The digital home of Gorch culture and better neighborhood design
The Gorch is calling. Open your door.
A Gorch (garage + porch) is a garage with the door up, a couple of chairs out, and a neighbor wandering over. It's what people do when their street was built for cars and forgot the porch.
We celebrate the Gorch. We also ask why it became necessary.
What's a Gorch? Score your streetCelebrate the Gorch
The culture, the characters, the creativity, the community, and the garages.
Post your GorchQuestion the Gorcherhood
The architecture, planning, policies and development patterns that created the conditions.
Fix the codeWe love what people are doing with their garages. We're just not convinced they should have to.
Start here
Discover
The phenomenon, the Signal, the four kinds of street.
Participate
Post your Gorch, the Gallery, Gorch of the Month.
Survive
Garage to Gorch. Stuck in a Gorcherhood? We can help.
Understand
The research, and the Gorch Index for your block.
Advocate
Code for Community: how rules shape streets, and how to change them.
Shop
Stickers, shirts and prints. Coming soon.
01 · Discover
What is a Gorch?
Gorch (n.): a garage used, door up, as a front porch. Two chairs, one open door, endless possibilities.
Across many American subdivisions, the most important social act of the evening is a motor humming and a garage door rising. Out come the folding chairs, down goes the cooler, and a passing dog walker gets a wave. For a few hours, a room built to store a car becomes the neighborhood's front porch.
The Signal
An open garage door with chairs in it means roughly what a dog means when it rolls onto its back at the dog park: I'm friendly. I come in peace. Come say hello. A closed door means the household is private tonight. Neighbors read it without being told.
Why it happens
Over the last seventy years, the garage moved to the front of the American house while the porch shrank into a decorative stoop. Shared courtyards gave way to driveways and walls of garage doors. People still need easy, everyday contact with the folks around them, so they found the one street-facing room the house still had, and they opened it.
The Gorch isn't wrong. It's just telling us something.
Four kinds of street
Every block lands somewhere on the Gorch Index, from 0 to 100. The type describes the street, not the people on it.
| Type | Score | What you'll see from the sidewalk |
|---|---|---|
| Garage Canyon a Full-Blown Gorcherhood | 75–100 | Garage doors take up most of the frontage, porches are decorative or missing, and there's a curb cut at nearly every lot. |
| Transitional Gorcherhood | 50–74 | Garages are prominent but not dominant. Some usable porches; sidewalks and trees are patchy. |
| Porch-Forward Neighborhood | 25–49 | Most homes have usable porches and front doors facing the street. Garages are recessed or small. |
| Gorch-Free Zone | 0–24 | Alley-loaded parking, porches everywhere, short blocks, a shared green within a short walk. |
The Gorch Manifesto
We love our neighbors. We just wish our houses made it easier to meet them.
We believe neighborhoods should be more than collections of houses, driveways and garages. We believe the places where we live should make it easy to see one another, say hello, share a conversation and feel connected.
We recognize the ingenuity of the Gorch: an unexpected gathering place, an informal front porch, a little piece of neighborhood life reclaimed by the people who live there. We celebrate that. But we also ask why it became necessary.
We don't believe garages are the enemy. We don't believe suburban living is the problem. And we certainly don't believe everyone needs to spend their evenings on a front porch. We simply believe we can do better: homes that face their neighborhoods, streets that invite people to walk, porches that encourage conversation, shared spaces that bring neighbors together, and development rules that make these things possible.
So post your Gorch. Share your Gorch. Celebrate your Gorch. And then let's build neighborhoods where we don't have to.
Long live the Gorch.
02 · Participate
Post your Gorch
Show us what you've got. Every neighborhood has one. Some have dozens. We're documenting the phenomenon, one open garage at a time.
Submit your Gorch
Send us a photo and the story. We review every submission before it goes in the Gallery. You can also post it with #PostYourGorch.
The Gorch Gallery
The Gallery is warming up. Approved Gorches appear here, sorted into four categories:
The Classic Gorch
Two chairs. One open door. Endless possibilities.
The Deluxe Gorch
When the garage becomes the neighborhood destination.
The Neighborhood Watch
Eyes on the street. Beverage in hand.
The Social Gorch
Come for a conversation. Stay for three hours.
The other side of the Gallery
Garage Canyons
Garage door, garage door, garage door. No porch, no chairs, nobody out front. These are the blocks where no one has Gorched yet, and where the design leaves nowhere else to meet. This is what we're trying to change.
It's not the residents' fault. It's the frontage. Shoot the street, not the people: no faces, no plates, no readable house numbers, no aerial shots. To add one, pick "Garage Canyon" in the form above.
No Garage Canyons posted yet. Know one? Send it in.
Coming to the community
Gorch Stories
Short interviews with residents about why they Gorch.
Gorch Map
Voluntary, approximate locations. Never exact addresses.
Gorch Awards
Best Setup, Most Neighborly Garage, and other honors.
Gorcherhood Confessions
"We have 42 houses on our block and exactly zero front porches." Send us yours with #GorchhoodConfessions.
Photo rules
- Photograph the Gorch, not the people. No faces without their OK.
- No license plates or readable house numbers.
- Approximate locations only: a city or neighborhood, never an address.
- Be kind. We celebrate Gorches; we never mock the folks in them.
03 · Survive
Garage to Gorch
Congratulations. You have a garage. Let's make it a Gorch.
The starter kit
- Open the garage door.
- Add two comfortable chairs.
- Make sure your neighbors can actually see you.
- Create a comfortable, welcoming space.
- Keep a clear path for cars and people.
- Say hello when someone walks by.
- Repeat until you're the neighborhood gathering spot.
Advanced upgrades
- String lights.
- A fan or heater suited to the space.
- A small outdoor rug.
- Plants and comfortable seating.
- A dedicated beverage station.
- A good playlist, at a neighborly volume.
Gorch etiquette
- Door up means "come say hi." Door down means "not tonight." Respect both.
- Keep the sidewalk and driveway clear.
- Wind down at a reasonable hour.
- Invite the neighbor who never stops by. Twice.
Stuck in a Gorcherhood?
It's not your fault. It's the frontage.
You didn't design the subdivision. You just bought a house in it. But there are ways to make your neighborhood more inviting and more connected, and patio furniture alone won't solve a subdivision-design problem. Sometimes the answer really is better rules.
| Scale | What you can push for |
|---|---|
| Your home | A usable front porch or stoop, street-facing windows, a welcoming front door. |
| Your subdivision | Pocket parks, sidewalks, street trees, walking paths, a common green. |
| New development | Rear-loaded or side-entry garages, limits on garage frontage, homes that face the street. |
| Your city | Residential design standards, alley incentives, porch-friendly setbacks, smarter parking rules. |
04 · Understand
The research
Community grows out of small, repeated, unplanned contact, and that contact depends on how buildings meet the street.
Eyes on the street
Jane Jacobs (1961): safe, lively streets need buildings that face them, and trust is built from "many, many little public sidewalk contacts."
Soft edges
Jan Gehl's studies found streets with usable front edges had about three times the daily activity of streets with hard edges.
The six-foot rule
Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language (1977): balconies and porches less than about six feet deep rarely get used.
People attract people
William H. Whyte (1980): "What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people."
Blank walls, low moods
Colin Ellard's walking studies found people felt markedly less happy beside long, blank facades than beside lively ones.
Connection is health
The U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory on loneliness called for rebuilding social infrastructure. Porches and courtyards are the most local kind.
Score your street: the Gorch Index
Rate one side of one block on nine things you can see from the sidewalk or on Street View. The score runs from 0 (porch-forward) to 100 (garage-dominant). It measures design, not the people. This is version 0.1, still being tested.
Pick a rating for each item.
05 · Advocate
Code for Community
Nobody draws a wall of garage doors on purpose. Builders build what the code allows. Change a few paragraphs of code and the default changes.
Where the rules live
- Parking minimums set how many spaces each home needs, and sometimes whether they're covered.
- Front setbacks often count a porch against buildable area.
- Lot and subdivision standards make narrow front-loaded lots the easy layout.
- Street standards decide pavement width, curb cuts and whether alleys are allowed.
- Design standards, where they exist, can cap garage width or require a front door facing the street.
Seven ideas to explore
Starting points to test with builders, planners, street and fire officials, and neighbors. Every one has precedent somewhere.
Cap the garage
Garage doors no wider than half the front of the house. Portland, Boise.
People in front
Keep the garage behind the living space or porch. Frisco, Texas.
A porch you can sit on
At least 6 feet deep and 60 square feet, not a decorative stoop.
Let porches come forward
Allow usable porches into the front setback.
Make alleys easy
Smaller lots and other credits for rear-loaded homes. Houston's shared-driveway rules.
Bring back the bungalow court
Small homes around a shared green, allowed by right. Langley, Washington.
Right-size parking
Let driveways and street frontage count. Spokane, Portland, Denver.
Change it in your city
- Notice it and name it. Photograph your street and do a quick Gorch Index audit.
- Find who writes the rules. City or county, and who controls the streets.
- Call the planning desk. Ask if a code update is underway and who can start a text amendment.
- Do the homework. Read the setback, design, parking, subdivision and street sections.
- Build a coalition. Neighbors, local builders, planners, architects, public health, aging-in-place groups.
- Hold a neighborhood meeting. Fittingly, in an open garage.
- Meet decision-makers. Ask staff or council to sponsor the change.
- Assemble the packet. Narrative, redline, findings, photos, letters.
- Submit and follow up. Answer agency questions; respond to the staff report.
- Show up to the hearing. A few speakers, one point each, one strong photo.
The full Field Guide with sources and model language is coming to this page.
06 · Shop
Gorch goods
Stickers, shirts and prints are on the way. Here's what's on the workbench.
Open Door Policy
Bumper sticker
Ask me my PGR
T-shirt
Long live the Gorch
I brake for porches
Bumper sticker
Holier than thou
Webster sticker