I want to live in Candyland. With trick-or-treat right around the corner, I’m about to find out if I do.

There’s probably a PhD candidate somewhere with charts and regression models to explain it, but I’ve developed my own highly scientific metric for neighborhood health: the Yard Goblin Index. That’s the number of inflatable monsters and skeleton families per household.

Forget the Census. Forget Zillow. If you want to know whether a neighborhood’s got life, check the plastic corpse to porch ratio.

I grew up in the kind of suburbia where you could run a 5K between doorbells. Nobody trick-or-treated our street except the kids next door, who were forced to show up like hostages to our dark, candyless porch. Our neighborhood wasn’t built for kids. It was built for cars. And car places are terrible for kids demanding Rolos.

But kids are geniuses when it comes to sugar logistics. They know exactly where the good neighborhoods are, the ones where you can hit ten porches without breaking stride. If planning boards really wanted to measure livability, they’d run a Snickers Feasibility Study. If a costumed eight-year-old can’t double-fist candy corn at full stride for two straight hours, don’t approve the subdivision.

Let’s do some back-of-the-wrapper math. A suburban Pittsburgh neighborhood might have 71 houses per kilometer. A walkable, traditional neighborhood? About 120. That means the kid dressed as a Power Ranger, mask slipping, cape dragging, pillowcase half-spilled, can hit roughly 720 homes worth of candy in two hours.

Meanwhile, his suburban counterpart is trudging along cul-de-sacs and collector roads, praying for the sweet mercy of a Reese’s cup. One gets a tower of Twizzlers. The other gets a single Dum-Dum and shin splints.

Trick-or-treating is the purest neighborhood diagnostic tool ever invented. Are the porches lit? Are the sidewalks full? Do people linger and laugh? Do kids feel safe and welcome?

If the answer is yes, congratulations, you’ve built a good place. A place designed for people, not machines. A place with neighbors who give a damn.

A good trick-or-treat street has all the civic essentials: human-scale homes, sidewalks, lighting, slow traffic, and a little shared joy. It’s the built environment of belonging.

Looking out my window this week, my street is filthy with Halloween decorations. Spiders cling to porches, skeletons sip martinis in lawn chairs, and orange lights glow like civic pride incarnate.

And I love it. Decorating your house for strangers is the most unselfish act of neighborliness there is. You don’t do it for yourself. You do it for the kids, for the joggers, for the dog walkers, for the people who live near you. It’s a gift of delight to the block.

Trick-or-treat night is my favorite of the year. It’s the one evening when everyone comes outside, sidewalks are packed, and the simple magic of community is alive again.

I love the look of my neighborhood this time of year. The houses are close, the lights are warm, the sidewalks are ready, and the neighbors all seem like the kind of people who stock the full-size bars.

I can’t wait to see hundreds of tiny goblins marching up our brick street, buckets swinging, sugar dreams within reach. The anticipation is almost unbearable. I just hope we have enough Nerds to survive the night.

About the Author, Jeff Siegler
Jeff has assisted hundreds of communities with their revitalization, economic sustainability, and community development over the course of his career. Utilizing a background in urban planning, downtown district management, revitalization, real estate, economics and organizational development, his diverse background and expertise lends a unique vantage point for addressing community concerns.
What Jeff lacks in patience and eloquence, he makes up for in passion and honesty. He believes revitalizing communities is the most important work we can do. Revitalization has the power to transform people’s lives by fostering a stronger sense of community. Revitalization enhances quality of life, it provides people with more enriching experiences, and Jeff has dedicated himself to killing apathy- one town at a time.
In 2023, he published his first book, Your City is Sick. When Jeff is not agitating benevolent community volunteers, he dedicates his agitation efforts at his son and daughter, who all call Pittsburgh home.
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