How to Find the Best Neighborhood for Trick or Treat
I’m highly suspicious of “safe” Halloween activities like swiping at the mall or pulling candy out of the trunk of a car. Halloween is knocking on strangers’ doors and demanding candy. Nothing else will do. But it has to be done in the right area.
Whether you’re taking your kids house-to-house candy hunts or bag-stealing, it’s vital to find the right place for a treat. You’re looking for the perfect combination of quality candy, low walking to candy ratio, safety, and that unique Halloween vibe that’s hard to define that makes the holiday special. Here’s how to find an area that fits the bill.
Avoid the suburbs
According to some urban planning experts , a neighborhood well-designed for treats is a neighborhood well-designed for everything else. You’re looking for a pedestrian zone, and suburban areas, with their wide, winding streets, homes set far from the sidewalk, and overall car-centric design, are usually inaccessible to pedestrians and therefore terrible for a treat or a treat. Older neighborhoods (and some carefully designed newer neighborhoods) tend to be better for treats than neighborhoods built during the suburban boom: neighborhoods built in the 1970s are usually the worst possible Halloween neighborhoods, despite this scene in ET .
Consider area traffic
You don’t have to worry about addicts planting LSD in Halloween candy , but you do need to worry about cars. Children are about twice as likely to die in car accidents on Halloween than on normal autumn nights, so a less dangerous area should be your first concern.
In some cities, neighborhoods actually block vehicular traffic for several hours on Halloween night. This is the best scenario, but if it’s not your city, look for an area with narrow streets so no one races across the block, and wide sidewalks with trees and grass separating them from the street. Make sure your child’s mask doesn’t obscure his vision too much, that he’s wearing reflective material, and that he’s not wearing a suit that will make him trip whenever you ask for candy.
Choose tight areas
In his book Cities for People , Ian Geil argues that a neighborhood can be considered “friendly” if there are at least 10 doors for every 100 meters of facade. This is especially true for tricks or treats. You need a low step-to-candy ratio for the most efficient purchase of sweet treats. Steps from the sidewalk to the front door count too, so look for doors near foot traffic.
Suburban streets designed with cul-de-sacs and cul-de-sacs can cut through traffic, but they’re terrible for a gimmick or a treat. You don’t want to get to the end of the block and find that you have to go back – so much time wasted. So look for an area with an interconnected layout of small gridded streets.
Decorations and community involvement
Treat is not only about getting the best candy. If that were the case, you’d be better off dropping 30 bucks on whatever sweets you like and stay home. Halloween is also a holiday feeling . To do this, you need to find one of those neighborhoods where everyone loves Halloween: you need a block full of Halloween nerds who go all out with decorations.
There’s a block not far from me where it’s just house after house of fully decorated Halloween performances – I’m talking giant skeletons, fog machines, creepy music, rear-projected ghosts, graves in front of the house, and more. Not only do the neighbors create a free spooky season vibe, they are clearly in competition with each other, which means the candy is better. It also attracts more treats, which only adds to the festive atmosphere. In addition, it means that the homeowners care about their area and are probably quite nice people.
If you’re going for the overall Halloween experience, consider giving treats in the old neighborhood. Houses are more likely to be close together, with comfortable porches, pedestrian sidewalks, and narrow streets, while older houses are just creepier.