it comes to Halloween efficiency, kids are very smart, and read communities well. They know the streets where the doors are close together and well-lit, what you might call "Halloween Door Density." When it comes to street design and traffic levels, they know where they can criss-cross quickly and reasonably safely if they need to - although kids are always reminded how unsafe that is, and not to do it! What if, though, our streets were designed in a way where this natural kid strategy WAS safe?
Great neighbourhoods for trick-or-treating also tend to be great neighborhoods for families everyday:
All of these are great for trick-or-treating, and equally great for walkable, healthy, economically resilient communities year-round.
At the same time, the number of kids running around on Halloween night can also tell you something. Kids are often said to be an "indicator species" for great neighbourhoods. Kids in costumes on Halloween night are an indicator too, although it can be hard to tell whether they've been driven in from elsewhere!
If kids ARE being driven in, that can mean it's a great neighbourhood from a design perspective (or perhaps just that it's a more affluent community, with "better candy") - but having too few local kids can show that there isn't enough housing diversity, new infill, and family-friendly "infrastructure" to keep kids in the neighbourhood. In fact, in many beautiful, tree-lined neighbourhoods popular on Halloween, the number of local kids may be actually dropping, with resulting pressures on local schools to close. This as household sizes decrease, and new density and "gentle infill" that could stabilize the population and keep kids in the neighbourhood, is often locally resisted.
But back to the suburbs -- are suburban communities as bad trick-or- treating grounds as some urbanists think? The answer depends in large part on how well-designed and dense they are. Not all suburbs are "sprawl," with separated, low-density, garage-dominated landscapes -- but too many are.
Many suburbs have plenty of kids, many of which will brave even those houses that miserably fail the Trick-or-Treat Test to get their candy. The neighbourhood pattern sure doesn't help, though, for reasons that are obvious - simply think about the opposite of all the factors discussed earlier in this article.
This has led in recent decades to trends like suburban shopping malls giving out candy, advertising themselves as the replacement for suburban streets and neighbourhoods, with warm, well-lit, unslippery, safe trick-or-treating environments. A depressing indicator of the failure of the communities themselves, or just an indication of the busy, often fear-driven lives of North American families?
Even perhaps more depressing is the "trunk-or-treat" trend, described by "Wiki Answers" like this:
Picture this: a huge parking lot with the back ends of vans and trucks decorated in a variety of fun themes; complete with games and treats. From babies on up to grandpas and grandmas, there is something for everyone. What a fun way to spend the evening as a family!In many communities, churches sponsor the fun event and families plan their own theme for their vehicle. Sometimes elementary schools, sororities, and large neighborhoods sponsor one as well. The best part of Trunk-or-Treating is that the parking lot is roped off, freeing kids to skip or stroll from place to place.
Thankfully, walkable communities are seeing a significant rise in market share, while car-oriented developments emphasizing "malls n' trunks" are losing favour. Walkability is now seen as key for real estate premiums - as experts like Chris Leinberger indicate, drivable neighbourhoods have been overbuilt in recent decades, while there's been a strong pent-up demand for walkable, well-designed, "complete" communities.
When it comes to trick-or-treating, walkable communities never fell out of favour. Even in higher density building forms like mid-rises or high-rise towers, if there are front doors along the street rather than blank walls and landscaping, good trick-or-treating is possible.
Here in Vancouver, our walkable streetscapes "by design," our "podium townhouses," or more recently our homes with front doors on the street at the base of mid and high-rises, make trick-or-treating a viable option in even the highest densities. Now if only kids could go from floor to floor easily in higher buildings! That's Door Density!
The powerful real estate tool WalkScore, which measures a neighbourhood's walkability (and increasingly links it to real estate value) recently ranked America's most Halloween-friendly cities. Their ranking shows what we already knew. Cities that are essentially walkable, pass any Trick-or-Treat Test. They are also more resilient, flexible, healthy, green, and economically successful neighbourhoods and cities.
Why is Halloween my favourite holiday? Because it reminds us once a year what great neighbourhoods are made of.
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So true.. after all where there's a will there's always a way.. :-)))
The more rural & sparse areas as well as the concrete jungles are a given: it's just too far & too unpleasant from door-to-door. But my urban experiences are that the densities are too much for much door-to-door to happen, and even if high-density development put in ground level units facing into the street- oftentimes the street still doesn't quite feel "street level" as much as it does that there's a looming tower overhead; and everyone you pass on the street & everyone behind every door is a total stranger.
It's tough to describe other than to anecdotally say that such higher densities don't quite foster the same sense of safe community to parents with kids. There are certainly *some*, but not as many as I've seen in small town neighborhoods where everyone knows everyone.
Vancouver is a ghost town
Vancouver is a city in decline
Do you live in a neighborhood, with actual neighbors? That is the ideal place for your children to trick or treat. In fact, it is the only proper place for your children to trick or treat. If you don't live in my neighborhood, don't come knock on my door.
Those people who pack up the cars and drive their kids to other neighborhoods to knock on the doors of strangers—what is wrong with them? Let them go back to their own neighborhoods, let their kids go to a few neighbors and have their fun, and let that be Halloween.
Are you age twelve or younger? Step right up. If you are older, go buy your own candy and find something else to do on October 31. You are too old for trick or treat.
For my family, the changes have generally been good. More families moving into the area is great for our kids and the schools. The strong demand to live in such a halloween friendly area (also has a high walkscore, our house is 100) has driven up home prices (okay for us since we own) but also displaced a lot of older, lower cost rental options in older houses.
Although I hate the word gentrification, but from some peoples' perspective, in this case maybe the kids are a sign of it.
Alternatively, the kids are a sign of a new phase in the ongoing history of this old part of Vancouver.
Secondly, many garage front homes do their trick or treating in the garage with the door open and all sort of frightful things going on.
Third, fabulous urban treescaped streets often have irregular bricks or pavers, all akilter because of tree roots and covered with wet, slippery fallen leaves, just right for kids to stumble around in the dark.
We don't plan our communities for Halloween or Thanksgiving or Christmas or Simchat Torah.