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The end of neighbours

macleans.ca

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Re: The end of neighbours

#41

Post by scoofy »

Good 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 room, garage, automobile, parking lot, destination.

With automobiles, there is no opportunity to, say, bump into your neighbor and ask, and then follow up with quickly knocking on your neighbor's door to see if they are still interested in joining you. Without those quick opportunities, relationships cannot form. Without relationships forming, it's culturally awkward to ask directly.

The single occupancy automobile, and the decentralized suburbia that formed around it are very probably central to many of the ills detailed in the article.

Re: The end of neighbours

#42

Post by ajaymehta »

onedev wrote: post #28

https://nextdoor.com/ is trying to help bring back that sense of community that this article talks about us losing. I think if something like this can help us get a cursory relationship with our neighbors, then that could potentially develop into something deeper and more meaningful and facilitate more offline interaction as well.

+1 for Nextdoor. I've moved around the Bay Area several times in the last few years, and every new Nextdoor community I've joined has been very active and helpful.

Re: The end of neighbours

#43

Post by mikeytown2 »

futuravenir wrote: post #18

I 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.

Re: The end of neighbours

#44

Post by AnimalMuppet »

scoofy wrote: post #41

Good 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…

Unfortunately, you cannot now fix it by removing the automobile. Now, even when you bump into people, you don't have a conversation, because they're on their headphones or texting on their phone or whatever. Nobody's available to talk to, even if you would be willing to do so.

Re: The end of neighbours

#45

Post by nsxwolf »

scoofy wrote: post #41

Good 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 my neighbors go back inside

- Getting into my SUV from the passenger side so they can't see me through the smoked glass

- And more!

Re: The end of neighbours

#46

Post by Systemic33 »

As many people have already said, the article seems to jump to a conclusion rather quickly.

What the author might not have taken into account is cultural changes in living habits. With that I mean how we are increasingly moving away from our parents home, and into our own little cell/room/apartment, instead of living with the parents in the house or in an attached building. And when people did move out, it would more than often be either because you moved into a dormitory (which previously were more communal) or together with a SO. That means more time spent in the neighbourhood, and more time with the middle ring as it's called in the article.

It could be interesting to compare the situation in america with for example the situation in Italy, where it's more common to stay at the parents for longer.

Re: The end of neighbours

#47

Post by scoofy »

nsxwolf wrote: post #45
scoofy wrote: post #41

Good 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…

Why do you hate chatting? I can understand if one of your neighbors is annoying, but my point is that if you weren't driving, you'd certainly know more than just the annoying one next door, and you almost certainly get a kick out of dogging him with the person on the other side of his house.

If not, hey, there's always one or two annoying neighbors, and if you can't find them, it's probably you.

Re: The end of neighbours

#48

Post by Systemic33 »

clarkmoody wrote: post #26

The article seems to dog on the suburbs as a big part of the problem. Is there any breakdown of the polling that shows that people in denser areas know their neighbors any better? Controlling for occupation / income level would highlight differences in neighborliness against population density.

I would hazard a guess that its more common in apartments to be socially distant. Because you are far more likely to get annoyed by the neighbour being noisy, you don't have any windows to interact through with them (eg. waving) and most important (imo) of all: you can't just talk in the hallway/stairway the same way you do in a garden or across a fence. And actually entering someones quarters is probably a lot more socially taxing than just stading in their garden.

What do you reckon?

Re: The end of neighbours

#49

Post by scoofy »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #44
scoofy wrote: post #41

Good 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…

Unfortunately, you cannot now fix it by removing the automobile. Now, even when you bump into people, you don't have a conversation, because they're on their headphones or texting on their phone or whatever. Nobody's available to talk to, even if you would be willing to do so.

Yes, you can. If everyone is walking to a centralized transit location, then those that would like to know each other will easily identify themselves. Catch the bus at 8AM? You'll soon learn who else is walking that route. Headphones or not, human interaction isn't that awkward. Even if you never talk in that context, it only takes one out-of-context interaction to end that. At a coffee shop: "hey, don't we walk the same route from the metro every day?" or "Didn't i see you at the farmers market on Thursday?"

To know people locally, you need to live locally. If getting dinner involves a commute, then you're never going to meet people. It takes more than one or two instances to get past the earbuds. Remove the automobile and immediately you're seeing the same people dozens of times a week.

Re: The end of neighbours

#50

Post by prestadige »

na8ur wrote: post #36
prestadige wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish my neighbours well, but for me socialising is a distraction from work and family. Those are my contribution to the (wider) community. Besides, I have trouble enough keeping up with relatives and schoolmates without introducing new, geographically-oriented relationships.

I agree with coldtea. Our consumerison is why it we get isolated. What is intresting, tendencys in DE show that people go back in the cities for shopping (it's more socializing). http://www.presseportal.de/pm/8664/2804458/innenstadt-bleibt... Maybe when our kids getting in adolescence find that this is the way to be diffrent than us. Good Practise: Start greeting people when you are in your neighbourhood. That's what…

I'm not a consumerist. Nor do I suffer from social anxiety. Who are you talking to, and giving advice to? Nothing in your comment addresses any of my points. Why not engage -- otherwise you remain 'isolated', surely?
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