A few weeks ago, an acquaintance sent over a document titled “Northside Neighborhood Draft Statement of Purpose and Proposed Action Steps,” which opens by describing the neighborhood as “a treasure, both in itself and for Iowa City as a whole.”
Even though I have never lived in the Northside, I would wholeheartedly agree with this statement. The houses are pretty, the streets are walkable, and the area contains some of my favorite places to go in Iowa City — Hickory Hill Park for nature walks; Hamburg Inn No. 2 for breakfast food; George’s Buffet for beer, conversation and a cheeseburger; John’s Grocery, also for beer (loss of fried chicken notwithstanding); and Ace Hardware, for the cats.
However, the primary focus of this document was not on local businesses, but rather housing, and the form that housing should take.
Frequently mentioned in the document was the need to lock in the pre-existing character of the neighborhood for future generations. As no strict definition for “character” was provided in the document, I will provide two for the purposes of this discussion: (1) an organic sense of character, in regards to the composition of the people who live in a place (such as age, social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, immigrant status, and so on); or (2) in a physical sense, in protecting the built form of a place from changing over time.
Most public discourse over neighborhood character, as with this document, tends to associate…
