Reno Park Update 091206: Bad Names

So neighborhoods. The issue of neighborhoods is not a small issue here at цarьchitect, so I want to explore how the nominal neighborhoods in DC, are relatively arbitrary. Whereas Cleveland Park is a coherent collection of period houses clustered around the summer home of our favorite philandering and mustachioed head of state. The same is relatively true of Chevy Chase. But other areas, such as AU Park or Tobago lack legible borders, character, nodes, or strong community sentiment. With these flaws in mind, I asked the internet where neighborhoods began and ended. For example, Wikipedia:

wiki neighborhoods

As you can see, there are some flaws to this map – some areas aren’t exactly stuck into boxes and others are claimed by two neighborhoods. Moreover, Tenleytown has, maybe, 100 residents and its borders rest, like the ANCs, along corridors where there is precisely the most activity, along Wisconsin. It also perpetuates the myth that there is a neighborhood called “Wakefield.” The name is a myth created by realtors, and you will not find anyone who actually calls it that, except perhaps some serpent or monster who wishes only to deceive you. . Clearly, it’s totally unsatisfactory. So, based on an informal poll and my own views, I’ve revised it:

formal neighborhoods

Reno Park Update 091125B: ANC

One more legal aspect worth mentioning are the Advisory Neighborhood Councils in any given site. There are three ANCs in the subject area, 3E, 3F, and 3G. The division between these three wards is at the park, as seen below.

basic ANCs

As you can see, each ANC consists of a handful of single-member Districts, which elect the individual neighborhood councillors. Because of the different densities in the project area, the number of SMDs in an ANC varies, as does the size of the SMD. So, 3F04, which represents a cluster of apartment buildings, is geographically small, while 3F03 is vast because it mostly represents a handful of people, deer, and some of the more intelligent trees.