Neighborhood Metrics

Intriguing metrics in relation to our investigation on identifying and measuring urban design qualities: the JaneScore measures the features that make for a “healthy urban neighborhood”, as articulated by Jane Jacobs. Based on Matt Lerner’s Walkscore who works with Liz Dunn at the Preservation Green Lab, it focuses on capturing the diversity of a street. In McNeighborhood Dan Bertolet describes the key variable:

The key attribute is diversity. In my interpretation, the JaneScore would focus on measuring diversity in a wide range of elements, such as building width, height, condition, style, and age; commercial space use, size, and rent; housing unit type, cost, and tenant demographics. Metrics to rate the vitality of street life would help round out the score.

Jonathan Hiskes highlights the potentials of this metrics in Measuring neighborhood diversity and liveliness with ‘JaneScore’

Building JaneScore maps sounds more difficult than building Walk Score, which draws from Google data. But it would help separate gentrified neighborhoods from economically varied ones. It would separate squeaky clean new neighborhoods from more eclectic historic ones. If JaneScore gets built out, it could yield heaps of information about the various flavors of urban living, which has great potential (see also Walkability Generates Real Value) to be sustainable living.

Why do I blog this: Data are at the source of these new metrics to define streets and neighborhoods. Both Walkscore and JaneScore rely on the static geographic, building, parcel, and demographic information. We are curious in coupling dynamic data and qualitative observations to the definition of these kind of neighborhood metrics (see Exploiting the Bluetooth Spectrum as Material for Space Management Strategies).

The hardly measurable diversity and vitality of a street. Photo courtesy of Nicolas Nova.