The neighborhood is the fundamental unit of urban planning.
Loosely speaking, your neighborhood is whatever lies within easy walking distance -- about a quarter mile, or two Ogden blocks.
A neighborhood should contain a park, an elementary school, and one or more churches, so residents can walk to these destinations, meet their neighbors along the way, and build a community. Neighborhoods that include grocery stores and other shops create an even greater sense of community and also encourage residents to support local businesses.
Finally, the ideal neighborhood includes a transit stop, so residents can easily travel between their own neighborhood and downtown. As a natural public gathering place and commercial zone, the transit stop also promotes community development and economic health.
Ogden has a wonderful diversity of neighborhoods. As in most American cities, however, our neighborhoods have suffered from too much segregation and separation of uses and income levels, and from too much reliance on automobiles. Once you're in a car, driving to the big-box chain store three miles away isn't much harder than driving to the locally owned neighborhood shop -- provided the traffic isn't too bad.
Automobiles and big-box stores aren't going to disappear. As our cities and suburbs become more congested, however, many people are rediscovering the value of living in neighborhoods that are designed on a human scale. Rising gasoline prices may also prompt more suburbanites to move back to urban neighborhoods.
In Ogden, we need to do everything we can to encourage reinvestment in all of our neighborhoods. A few small, well-chosen investments can go a long way -- however, the one big investment that will help a variety of neighborhoods is a better transit system for Ogden.