Best Neighborhoods in America

I enjoy it when the Project for Public Spaces posts a new list, even if I disagree with it. But their newest list is pretty intriguing.

This time, instead of listing THE Top howevermany sites or places, they settled for a less controversial list of Five OF the Best Neighborhoods in America. And the best new neighborhood is The Pearl in Portland. I love visiting the Pearl which has some great new places to live, two new parks (see the photo from last summer) and a great location within the larger downtown area. People really walk the neighborhood and enjoy it as a reasonably dense urban setting.

The neighborhoods in New Haven (yes, New Haven), Montreal and Northfield, MN all sound great too. But I can't speak to them directly.

They also featured Country Club Plaza as a real neighborhood that is also a shopping area. I haven't been there in years, but my memory of it is that it was a great neighborhood to walk around. And I still regularly use a photo of the fountain at the entrance to the neighborhood.