8 - Territorial functioning in outdoor residential spaces close to the home

Summary

If one is to tell what is going on in a residential area, it can be much more useful to look at the decoration of the windows, the cleanliness of the sidewalks, and the neatness of the lawns, than at the style and scale of the houses.

– Don Appleyard, “Environment as a Social Symbol”

“A lot of people say it's tacky… I don't know… One flamingo… maybe that's tacky. I've got thirty-four.”

– Don Featherstone, of Union Products, Inc., inventor of the pink flamingo lawn ornament. Interview on National Public Radio's “All Things Considered,” July 31, 1987

In this chapter we move out of interior residential settings and into the spaces surrounding them: outdoor residential spaces close to the home. The locations to be considered include front steps, porches and front yards, driveways, backyards, alleys, sidewalks, and the street itself. These exterior locations not only encapsulate the interior residential spaces where person-place transactions are of highest centrality. They are also linked with interior settings in a number of important ways. Quality of life in the interior residential setting is shaped by events, people, and conditions in the adjoining outdoor spaces.

Transactions in outdoor residential spaces rank second highest on the centrality dimension for a simple reason: They are always there. In leaving the residence and returning home, occupants must traverse these spaces.