Monday, June 27, 2011

Are you living in a microhood?

Water Hill, Ann Arbor's newest microhood?

What exactly is a microhood? A microhood is a distinctive sub-neighborhood within a bigger established neighborhood. They can be defined strictly by geography or additional features that unify an area. For example, there are the student rental and rich people sections of Burns Park. And of course, there is always the newly minted Water Hill microhood. Are there other microhoods in Ann Arbor? Perhaps we could start calling the area of Washtenaw and Hill with all the sororities and fraternities "Little Athens."

6 comments:

  1. Greater Burns Park has various smaller divisions, including North Burns Park and Lower Burns Park. A neighbor who lives in the appropriate part of the area said half-seriously that he lived in Lower Ives Woods.

    There's an Oxbridge neighborhood (Oxford, Cambridge streets) which is the approximate location of your Little Athens; their neighborhood site says it was once called "College Hill". http://www.oxbridgeneighborhood.org/Neighborhood.htm

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  2. @Ed, Thanks for the great information.

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  3. The area between Kerrytown and the Medical Campus needs some classification. Right now I think of everything between Division and Glen and Huron and the river as a giant block of student housing. Any microhoods to be found here?

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  4. I live a couple of blocks from the intersection of Dexter, Huron, and Jackson. Can we have a microhood name? Perhaps a reference to the terrible road conditions on Dexter? Or the constant smell of squished skunk?

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  5. @Miss E, I've heard two proposals for that area: 1) The Jacks-Dex Triangle. 2) The Crotch.

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