urban density, community, social anxiety: living arrangements in cities and subrubs

thread title makes it sound more academic than intended, but i'm interested in ppl's relationship with their neighbors, the extent to which you know about your neighborhood's goings-on, the amount of turnover of new neighbors, and whereabouts these neighborhoods are (high density urban, residential spaces cut off from other development unless by car or long walk, middle of nowhere, etc.) also, how does that differ from where you grew up?

been thinking about when it comes time for my wife and me to raise kids how i'd like to be in a more close-knit environment with the ppl who live around us. i only moved once: the house i spent most of my childhood there were lots of other kids so it was easy to start a ball game in the evenings. much closer to the "everyone knew everyone" kind of idea than where we moved in my early adolesence, which was a somewhat more affluent neighborhood a few miles away. we hardly knew anyone on the block and everyone pretty much kept to themselves, just pulling into their driveways in the evening and walking straight into their homes. it was quiet, and i can value that to a degree, but it made for a pretty isolating community environment ime.

also as it pertains to social anxiety, i def trend towards that so meeting lots of new ppl just taxes me. once i get to know ppl, neighbors in particular, i gtf over it.

Edward T. Hall - The Hidden Language

From the suburban-style development in a rural area where I grew up, to the medium-density urban areas I've lived since, I now wonder whether how well you know your neighbors has something to do with the neighborhood but even more to do with whether you have kids. It seems like in either type of place, families with small children spend time outdoors, walking or in parks, and that gives them opportunities to meet each other.

I think having little kids makes people more eager to know their neighbors, too so they make greater efforts to do things like bring over cookies, especially if there's a stay-at-home parent who can put the time into those efforts. Some atmospheres are more conducive to community than others but I think it always starts with people feeling awkward about starting conversations with strangers but forging ahead anyway.

My parents still live in the community I grew up in. Most of it was built between 1977 and 1983, at the very edge of northwest Edmonton. We moved there in 1990 and my perspective of it is that it was a pretty close-knit place, but I think that has a lot to do with the fact my mom was very involved with community things. My little brother is 6 years younger than me, so between me and him she had 12 years of involvement with our elementary school and made a lot of connections with other locals through that. A lot of our neighbours had school-age kids as well. For us, and I think for a lot of other families at the time, it was the school and the community league that connected people beyond their immediate neighbours.

20 years on, there are fewer kids here and there has been a lot of turnover in neighbours (partly due to an economic boom, so this may slow down). Maybe it's that a lot of new families who can afford it are choosing the new developments that flank Dunluce, even though Dunluce is better connected and has schools and parks (which the new developments don't). It does feel like it's becoming more isolated, or that the community is 'growing up', but now that nobody in my family has young kids or any reason to be involved with the local school or community league it could just be that we're the ones who are out of touch. Not entirely sure, really.

Anyway, interesting topic.

Just popped in to mention that I at first saw this thread title start w/urban dentistry and thought, 'How quaint!'

tbh everytime i see it i think "unban density" and i am like "otm"

so it wd appear small children is an important variable in strengthening community ties (assumption that it takes a villge + adults can take care of they own damn selves?)

So the guy who made the documentaries Helvetica and Objectified has yet another design-themed one, this one on the mega-topic of urban planning across the globe, Urbanized. More here, and from me:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/gary-hustwits-urbanized

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/urbanized/5878

nice review.
screening here in a month w/a panel afterwards, which seems suitable; i can't really imagine something so broad and trendwatchy getting a chance to go deep on the actual problems & situations. is the detroit section typical of recent detroitphilia?

great thread topic! I think about this a lot.

me: first nine years of life in an affluent mid-density neighborhood in mpls. Next nine in a rural area. In the city I remember knowing some of the neighbors, but not many. In the country, we knew everyone. Part of this was due to aggressive socializing on my moms part, but a lot can be chalked up to the Midwestern welcome wagon. Even so, I felt like the "new kid" well into high school.

Now, as an unmarried, childless thirty year old professional student back in the city, I don't know any of my neighbors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/realestate/how-many-people-can-manhattan-hold.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all

lol I just changed windows from that article to ilx

anyway, manhattan: not a city, prob not the most important place to build up in NYC

this guy did good work w/ the us census bureau fact finder, scroll down, love that the chart is sortable
http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2012/04/04/seattle-population-kids-ownership-vs-top-100-cities/

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/pandemic-suburbs-are-best/613300/

But after the anxious spring of 2020, these defects seem like new luxuries. There was always comfort to be found in a big house on a plot of land that’s your own. The relief is even more soothing with a pandemic bearing down on you. And as the novel coronavirus graduates from acute terror to long-term malaise, urbanites are trapped in small apartments with little or no outdoor space, reliant on mass transit that now seems less like a public service and more like a rolling petri dish. Meanwhile, suburbanites have protected their families amid the solace of sprawling homes on large, private plots, separated from the neighbors, and reachable only by the safety of private cars. Sheltered from the virus in their many bedrooms, they sleep soundly, dreaming the American dream with new confidence.

Safety has always warmed the suburban soul. The American dream is sometimes equated with property ownership and the nuclear families such properties house—but really, they are just hulls for a more fundamental suburban aspiration: individualism, which the suburban home demarcates and then protects.

by the famous mind behind the hilarious facebook game cow clicker

the idea that individualism is a suburban aspiration has got to be one of dumbest things I’ve ever heard

Suburbs definitely about separation. People hating their fucking neighbors whenever they impinge on them in any way etc.

Is “subrubs” an ilx meme

seems like it's got legs

I'd think the hip thing is living in the sticks out in the woods or mountains etc. It seems that the whole outdoors camping thing is really popular Yuppie pastime, more than perhaps even 20 years ago.

There appears to be enclave towns of these scattered through the west and in your beach adjacent towns like in the Carolinas or mountains in Tennessee.