Chatham Village is a co-operative Pre-WWII masterplanned community and registered National Historic Landmark in the Mount Washington neighborhood of the City of Pittsburgh. The design of this community is guided by the concept of a “Garden City” and the homes are centered around a series of internal courtyards and surrounded by woodlands on three sides. A commercial corner ties the overall development to the larger community and provides a point of entry without signs or gates. Built during the great depression to provide new families with starter homes, the design had to accommodate the automobile for the first time, and provided clusters of garages in place of individual garages. Over the years its demographic has transitioned into a mix of young professionals and retirees, and while surrounding home prices fluctuated with the market, homes in Chatham Village remained above average in value. Seeking a subject for a research oriented masters these on community design, and specifically, the development of a “sense of place,” Chatham Village provided a perfect case study.
Sense of Place
Chatham Village - Pittsburgh, PA
“Sense of place” is a common phrase of implicit understanding and multiple meanings. Despite the enigmatic nature of such a term, various community design professionals have insisted sense of place is a critical component. Empirical research thus far has generated limited spatial conclusions for implication, yet “New Urbanism” continues to generate form based code on the basis that segmented suburban sidewalks, street walls, and pedestrian pockets create a “sense of place.” Framed as a qualitative case study, narrative interviews were conducted with seventeen residents to discover their sense of place. The inductive analysis revealed a range of social experiences harbored by an invisible and intricate weave of public to private spaces found to be consistent with designer intent. While the initial draw to a community was its visual cohesion, quality of construction, and beauty of the landscape, over time the social experience brought about by having a variety of communal spaces in which to interact most lead to the development of a ‘sense of place’ for residents. Such theoretical discovery provides the basis for planning and design implications relevant to community design today, suggesting a variety of social spaces, with different degrees of privacy, can create a more cohesive “sense of place” than can the physical elements stressed by the ivy-league think tank “New Urbanists” suggest.
