| Downtown New Haven was originally laid out as nine squares in 1638. This includes modern day New Haven Green, the immediate surrounding central business district, as well as a significant portion of the Yale University campus. Dwtn New Haven has become one of the most residential mid-size city downtown helping to support downtown businesses and retail extending even to secondary streets. Its vibrancy, mixed-use development, cultural amenities, and strong walkability make it one of the best Dwtns in the United States. But as always there are still areas that could be improved from an urban perspective including more rental product and affordable housing, a larger office population and several key retail amenities (i.e. supermarket and a department store). |
URBAN STRENGTHS:
| * Excellent public transit access Dwtn and throughout the full New Haven City. Good transit access to surrounding inner ring suburbs. * Pretty good bike infrastructure within Dwtn including several dedicated bike lanes and a bike sharing system within Dtwn and inner ring neighborhoods. Limited bike lanes out to the suburbs other than a lengthy lane going to the north. * Excellent racial and economic diversity helped certainly by Yale. * Pretty nice mix of for-sale options with condos selling between 100K-500K, and larger townhouse and rowhouses selling between 500K-800K. * Good vibrancy Dwtn. * Great historic architecture especially with Yale University buildings. Solid urban infill as well. * Wonderful urban form and streetscape in Dwtn as well. Some surface parking lots on the eastern edge of Dwtn. * Nothing spectacular with the skyline but some nine consistently with the midrise building and some very nice Yale University towers. * Great imageability with numerous historic landmarks, New Haven Green, and well laid out streets. * New Haven Green is a wonderful civic space located in the middle of Dwtn and Yale. Lots of programming here. Other greenspace include plenty of gorgeous quads in Yale University but this is still public space. Some nice rec spaces just outside dwtn as well. * Generally very walkable infrastructure but good amount of ADA current curbs missing. * Good array of public and private schools generally forming a ring about 1/2 mile outside of dwtn. Rankings are ok but very walkable schools. * Large student population in Dwtn including over 12,000 at Yale, 7,000 at Gateway Community College. * Lots of cultural amenities including a movie theater, several community theaters and live music venues, tons of restaurants, bars, & cafes, several art galleries, and a great array of museums. Many of these amenities are run by Yale. * New Haven has a dwtn improvement district and safety ambassador program. * Good array of retail amenities including several small grocerias, great array of clothing stores, many banks, several books stores, several pharmacies, and a dwtn post office and library |
URBAN WEAKNESSES:
| * 25% of households are family. Pretty decent for a Dwtn, but limited age diversity as most residents are students. * Rental product is a bit limited and expensive. * No large convention center dwtn, although there are plenty of small ones. No major sporting arenas. * Not a ton of office jobs in Dwtn by Yale University itself brings 15,000 jobs. Probably 25,000 total jobs in Dwtn New Haven, an okay number for a metro of 862K. * Very low vacancy rates though, speaking to the demand of office space dwtn. * Large supermarket is about 1 mile outside of dwtn. |
Evaluating our Urban Communities [with a focus on America] 