Outer Ring City Neighborhoods

[selltheburgh]

Sq Hill and Highland Park are technically outer ring neighborhoods...

[Uptown kid]

Declining outer areas
Lincoln, Homewood, East Hills
Knoxville, most of Arlington, most of Carrick, soon East Overbrook, Mt. Oliver (city proper to a lesser extent) & Beechview's Rockland Ave/Palm Beach Ave/where the Beltzhoover &/or Hispanic DTO offsets hide out in
almost half of Sheraden, half of Fairywood, most of Elliott, soon West End Village? etc.
Marshall-Shadeland, Perry Hilltop, Northview, a medium siezed part of Observatory Hill & part of SE Brighton Heights.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by ferraris

I really wish that the California business district was on both sides of the street (and maybe moved to Brighton, so it's not on the edge of the neighborhood) and that the Giant Eagle was more centrally located. It would make a world of difference.

It's actually zoned commercial on both sides of the street at least, which means if demand ever rose, there could be storefronts there.

Originally Posted by ferraris

I wonder if that's another thing Brookline has going for it. Admittedly I haven't explored much off of the Blvd, but isn't it mostly brick craftsmans and four squares? Maybe it's lacking the old apartment buildings, frame homes, and row homes that are less attractive to most people.

Tastes vary, but I don't think the housing stock is Brookline's solid point. There are still a fair amount of frame houses (including some which almost look like shotguns). And since the neighborhood continued to be built out through the 50s and 60s, there's a lot of godawful Pittsburgh vernacular styles, such as the ever-popular bunker house.

When you add to this that Brookline houses tend towards being more remuddled (the area stayed middle-class, so people "improved" their interiors through the entire 20th century) overall the housing stock is much more blah than Brighton Heights or Observatory Hill. I think the Boulevard is the main selling point, along with the whole low crime/decent neighborhood schools thing.

Originally Posted by selltheburgh

Sq Hill and Highland Park are technically outer ring neighborhoods...

Technically speaking Squirrel Hill isn't "outer ring" because it isn't a neighborhood which borders on the outside of Pittsburgh. But I'd tend to concur. Within the East End, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Garfield, Friendship, East Liberty, and Shadyside all form a sort of coherent unit. If you live in one, you can generally walk to the business district of another. But Squirrel Hill on Forbes and Murray is off doing it's own thing, fairly geographically isolated from the other walkable areas in the East End.

[robrobrob]

Originally Posted by PghYinzer

1. It has a solid business district, not trendy but very useful unlike Brighton Heights and Observatory Hill which don’t have much if any business district at all,

I think the size of Brookline's business district is why it gets a pass. First and foremost posters seem to crave a walkable neighborhood.

To a lesser extent, I think its housing stock helps too. My thinking is that the houses aren't massive so rehab costs aren't as expensive. Let's face it if you aren't worried about the cost of rehab you can swing the pricey East End neighborhoods.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by eschaton

It's actually zoned commercial on both sides of the street at least, which means if demand ever rose, there could be storefronts there.

There actually is a lawyer's office on the opposite side of the street, maybe some of the other single family homes could be converted to businesses one day. I think the neighborhood would generally be opposed to demolishing the stone church or this nice apartment building though.

[norcider]

Originally Posted by ferraris

There actually is a lawyer's office on the opposite side of the street, maybe some of the other single family homes could be converted to businesses one day. I think the neighborhood would generally be opposed to demolishing the stone church or this nice apartment building though.

Especially since that same apartment building sat dormant for a decade (or longer, it was in a deplorable state for a long time) and was only recently refurbished and put back into use.

[Tinare]

I'm struggling with concept of an "outer-ring city neighborhood." I mean this isn't Houston. The city is only what, 56ish square miles in total. My house on the far edge of Brookline (almost in Dormont) is almost exactly 4 miles from my downtown office. The rivers, bridges and hills around here significantly alter the psychological concept of distance, I think, for a lot of folks.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Tinare

I'm struggling with concept of an "outer-ring city neighborhood." I mean this isn't Houston. The city is only what, 56ish square miles in total. My house on the far edge of Brookline (almost in Dormont) is almost exactly 4 miles from my downtown office. The rivers, bridges and hills around here significantly alter the psychological concept of distance, I think, for a lot of folks.

The concept is especially confusing in Pittsburgh because we clearly have two "cores" - one in Downtown, and one in the East End (roughly Oakland and the Baum/Centre corridor to downtown East Liberty. Neigborhoods within this core all tend to be dominated by some mixture of apartment units and attached housing. neighborhoods outside of this core are dominated by detached single-family housing.

Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that, given even though Mount Washington is only an incline trip away from Downtown, in a lot of ways it's more like an "outer ring" city neighborhood.