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The end of neighbours
101–110 of 150 posts
Re: The end of neighbours
#102Good to see they finally point the finger at what is fairly certainly the culprit: the automobile. When i lived in NYC, i knew most of my neighbors. Why? because we literally bumped into each other coming in and out of the building. When you have a common destination (subway, bus, market, etc), it's nice to have someone to chat with, but when your commute is in an automobile, you never get a chance to ask. Living roo…
Where in NYC? I find it really varies. At present in Bushwick, none of my neighbors talk or even make eye contact in the hallways, it is a pretty strange social situation. It is in pretty stark contrast to when I lived in Park Slope, where I would run into people in local bars, etc.
Yes, I live next to Prospect Park and I know faces of most of my neighbors (at least in the same 4-story building), and regularly 'socially interact' with some of them.
High density is one of the principal things I like about proper cities (like NYC or London or Moscow).
Re: The end of neighbours
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question - why is it considered so inherently important to spend time with your neighbors? I don't understand why I'm supposed to have a natural connection to certain individuals just because we chose to live in the same area. If my social circle consists of people who don't happen to live on my street, is that so bad? We don't really need to worry about having someone to come check up on us from next door bec…
It's not supposed to be a natural connection. But it's much easier to kill time with people who live close by. I don't know about you, but I find watching a movie or sitting around a fire with my neighbors far more therapeutic than text messaging on my phone.
You have time and have nothing better to do with it than to kill it? My condolences. Try having kids; it rids you of free time quite well! :)
Really, with current online life, people have contact less with random strangers and more with like-minded or otherwise interesting individuals. If in an [abstract] countryside you have to talk to you neighbors because there's no one else around, on the Internet the choice is wider.
OTOH your neighbors may be nice and interesting people; some of my neighbors are. Also you might have some local common interest, or could e.g. lend power tools or kitchen utensils to each other sometimes.
Re: The end of neighbours
#104I believe that if we start helping each other in close proximity, we increase our self-confidence and neighborhood security all while building social capital. I am working on an open-source hyperlocal Craigslist-style solution to the neighborhood dilemma with JoatU : http://github.com/joatuapp
https://nextdoor.com/ seems to filling that niche pretty well in my neighborhood; almost all my co-workers who own a house use it as well.
It's definitely a step in the right direction and fulfills the neighborhood aspect. I have a different idea in mind for what I'm building; I want to see a participative economy built from the ground up.
Re: The end of neighbours
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
In suburbs of Boston this is a very common thing. They are "all cash buyers" and often beat out regular folk who want to buy a home via a mortgage.
In suburbs of Boston this is a very common thing. They are "all cash buyers" and often beat out regular folk who want to buy a home via a mortgage. Boston's extensive housing development limits enable this behavior; in a functioning market we'd see supply rise to meet demand. See Yglesias's The Rent is Too Damn High ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO ) for more.
> in a functioning market we'd see supply rise to meet demand
So, tear down existing buildings to build higher, dig more basements, or subdivide existing properties? Because you can't assume there's always free land to build new buildings on.
Even if you assume the city is in the middle of a desert and there's essentially infinite room to grow horizontally, eventually you lose the reason people came to the city in the first place: The city itself, which you aren't really living in if you're commuting from a neighborhood more than an hour away from the city proper, or the city before it added on a dozen outlying regions.
Re: The end of neighbours
#106Since we're living around like-minded individuals but subjected to top-down centralized lawmaking, there is a large disconnect between what's happening in our backyard, in the state capital, and in Washington. Often the City Council office is out of touch with one part of the city or another, imposing rules on all that about half disagree with. The federal system in America is supposed to emphasize differences in the…
> But Washington has been taking more power away from the states for the last ~100 years or so.
Yes, and there are very good reasons for that, beginning with us having to fight a Civil War because the South felt the need to keep slavery and continuing on to us having to fight the South to get it to enforce the laws preserving Civil Rights for black people and other minority groups.
Shifting power back to local governments doesn't mean the locals in general get more say. Historically, it's meant that the most violent and richest of the locals got to lord it over everyone else in the region until the Feds stepped in to clean things up.
> This leads to large Washington-imposed mandates forced upon the states and upon the people, which leads to hostility.
Fine. Hostility is better than lynchings.
Re: The end of neighbours
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where the hell else will rental properties come from?
Perhaps you buy a second home and have enough income to keep & rent your first home. Perhaps it is a vacation home for you, so you timeshare.
How is buying a second home and renting out the first one different from buying a second home and renting out the second one?
Re: The end of neighbours
#108A UK perspective: over the past decade there has been an enormous growth in the buy-to-let market and the UK is now overun by the worst type of property owner: the buy-to-let (buy-to-rent) landlord or "property investor". They treat housing as a pure profit-making exercise. When more and more homes in your area get bought by property investors and buy-to-let landlords it can have a detrimental effect (I've seen it ha…
In suburbs of Boston this is a very common thing. They are "all cash buyers" and often beat out regular folk who want to buy a home via a mortgage.
The less mortgages the better. No mortgage, no fear of underwater mortgage.
Re: The end of neighbours
#109Good to see they finally point the finger at what is fairly certainly the culprit: the automobile. When i lived in NYC, i knew most of my neighbors. Why? because we literally bumped into each other coming in and out of the building. When you have a common destination (subway, bus, market, etc), it's nice to have someone to chat with, but when your commute is in an automobile, you never get a chance to ask. Living roo…
My suburban neighborhood consists of single family homes on roughly quarter-acre lots. I "bump in" to my neighbors a lot when we're in our front yards. But I hate the "stop and chat", so when I see a neighbor outside I employ the following strategies to avoid neighbor contact: - Driving into the garage and lowering the garage door even when I really wanted to park in the driveway - Peeking through blinds to see when…
This is satire, it must be.
Re: The end of neighbours
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps you buy a second home and have enough income to keep & rent your first home. Perhaps it is a vacation home for you, so you timeshare.
How is buying a second home and renting out the first one different from buying a second home and renting out the second one?
Oh, I can't prove anything, but to explain what I mean a little better, renting the first is a much more natural progression. Like a hermit crab moving up in shell sizes. You rent the first property as a consequence of buying a new house, rather than as the entire purpose of the second purchase.