The Mending Wall, by Robert Frost. In the poem, the maxim is said by the neighbor, but the narrator remains skeptical.
That makes Dallas, Memphis, Little Rock, and Sacramento suburbs then. All of them have houses kind of like that.
What about rusted out hulks, appliances, and three feet of grass in the front yard? Not that I’m super old but in all my years of living in the suburbs I’ve only had one complaint about parking in front of someone elses house and that person had an immense stick in their ass, so I’m not sure how typical it is.
Oh yeah, we’ve never heard people in the city bitch about how nice the neighborhood was before those “other” people moved in or how rising prices (gentrification) has forced people who lived in the area for generations to move. The bulk of most peoples budget goes into their house payment and given that people are likely to sell their house at some point in the future they want to make sure the value stays decent. If the neighborhood goes to pot you might have a difficult time selling it or may not get a decent price for it. If people in your neighborhood don’t perform routine maintanence on the property then it makes the entire area look bad. One house might not be a big deal but walk through a neighborhood where most people don’t care about their lawns, the paint, or even making basic repairs to their homes.
Marc
I don’t think suburbs are quite the same as they were in the late 40’s and early 50’s. What we have in the 21st century is conurbation where multiple cities form together into a megalopolis. The biggest one in the United States being the Boston-Washington Megalopolis (I could be mistaken) and though smaller the D/FW Metroplex is another example I think. As I said before, if you’re living in a city with a house similar to what you might find in the suburbs I bet you have more in common with suburbanites then you wish to admit.
Do you really think people moved to the 'burbs because they didn’t like other people? I like other people but I don’t want to hear my neighbors talk when I’m trying to watch tv in my living room. I can generally get a larger house in the suburbs then I can in the city proper though because of conurbation you’ve got to go farther and farther out to stretch those bucks. The suburbs don’t have a lock on anti-social people.
Marc
I agree with you on this. I’ve had just as many conversations with my neighbors on property values as I would have living in the suburbs. And I’ve complained just as loudly about the last abandoned house in the neighborhood as anyone else.
What might help us here is to differentiate between a high density urban environment and a lower density environment. Your picture oneighborhoods with houses like that and I don’t necessarily think of those neighborhoods as being typically urban. Although because they are in the city they do tend to be closer to stores and other amenities than they would be in the suburbs. (my experience is almost exclusively with cities in the Mid-Atlantic region, specifically with the DC area).
My city/suburb experience is rather like this (except that many of my neighbors have been my neighbors for over a year and we still don’t know each others’ names - they’re “the guy who I’ve seen in the laundry room twice”).
Do I get along with my neighbors today? I guess. To the best of my knowledge, no one’s complained - but then we don’t interact enough to complain. Did I then? Sometimes, sometimes, definitely not, but sometimes very much so. In the suburbs, there was personal interaction, too much at times. Obviously, there’s more opportunity for friction with the people you speak with daily - but there’s also more opportunity for support as well.
I agree with you that the burbs of today aren’t like the burbs of 40+ years ago. I see a lot of subdivisions that don’t even have sidewalks and I think that the car culture is what drives the sense of isolation in the burbs.
I do think people live in the burbs because they want to be isolated, or at least left alone. I think there is a strong desire in these communities to establish one’s own territory and when something intrudes on that sense of territory it creates conflicts that are disproportionate to the incident itself. I also think there is a homogenity to the suburbs that make differences stand out. A lot of times in posts about problems between neighbors in the suburbs it comes out that the offender is from a different race/culture/class and it adds a level of tension to the problem.
In the city (by city I mean an urbanized zone, not a suburban community that happens to be part of a municipality) there are different expectations. You understand that you are going to be in close proximity to others and that the community is very diverse. In general, if you want to get along, you have to let a lot slide and not get upset at the first real or imagined slight. Yes there are problems and conflicts as there is any time people live together, but sometimes I hear people in the burbs complain about people not mowing grass, or neighbors parking in front of the house or whatever and I just really don’t see the issue. I barely worry about my own yard, let alone my neighbor’s yard. My parents are obsessed about people parking in front of their house and I have never got it, it just seems so petty.
Again, this isn’t to say that city life is utopian, but that conversely to a lot of people’s expectations, urban life seems to have a greater sense of community than a lot of what I see in the burbs, IMHO
Explain to me what an urbanized zone is because I don’t get. So far as I understand the definition of an urban area the suburbs qualify.
What do you consider close proxemity? In my experience people in the suburbs get along just fine. I’ve never had to complain about someone mowing their lawn because my neighbors always made sure to cut the grass in a reasonable amount of time.
That’s what confuses me. Last time I was looking for a place to rent I’d drive through the area and my opinion of the neighborhood was formed partly on what the place looked like. If the houses were run down, if the lawns were poorly maintained, or a lot of people had junk in the yard I’d move on to look for another rental. I don’t expect everybody’s lawn to look like a golf course but when it’s getting to be a foot high you need to take care of it.
Marc
A suburb is just a “subsidiary urban area surrounding and connected to the central city. Many are exclusively residential; others have their own commercial centers or shopping malls.” --Human Geography. H.J. de Blij, A.B. Murphy.
I promise you that just about any amenity you can find in Dallas you can also find in Plano, Richardson, McKinney, Garland, and though I never would have believed it 10 years ago you can also find them in Frisco and Allen. That house in Plano that trunk linked to might very well be within walking distance of schools and markets. I know my house in Plano was. So what I’m getting at is that there are plenty of people in the suburbs who are just as close to stores and amenities as some of those in the city.
Marc
If you’re trying to draw someone into a technical discussion of what’s “urban” and what’s “suburban”, you’re just playing a game of “gotcha” and you know it. Because anything someone says “this is urban” or “this is the burbs” you know – and we all know – you can find a counterexample to it.
Who cares about “amenities”. That’s not what anyone is talking about.
When’s the last time you and your neighbors had a block party?
When’s the last time you walked to go get your cup of coffee in the morning?
When’s the last time two dogs that weren’t yours had a wrestling match on your front lawn?
When’s the last time your next door neighbor said, “can you watch my kid for two minutes. My phone is ringing and I have to take it”?
When’s the last time you walked into your neighbor’s house with two beers because you were out front and you saw him painting inside?
When’s the last time you got invited to a barbeque AFTER the barbequer had already lit his grill?
When’s the last time you mowed your neighbor’s lawn?
Watered his flowers?
Borrowed sugar?
Shovelled his walk?
Yeah, sometimes you hear your neighbor’s talking when your trying to watch TV. What about hearing his kids laughing and playing? What about hearing mom and dad singing to their kids? What about actually talking to him? If your biggest concern is hearing your TV, stay in the burbs – they’re tailor-made for that kind of thing.
And in my experience, those things happen in the suburbs - never in the city (downtown area of a major city).
Of course, my experience isn’t universal, but if you think those things happen in cities and not suburbs, neither is yours.
I live in an urban setting. My neighbors are pot smoking, abusive boyfriend, alcoholic friend keeping idiots. I cannot sit in my livingroom with the window open in the summer half the time because my neighbors are sitting on their front porch, smoking pot (which blows into my living room–the houses are row homes), with their friends, drinking beer (everyone) and cursing in tones and volumes that rattle the glass in the windows.
I do not confront them. I do not call the police anymore. (although I have–the police don’t care, unless they have weapons–which so far, they don’t–or are killing each other–which so far, they haven’t).
This is not because we’re used to diversity, or all try to get along. It’s because I don’t care to have the tires on my car slit, or to have someone jump Hallboy in the alley, or someone to kick in the basement windows and steal me blind.
I’d give anything to deal with tall grass in the neighbors yard, as opposed to the trash they let pile up on their back porch, drawing flies and vermin. Park in front of my house all you want, but don’t blast rap music at 2:30 in the morning so it rattles my windows. Don’t pitch your empty bottles of cheap alcohol over the fence into my backyard, or dump the trash from your car into my front yard. And for crying out loud, don’t shoot guns in the middle of the night. It wakes me up.
If you walk to get your coffee in the morning, then what you’re calling a suburb isn’t what we’d call one around here.
Mowed your neighbor’s lawn? Around here, the burbites spend half a Saturday on their riding mowers to do theirs. You do that, really?
A block party out in the burbs? The guys I know who live out there don’t even know their neighbors names.
The businesses you regularly traffic in (eateries, video store, coffee shop, liquor store, book store, hardware store) – do you know the owners?
Well, what you live in is a poor, shitty “urban setting”.
Of COURSE you’d trade it for the suburbs but, I presume, that’s not an option for you.
Actually, no - they (my parents, now. I live in the anonymous city where I don’t know the names of the people with whom I share a wall. I’m sure his parents don’t call him “guy in the laundry room,” but that’s who he is to me - same with “guy with dog”) go to each other’s houses for coffee in the morning - the stores are too far away to walk to them. (it isn’t just a suburb, it’s the suburb of a suburb) So, no, they don’t know the local business owners, there aren’t really any local business owners there’s nowhere within a reasonable walking distance that’s zoned for business. But they do know each other.
As kids, we would weed each others bark, and yes, kids did make money mowing neighbors’ lawns. They have block parties (just had one for the 4th, and they’ll do it again for Labor Day). I have never seen my parents walk over to a neighbor’s house with two beers, but I have seen them stop to chat for a half an hour while doing yard work (and catch up on everything in each other’s lives). They know when someone’s on vacation (often because they’re checking the house, or taking care of the pets and plants, or drove each other to the airport). Not only do they know each others names but each others’ business - who is doing what, to whom, with whom, and when. They have neighborhood get togethers, they do favors for each other, they go out of their way for each other.
Since I’ve lived in the city, nothing like that. That’s where I’ve found it anonymous and impersonal. I can hear their (I think I’ve heard two voices, but I couldn’t tell you for sure) TV through the ceiling, but that’s the extent of my contact with my neighbors.
All suburbs are urban areas but not all urban areas are suburbs. What I’m really interested in is what constitutes an “urbanized” area and what doesn’t.
Scroll up, someone else mentioned amenities before I did.
I live in a rural area so none of this applies. However, aside from walking to get a cup of coffee, most people have coffee makers after all, these sound remarkably like things that happen in the suburbs. Not the last neighborhood I lived in but the one my uncle lives in in California. (Ok, no shoveling either.)
Marc
I have excperienced exactly the opposite - I used to live in DC (16th and Florida NW) and hardly knew my neighbours. I would pass tenants from my building either oustside or in the hallways and neigh a word was spoken. Then I moved to the MD burbs (Kensington) and now I know most folks in the street, greet and am greeted by almost everyone I happen to meet while walking to bus/supermarket. There are hardly any houses/folks in my neighbourhood that upset me (except for the occcassional monstrosity that people build these days on lots that housed a capecod before)
Maybe I lucked out with my neighbourhood, who knows…
I’ve never lived in the suburbs, as we could never afford it (my personal definition of suburbia is “houses that are owned or mortgaged, at least one car that isn’t a piece of crap, a lawn, and a decent salary/wage” I know that’s not the “real” definition, but hey). But I used to deliver pizza there all the time. And I think someone’s got something here. None of the neighbors in suburbia liked each other, or really knew each other. Where I live, we’re constantly doing stuff like throwing barbecues (on our front porch because we don’t have a lawn, we have a cheapie townhouse) and inviting our neighbors and friends, and the people who rent (some of the townhouses have been sold as condos) are all usually pretty cool. The people that have bought are snooty and of course don’t want anything to do with us - why they’d turn down free food is beyond me. But yeah, I’ve noticed that places where there’s a lower income level, or where there’s renting rather than owning as the norm, there seems to be a sense of comradery. In the low-income development I used to live in when I was little, it was more of a sense of “we’re all in this shithole together, so we might as well make the best of it.” The people were aware of their problems and knew their neighbors had the same problems. In suburbia, it seems to be “all about me.”
~Tasha
We had a block party a few months ago, and one of the stores in the neighborhood throws a block party every August. We also had an alley cleaning party three weeks ago.
I walked to the local coffee shop about a month ago. It is two blocks away and I don’t have time in the mornings in addition to preferring to make my own.
I don’t think that I could tell if they were painting. Our houses are on an elevation and most have shrubbery or something else blocking the view of the front windows.
The city doesn’t permit dogs without a leash so this has never come up. Also most everyone in the neighborhood has a retaining wall and/or a fence on their property which would keep dogs out.
My next door neighbors have lived in there house for 70 odd years. They don’t have kids.
Never.
No lawn really to mow. (I trim my grass with a weedwhacker)
No.
Never
It hasn’t snowed enough to require it.
I did give one set of neighbors some of the plums that we harvested off of our plum tree and will probably share the wealth when are peaches become ripe.
Our city living experience by no means has been as ideal as some other people’s experience. For the most part, the neighbors that I know well as just as busy as I am and don’t spend a lot of time socializing but we all greet each other and if we run into each other, we will chat for a while.
In my experience, when I lived in a rented place in Roslyn,( a neighborhood in Arlington), I didn’t know anyone with the exception of a friend of mine who lived on the same floor whom I had known prior to moving there. I never really interacted with the neighbors with the exception of the loud drunk guy whom I told to shut up at five in the morning on a Saturday when he was singing along to Poison.
In my current neighborhood, I met several of the neighbors my first week. We were invited to a Labor Day barbeque and I’ve met more of them since then. I met some of them in the local coffee shop.
As to the OP, I think that how well neighbors get along is largely defined by their socioeconomic class, personal manners and the design of the neighborhood.
As a general rule, suburbs tend to me more isolating than urban appartment living. They are designed that way. It’s one of the things I don’t like about them. An urban area has “common areas” like parks, Starbucks coffee shops, bars and other places where people congregate and meet. Most suburbs don’t. People drive around in their cars, go into their homes and disappear from sight.
Notice that those who actually live(d) in suburbs say that there is more of a sense of community. The “isolation” cliché is how urban people choose to view suburban life, but it doesn’t match up with the actual experience of those who have lived in suburban areas.