4 ms·

> 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; u

> 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 door to hand them out. The vast majority of people shut their doors on us without saying a word, including some of my (at the time) fellow MS employees still wearing their badges from work that day. A couple years ago I moved to Seattle proper. When we moved in, neighbors brought us over cookies. The difference is astounding. People here talk to each other with quite a bit of frequency, neighborhoods organize block parties, BBQs, and other such events. It isn't like the demographics of the people around me have changed, it is still largely engineers! Edit: When looking at houses in Seattle, we went and visited this one house 3 times in quick succession, and on the 3rd visit neighbors came by and talked to us and told us about the neighborhood and said how much they'd love to have a young new family move in. Another couple with a young child across the street from the house went over to talk to us and described what it was like raising a family in that area of the city (all pleasant things, the house was in Magnolia for anyone who knows Seattle!) I have a good friend who live in a suburb north of Seattle, he is one of the most outgoing and social people I know. Even he doesn't know his neighbors. IMHO something about 10,000 sqft yards and deep setbacks destroys any hope for communities.

clipsy 4y ago
> IMHO something about 10,000 sqft yards and deep setbacks destroys any hope for communities. 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!
- com2kid 4y ago
  > It certainly does not intrinsically do so; this was absolutely not my experience growing up in suburbia, None of my suburban friends report knowing their neighbors. OK, so, in Seattle, I can walk to 3 different, large, parks. In the morning, I can choose which of the 2 local bakeries I want to walk to if I want to buy some fresh bread. No big surprise, with all that walking going on, you see the same people day after day, and eventually you say hi. You pet their dog, you talk about how gardening is going, you invite people over for board games outside on the patio in the summer. Meanwhile my friends outside the city have to drive to their "local" park and drive to their "local" stores. They don't know their neighbors because their lives consist of house->car->destination. And while they are driving, I've stopped to pick berries from the tree hanging out of my neighbors yard (he doesn't mind, he loses more berries than he could ever pick himself) on the way to the grocery store to pick up whatever I need to cook for dinner that night. Don't get me wrong, I spent over a dozen years living in Seattle's suburbs, there are advantages (40MPH speed limits! Get everywhere fast! The police are legit super nice to you if your driver's license has a local address on it!), but I feel more connected to people in the city.
thewebcount 4y ago
At the last house we lived in, we were renting. We got a constant stream of real estate agents knocking on our door asking if we’d be willing to let them sell it. So when we got a knock one morning I opened the door and kind of yelled at the person, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” It was a new neighbor that had moved in a few doors down bringing us a bottle of wine and to let us know they were new to the neighborhood. I apologized for my boorish behavior, but they were apparently too shaken to get over it. Every time I saw them after that we’d wave at each other, but it was clear they wanted nothing to do with me. Until we decided to move out. Then they were very interested in the house and possibly buying it (I assume to flip it). The neighbor stopped me one day and said, “let us know as soon as you can when you’re moving out. We’d like to talk to the owners about buying it.” I never let them know. The entire act of bringing over a bottle of wine was just to try to get on our good side in case they ever wanted some favor from us. Meanwhile, the other neighbors we met there were great, and we still talk to them from time-to-time. I can easily see your neighbors in Kirkland assuming you were either real estate agents, sales people, or trying to convert them to another religion or something like that. Edited for clarity.
- com2kid 4y ago
  > I can easily see your neighbors in Kirkland assuming you were either real estate agents, sales people, or trying to convert them to another religion or something like that. Given that I had lived there for 6+ months, they should in the very least have recognized me! It wasn't like we had just moved in or anything. We actually found that a lot of the renters there were more friendly than the owners, and over time we made friends with some of the neighbors, largely those who had moved in from overseas.
- datpiff 4y ago
  > The entire act of bringing over a bottle of wine was just to try to get on our good side in case they ever wanted some favor from us. Weirdly cynical assumption. Sounds like you alienated your neighbors and then retroactively made them the villains.
  - thewebcount 4y ago
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
I think it's at least as much to do with expectations. The small village in rural NM where I live generally has larger properties than you're describing, and people are really not "on top" of each other to any real extent. But for reasons that are hard to pin down, there's an expectation here that people will be neighborly - it's an expectation that is frequently broken, but persists anyway. We have community breakfasts, village cleanups, dinner gatherings, communal dog-walking schedules, book clubs and more. By contrast, just 15 miles away in a geographically similar place, someone I know remarks with amazement at any description of life in our village. They say "just about everyone who lives here came here to be private. Nobody wants anything to do with anyone else". So I think that some of what you're describing can be the result of a semi-self-sustaining culture of a place (a place as small as a block, sometimes). Although I'm a big believer in designing urban (and really, any residential) areas for better neighborhoods, I think that part of the equation is really independent of the physical nature of the place.
mantas 4y ago
> IMHO something about 10,000 sqft yards and deep setbacks destroys any hope for communities. I doubt it's the case. I moved to outskirts from the city. Even with lower density and fewer people, 2 years in, I already know more people than I knew after 7 years in the same apartment. I also talk to and hang out with my neighbours much more. Community events are a thing here. Local FB groups are friendly and supportive, which is probably the biggest difference.

clipsy 4y ago

> IMHO something about 10,000 sqft yards and deep setbacks destroys any hope for communities. 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!

com2kid 4y ago
> It certainly does not intrinsically do so; this was absolutely not my experience growing up in suburbia, None of my suburban friends report knowing their neighbors. OK, so, in Seattle, I can walk to 3 different, large, parks. In the morning, I can choose which of the 2 local bakeries I want to walk to if I want to buy some fresh bread. No big surprise, with all that walking going on, you see the same people day after day, and eventually you say hi. You pet their dog, you talk about how gardening is going, you invite people over for board games outside on the patio in the summer. Meanwhile my friends outside the city have to drive to their "local" park and drive to their "local" stores. They don't know their neighbors because their lives consist of house->car->destination. And while they are driving, I've stopped to pick berries from the tree hanging out of my neighbors yard (he doesn't mind, he loses more berries than he could ever pick himself) on the way to the grocery store to pick up whatever I need to cook for dinner that night. Don't get me wrong, I spent over a dozen years living in Seattle's suburbs, there are advantages (40MPH speed limits! Get everywhere fast! The police are legit super nice to you if your driver's license has a local address on it!), but I feel more connected to people in the city.

thewebcount 4y ago

At the last house we lived in, we were renting. We got a constant stream of real estate agents knocking on our door asking if we’d be willing to let them sell it. So when we got a knock one morning I opened the door and kind of yelled at the person, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” It was a new neighbor that had moved in a few doors down bringing us a bottle of wine and to let us know they were new to the neighborhood. I apologized for my boorish behavior, but they were apparently too shaken to get over it. Every time I saw them after that we’d wave at each other, but it was clear they wanted nothing to do with me. Until we decided to move out. Then they were very interested in the house and possibly buying it (I assume to flip it). The neighbor stopped me one day and said, “let us know as soon as you can when you’re moving out. We’d like to talk to the owners about buying it.” I never let them know. The entire act of bringing over a bottle of wine was just to try to get on our good side in case they ever wanted some favor from us. Meanwhile, the other neighbors we met there were great, and we still talk to them from time-to-time. I can easily see your neighbors in Kirkland assuming you were either real estate agents, sales people, or trying to convert them to another religion or something like that. Edited for clarity.

com2kid 4y ago
> I can easily see your neighbors in Kirkland assuming you were either real estate agents, sales people, or trying to convert them to another religion or something like that. Given that I had lived there for 6+ months, they should in the very least have recognized me! It wasn't like we had just moved in or anything. We actually found that a lot of the renters there were more friendly than the owners, and over time we made friends with some of the neighbors, largely those who had moved in from overseas.
datpiff 4y ago
> The entire act of bringing over a bottle of wine was just to try to get on our good side in case they ever wanted some favor from us. Weirdly cynical assumption. Sounds like you alienated your neighbors and then retroactively made them the villains.
- thewebcount 4y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

I think it's at least as much to do with expectations. The small village in rural NM where I live generally has larger properties than you're describing, and people are really not "on top" of each other to any real extent. But for reasons that are hard to pin down, there's an expectation here that people will be neighborly - it's an expectation that is frequently broken, but persists anyway. We have community breakfasts, village cleanups, dinner gatherings, communal dog-walking schedules, book clubs and more. By contrast, just 15 miles away in a geographically similar place, someone I know remarks with amazement at any description of life in our village. They say "just about everyone who lives here came here to be private. Nobody wants anything to do with anyone else". So I think that some of what you're describing can be the result of a semi-self-sustaining culture of a place (a place as small as a block, sometimes). Although I'm a big believer in designing urban (and really, any residential) areas for better neighborhoods, I think that part of the equation is really independent of the physical nature of the place.

mantas 4y ago

> IMHO something about 10,000 sqft yards and deep setbacks destroys any hope for communities. I doubt it's the case. I moved to outskirts from the city. Even with lower density and fewer people, 2 years in, I already know more people than I knew after 7 years in the same apartment. I also talk to and hang out with my neighbours much more. Community events are a thing here. Local FB groups are friendly and supportive, which is probably the biggest difference.