You also never had the ability to be talking on somebody else's property while sitting in your own home until very recently. Things change. The streets are still public but the streets aren't where we're talking anymore.
Those are normal expectation of living in society. Talking you your neighbour is not.
I’m sure it was decades ago in the curtain twitching world where people stayed living int he same street for decades, but not today in a highly movable world. Certainly not for me any my peers. any interactions I make are slot my own choosing, that I happen to live near someone is of no consequence.
If I did park my car in a ditch there a plethora of recovery services that will retrieve it, whether I’m a mile from home of 200 miles from home. I have no need or desire to know anything about the recovery driver, or the pilot who flew the plane I was last on, or the guy who delivers my mail, nor the plumber who replaced my boiler last year.
I think it's more of why don't you talk to them -- there are more demands on our time or different demands. I get home from work and I normally don't go back outside to socialize with anyone. I might talk to my neighbor when I am going in or out; but, that's about it.
In addition, are newer houses designed for causal chats with neighbors? I recently moved. On my street are houses that are over 100 years old and houses only a couple of years old. Most of the older ones have been well kept or renovated. What's the easiest way to tell the old ones from the new ones? All the old ones have porches big enough for at least a couple of chairs. When I was first looking at my house, I saw people hanging out on their porches and people walking by stopping and chatting or people waling across the street when they saw their neighbor out on the porch. It's a lot easier to stop and talk to someone when you see them outside, than going up and knocking on their door.
We've designed ourselves into isolation. We leave our house in a metal box, arrive at work, then return to our metal box. The most prominent feature of newer houses from the street is the garage, not the door or porch. We live in a subdivision where the nearest store is a five minute drive, so nobody ever uses the sidewalks that are mandated to be there. We move across the country for work, so we aren't close to family. There's no real neutral place where people have to interact together for some reason, so you don't have the accidental meetings that is required to meet people and community.
it used to be incredibly common, in fact normal, to be friendly with your neighbors… dine with them, hang out with them… this has changed dramatically in the last 30 years
That's what I was thinking. Neighbours talk less often to each other these days, and instead, they rely on the police to fix these sorts of issues. It's just a side effect of an increasingly individualistic society.
Great. One of the things I noticed when living in the country is I had virtually no interaction with my neighbors. Now in the city I interact with my neighbors all the time (maybe to the point of irritation).
Perhaps the difference in our experience is explained by small sample size & not systematic differences...
I've very recently moved from the city to the suburbs and I've probably spent more time making small talk with my neighbors in the past 10 days than I've spent making small talk with my neighbors in the 10 preceding years, despite the fact that then number of people who could be considered my 'neighbors' has dropped by an order of magnitude.
Same here. One thing I've noticed is living on a road or in an apartment you don't really talk to your neighbors all that much. On a cul-de-sac you do get to know them.
I don't think that's the only factor. I think it's also just culture.
I grew up on a street (in the US) where many of my neighbors did have the same landlord as my family, but none of us spoke to each other; they were basically strangers like any other.
I was born in 2003, so this is more recent than the 1980s.
Also just general breakdown of people knowing each other in the community. When I grew up, I was a "latchkey kid" with a single parent, yet I was allowed to freely roam the neighborhood on bicycle. The idea was (or at least the perception was): If I ran into a problem, I could knock on any random neighbor's door, and 1. wouldn't get kidnapped or murdered and 2. the neighbor would know my dad and either watch over me or call him. Today, nobody knows the people who live in their neighborhood. Some people don't even know their next door neighbor. Nobody answers their door anymore either, so if you're a kid your only island of familiarity is at home.
This is kind of sad but very true from my experience. We knew most or all our neighbors but then my street got an Airbnb house and all sorts of people come by including a family reunion, parties, equipment dealer with trailer etc. Maybe unrelated but crime has increased (car breaking and catalytic converter thefts are all I know) and its hard to tell who lives on the street just due to the traffic.
Living in the UK, I only started to interact with my neighbours once we bought our house.
While renting, I was always surrounded by other people renting. People were more transient and the properties lacked gardens to promote to being outside long enough to see any neighbour.
In our last rental property, our upstairs neighbour changed five times in about 15 months. We gave up knowing who was who by the end.
I also have an experience where the design of the neighborhood heavily affects interaction with my neighbours. I live in a street whose entrance is too narrow for cars. Except for the occasional motorcycle, the soundscape makes it possible to chat every time I exit my house and there’s no barrier between the houses affecting visibility. Hanging out in front of the house is enjoyable because the backyards are tiny. We have a great relationship with all our neighbours and they form a sort of extended family. In the beginning, one thing that surprised me was the social dynamics reminding me of school, but it still beats anonymity. There are great demonstrations of support with the elders, the parents, or the alcoholics of the street when they can’t open their door at night. We are quite different from each other but physical proximity overcomes it.
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