71–80 of 572 posts
Most people seem to optimize living near their parents or adult children, which probably also makes them happier: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-f...
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> Isn’t being friends with your neighbors a far more obvious answer to this? you don't get to choose your neighbors...
Do you find yourself not having much in common with your neighbors, not liking them, etc? A large part of friendship is some circumstance that puts you in the same time and place (school, work, sports, etc.). There must be some pretty big barrier if you can’t make friends with most of your neighbors.
Many of my neighbors are older and have lived in the homes since they were built. Mostly they just gripe that I don't behave the same way as the last guy.
Others are parents around my age who I don't have much common ground with because their kids are their whole lives basically, and I don't have kids and don't want them.
I think there's more to friendship than just proximity.
First I'd have to understand how to make some friends as a 37 year old man who works entirely remotely. I'm trying on Bumble BFF mode, but not having tons of luck.
A somewhat modern feeling I have is also that it’s hard to make close friends as an adult. There’s less willingness to interact with strangers or even the possible idea of having a good interaction with someone that’s a stranger. I think that would also help alleviate the problem significantly is if we were able to meet people in safe spaces somewhat randomly without people feeling like it’s an affront or something
The idea of safe spaces implies that the existence of unsafe spaces. If you’ll excuse me pontificating for a moment, it might be useful to try to reframe this outlook; if you wait to feel safe before taking chances with people you’ll miss out on many potential interactions and relationships.
I've been wondering how related these feelings of distance and isolation in the middle of society are to how the area is designed. I had always known for a long time the "why" I didn't want to go out on weekends and such, but it wasn't until I watched some of those videos from "Not Just Bikes" that it really, really struck me. I literally dread finding parking more than I enjoy finding friends. And suburban (and fran…
This is a bit of an unconventional POV, but I don't consider large areas of suburban sprawl to be cities but just really big towns. This covers Houston, swaths of Atlanta, lots of Southern California. There are lots of people living there compared to rural areas, to be sure, but without the density to support usable public transportation (once-an-hour buses don't count), it's really not a city at all. It's endless su…
New England has counties and townships and cities, California and Texas only have counties and cities. Even a place that calls itself a town is still a city as far as their laws go, so advocating your position is going to run up against practical issues with people about why you’re saying their city isn’t a city.
We already have terms for this, and it’s called the suburbs.
> why don’t we do this? The fetishization of the nuclear family, of course, as well as the building and zoning codes that facilitate that fetishization. Zoning calls them "single family homes" but it doesn't call it "nuclear family homes" or anything like that. Single family homes are more about American individualism [0] and not wanting to share anything if you don't absolutely have to. That's why, outside of at mos…
> about American individualism[0] and not wanting to share anything if you don't absolutely have to. I don’t know if this is an American quality specifically. It could just be that Americans can (or used to be able to) afford it, whereas most other people in most other societies never could. For example, what young married couple would want to live in their parents house if they can afford their own? All of my extend…
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For what it's worth, as the rare suburbanite HNer, I fondly recall my family having the same sort of relationships with neighbors in the late 80's and 90's; unfortunately the same just doesn't seem to happen even in socioeconomically comparable suburbs today. Even just attempts to strike up small talk with a neighbor when we both happen to be outside at the same time are usually rebuffed, and the idea that anyone wou…
> For what it's worth, as the rare suburbanite HNer, I fondly recall my family having the same sort of relationships with neighbors in the late 80's and 90's; unfortunately the same just doesn't seem to happen even in socioeconomically comparable suburbs today. I used to live in a townhome in Kirkland Washington, ~10 minutes from Microsoft's main campus. One year my wife and I made Christmas cookies and went door to…
It certainly does not intrinsically do so; this was absolutely not my experience growing up in suburbia, and I don't appear to be alone in that. I'm glad you've had a better experience in Seattle proper, though; perhaps there is just some sort of urban/suburban culturual inversion at play!
Otherwise, I'll echo the others around here who talked about the suspicion of others that gets in the way. I live in an area where if I go to a coffee shop at any given time, the chances of seeing someone I know -- other than the barista, of course -- is fractionally small, much less running into someone enough times to form a genuine friendship. It's hectic.