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Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

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Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#61

Post by wenc »

Waterluvian wrote: post #38
wenc wrote: post #6

I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I’m the type who needs to always be learning. So I would always need to be in a big city. Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisel…

I’m not sure I’d draw any general conclusions from your experience. It’s a rather broad brush. I grew up in a very intellectual city (Waterloo) with a back yard with big wood fences and we just became experts climbing them, venturing from yard to yard collecting half a dozen kids. We’d bike all over, including to the universities (though Laurier campus didn’t feel interesting). I moved to a very blue collar small cit…

I get it. I lived part of my life in Southern Ontario and knew a bunch of people from Waterloo and surrounding areas — absolutely brilliant mechanical minds. (Farmers truly make great engineers — in fact many famous American engineers trace their roots to farming communities in Wisconsin or some such).

But suppose you were interested in Rousseau or Great Books. You wouldn’t find too many people willing to connect on that. But in a big city you will find both types and more.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#62

Post by flawn »

ryandrake wrote: post #40
wenc wrote: post #6

I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I’m the type who needs to always be learning. So I would always need to be in a big city. Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisel…

> I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. This part of choosing where to live is so important and hard to articulate. I remember when I moved from small town to small town, then finally out to Silicon Valley. The first thing I noticed was the billboards by the side of 101. They were about programming frameworks, iPhones, h…

Hmm, tangentially related, but how would you say SF changed? Where would you get this feeling of SF back then nowadays? Thought about giving SF a visit in summer as an aspiring software engineer & entrepreneur but curious to what you think about it.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#63

Post by UncleOxidant »

paxys wrote: post #17

Weird that the article frames friends as being constant in life and your career/house/neighborhood/kids' schools/community as totally flexible when practically speaking it's the other way around. It is normal to move away from people you formed bonds with in high school and college. If you are lonely the solution isn't to uproot your life and go after them, but to form new bonds with people who are around you right n…

Agreed. However, it seems that in the US especially it becomes difficult for people to make new friends after we're in our 20s. And probably even harder now than it has been in the past given the increasing preference for isolation. Instead of moving as a solution, we need to focus on helping people figure out how to form longterm friendships at every stage of life.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#64

Post by danenania »

em-bee wrote: post #54
danenania wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think suburbs are the cause of isolation. I’m on the tail end of a trip to Argentina and I can tell you that in general, people in the suburbs here are out and about, chatting with the neighbors, and getting together with family/friends in their backyards all the time.

i read the parent comment as the desire for isolation being the cause of suburbs,

Either way, the association between suburbia and loneliness/isolation isn’t a universal thing.

People in Argentina definitely aren’t seeking isolation in the suburbs. They mainly seem to want more space to host gatherings of everyone they know.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#65

Post by almostvindiesel »

100% this. Started out with two families buying houses near each other in a family centric LA neighborhood (Eagle Rock). Then it expanded to 3 --> 4 --> 5 all within walking distance. We all have similar aged children. It's magic. We watch each others kids, do frequent backyard/park/sleepover playdates, and help w dropoff/pickup. It makes parenting SO MUCH EASIER. I often joke that I'm not a real parent bc we have so much help. Living closer meant compromising on other decisions (ideal house/commute/etc), but proximity to friends has more than outweighed the cons. One family was living near the beach and loved it, but decided it was more impt to live near us then right on the coast.

We opt in and out as much as we'd like. It's beautiful having options, mostly for our kids, who are really thriving by having easy access to playmates. So much better than having to "blind date" other couples and their kids from daycare/activities/etc.

The hardest part is starting. It doesn't have to be a huge commune initiative. Pick one friend who has a similar lifestyle and settle down in a neighborhood withing walking distance and take it from there. Think most important time to do it is when you become a new parent, when your kids and you will want companionship but won't have the time (nor energy) to build new relationships.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#66

Post by model-15-DAV »

This is certainly a reaction to economic strangulation of a huge percentage of people in the economy. Of course, if people want to be near each other they should, but this phenomenon is a direct result of the crumbling conditions for the working class. The resurrection of third-spaces is a much better alternative than the erosion of first-spaces.

Our civil society organizations have eroded to the point that the private market has completely ended the concept of the third space. Places where community can be formed are gone; commoditized and politicized and so are not places where community can develop. Instead of the use of third-spaces we are forced to depend on our friends economically like this.

This seems like a good thing, "people are coming together, yay!" but being forced to live like this is not going to have good outcomes. These people have real issues described in the article, they need better child-care, they need closer personal roots, they need economic security. But we forcing people to make these contracts of great economic dependency, we should be more prepared to allow people to live more independently. I see this move as kin to the economic migration from the Global South today to countries like Sweden, Germany, etc. which has been causing great strife internally to those countries.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#67

Post by pseudocomposer »

extr wrote: post #46

I go back and forth on this. I still keep in touch with a bunch of high school and college friends. For better or worse those guys know "the real me" and the history and relationships are impossible to replace. They all still live close together but I live far away - I only see them once or twice a year, if that (less right now because we're all in the "very young kids" stage). I miss them. On the other hand, when I…

People you meet later in life - even much later, even when you have a wife and kids - can absolutely come to know “the real you.” (I might describe “closeness of relationships over time” as “asymptotic, with an upper limit” or at least “with diminishing returns,” if we want to get really math-y about something that is not really measurable.)

But you have to be open to that, and it also requires a lot of social skills that are not really otherwise demanded (in fact, arguably discouraged) among, particularly, men in developer/software engineering roles.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t maintain relationships with school friends. But, especially if none of them are nearby, you owe it to yourself and your family to build a local community for yourself that’s on that same magnitude of closeness. It’s a process that takes 5-7 years (again, just making up numbers here - this depends on your personality, how far along you are learning social skills, and who’s in your community), but the best time to start is always now.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#68

Post by neverartful »

This post is coming to me at an odd time regarding friends. On the one hand, I've rekindled some friendships with friends from high school and I'm so happy to be reconnected with them. I wish I could see them more often and spend time with them. On the other hand, I also just recently blocked the calls and emails from a long time friend. It wasn't a decision that I made lightly. Without getting into too much detail, our fairly frequent phone calls had become toxic with us arguing about politics and him lecturing me about various things (and perhaps me lecturing him too about various things).

I was recently thinking how much I would like to be closer (geographically) with my high school friends (despite the changes that we've had over the years). But in the case of my friend whose phone number I recently blocked, I'm so happy that I don't live so close that he could drop by.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#69

Post by croissants »

wenc wrote: post #11
phendrenad2 wrote: post #5

Great idea - to make this happen we either need to solve the housing affordability crisis in high-density areas, or spread job opportunities around to lower-density areas. My friends are in a diverse set of fields, finding a place with jobs for all of them isn't feasible right now.

Tokyo seems to have done this. It’s not cheap by any means, but rent seems relatively affordable relative to pay (and very cheap compared to expensive cities in North America). I wonder if part of the reason is that housing is not an investment vehicle in Japan (probably due to the Japanese preference for newer, more modern builds and the fact that housing is a depreciating asset in an earthquake prone region). In mo…

This is in the category of "things I believe I read from a reputable source, but which I can no longer definitively attribute", but my understanding is that one contributor to Tokyo's lovely and specific density is that its zoning laws are pretty relaxed, and on top of that they are not very strictly enforced. This is maybe less workable in a society with higher variability in people's judgment of what is ok.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#70

Post by swozey »

Paywalled but from the comments here it sounds like this is moving near your HS friends? Absolutely not. Nothing in common with them.

If this is more about living in a more dense area where you have friends closeby, absolutely. I live in a very dense area and I have friends all over the neighborhood. Some across the street, some down the road. We can meet up and see a show or do friendsgiving or whatever or just grab a beer.

It's not cheap and I don't live in a big place but I am astronomically happier here than I was when I owned a house in the suburbs 2016-2019 and had to drive 25 minutes minimum to meet up with people.

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