The Trick-or-Treat Test

Brent Toderian, writing for The Atlantic Cities, on the Trick-or-Treat test for neighborhoods:

When it comes to candy-collecting efficiency, kids are very smart, and read communities well. They know the streets where the doors are close together and well-lit, what I call “Halloween Door Density.”

Parents are smart, too. They recognize neighborhoods designed to be safe for walkers when they see them: Tree-lined streets; enough density and community completeness to activate what I call “the power of nearness”; good visual surveillance through doors, windows (and I don’t mean windows in garages), porches and “eyes on the street”; connected, legible streets that let you “read” the neighborhood easily. All of these are great for walkable, healthy, economically resilient communities year-round.

It’s true that the best neighborhoods for Halloween tend to also be the more compact, walkable neighborhoods. Here in Sacramento the older neighborhoods that have the characteristics Brent mentioned are known as great Trick-or-Treat destinations. Homeowners in these neighborhoods know they have to be well stocked with hundreds of pieces of candy or they will run out. Kids come from all over the city to trick-or-treat in these walkable neighborhoods.