Our summer rental in Lincoln, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb with two-acre minimum zoning, is coming to an end. My friend Tom asked me whether I was sorry to be giving up the yard, woods, and pond and moving back to my crummy two-bedroom apartment in Harvard Square. I said, “Well, in three months here I’ve only met one other person.” Tom said that he’d lived in a Manhattan high-rise and found it difficult to meet people outside of work. The authors of A Pattern Language advocated a three- or four-story maximum height for housing with a lot of public squares, which is sort of what Cambridge is like (sadly the three- and four-story structures are wooden and fell into disrepair 50+ years ago). It is definitely much easier to meet folks while out walking the dog in Cambridge than wandering around in isolation over the trails of Lincoln.
Could it be that Cambridge has the ideal physical structure?
Hmmm, I think the public square part is the most important. I lived in a similar decrepit three story place in Somerville and we barely knew the neighbors. On the other hand, right as I was leaving there was starting to be a reason to go to Union Square where there were lots more people.
I guess it is the contrast. I also spent summer weeks in the country and was always happy to go back to the city. It is nice to enjoy isolation and mother nature, but after downloading BBC with 28.8 kBaud I defenitely need my wireless broadband again.
Vienna (Austria) seems to be very similar to Cambridge. Especially with dogs. Whenever you walk a dog, you can attract people — even tourists! 😉
Hmmm… maybe (post-rent control) real estate prices reflect that yes, Cambridge is pretty close to the ideal city for many, many people.
The tragedy is that somehow we let our zoning codes get to the point where it has been illegal to build on that model for most of a century now, so the only places that can fulfill that demand are the few cities out there that a) fully urbanized more than ~80 years ago, and b) never deteriorated to the point of insurmountable physical and social problems. Hence this type of life is out of financial reach to all but a very few people: those based in an appropriate metropolitan area and either very wealthy or willing to tolerate living in cramped quarters.
Sparce, expensive neighborhoods are terrible for meeting people. People go where there is activity, things to do, stuff to see, and… other people to meet. Outside of activities where like-minded people meet, I do believe there is a density “sweet spot” somewhere near small to medium city density levels. I live in a ‘burb with quarter acre zoning and a lot of people go for walks and hang out in their yards so it is easy to meet the neighbors. Some cities nearby have higher density and there are the malls and shops where a lot of people meet and it is relaxed. But when you get to the density level of NYC (20 miles away), the density begins to work against you with people hiding behind their protective city shells. Then a whole new set of rules apply! However, a good smile and non threatening body language seems to work well almost anywhere.
I divide my living situation between an old medium-density suburb (~6500 sqft. lots) and a shoebox studio in a highrise in one of the new high-density Vancouver neighborhoods.
Empirically, highrises aren’t good for meeting your neighbors. They consist of sterile common spaces that largely go unused, and the elevators and hallways that you spend a few minutes in to get to and from the lobby and parking. If someone lives on your floor, you might run into them a couple of times a week. If they live somewhere else in the building, you might see them a couple of times a year. A 45-second elevator ride doesn’t provide a lot of time to meet people; in fact it’s literally by design, since no one likes to ride in a full elevator that stops every floor or two.
In general, older neighborhoods (relatively high-density suburbs and low-density downtowns) seem to be the best for a lot of personal interaction. It seems that somehow our culture has become obsessed with safety through isolation in the last fifty years.
It is not density but organization that makes the difference. You could all be living on farms, and end up meeting folks more often than in a dense urban environment. Too dense/busy and you get the anonymity of the crowd.
Got a clue from the dorms in college:
http://bannister.us/weblog/on/2004/06/19/suburban-planning/
Tweak the design of homes and communities to promote “accidental” encounters, and I will bet you get a lot more folks meeting forming more of a community.
Paraphrasing from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance while Pirsig was present and Phaedrus was not:
While riding through the flat rural farmland of the midwest, Im struck by how tightly knit the community is even though the closest neighbor is more than a mile away. In the city, I don’t know most of my neighbors on my block, but on the farm, I knew everybody, every family, and every farm for more than ten miles in every direction.
You might meet more people in dense areas, but it seems that you will know more people in rural areas.
/paraphrase off
I’m a land use planner by training and profession and agree with your premise Phil but the above has always stuck with me since I first read Pirsig in the late ’80’s. He has a good point about the creation of community through design (or lack thereof) versus the evolution of community through necessity. I think his example was that when it’s 30 below and your electricity goes out or your furnace explodes, it’s a necessary thing to know your neighbors and a different sort of community evolves.
It seems from my experience working with land planners (I am a zoning official) that at least some developements today attempt to bring about a “meet your neihbor” design to their projects. That said, I’ve heard it expressed time and again that today’s citizens simply are not as hospitable and as amiable to making friends as we once were. No matter how friendly the design is.
I don’t know how much difference density makes. I’ve lived my entire life in the suburbs of Los Angeles. I’ve been in my current 35-unit apartment building for just over nine years, and I know none of my neighbors. Although there is a pool and barbecue area, it’s sparsely used by residents except when they’re entertaining their own guests. Other than that, there are no opportunities whatsoever for “accidental” encounters beyond the most cursory phatic acknowledgment of existence.
I lived in my previous 14-unit apartment building for 12 years. The social situation was identical despite it having a large central courtyard that would seem to be more conducive to social encounters. But it didn’t happen– except when my car was stolen. Then I got to know my neighbors slightly (in the sense that they now knew who I was) due to this “celebrity.” But within a year there had been nearly complete turnover, so I was back to not knowing anyone.
When we moved to the current building, my roommate and I had the notion of going door to door and introducing ourselves to each of our neighbors. It’s good to know who’s a neighbor and who’s a car thief, after all. But we couldn’t get up the courage to do that, figuring that we’d have a hard time convincing people that we’re just neighbors and not selling Amway, Jesus, or the Los Angeles Times (which is invariably the case when someone knocks on our door). To date, none of our neighbors have knocked on our door to introduce themselves. And I think that’s the way they prefer things, unfortunately.
I don’t know if this situation is peculiar to Los Angeles, a place where mobility is so highly prized that it may not be worth the bother to meet neighbors who are likely to move away tomorrow. But I suspect it’s the same in any major city, as my roommate has had the same experiences when he has lived in various places around the country.
I don’t think Americans as a whole value quaint notions of “community” any more. It might be because they’re too absorbed in the endless struggle to service their debt. Or it may have something to do with the pervasive climate of fear that has been the dominant aspect of American culture for decades (and which the Bush administration has so successfully exploited to gain unassailable power). Whatever the cause, it’s not a healthy thing either for individuals or for society as a whole.
A lot of military housing is designed in the Pattern Language way. There are sixty three-bedroom apartments in ten buildings. There are several other such areas in the immediate area, Sellers’ Road, Phythian, etc. Those who have not lived there often find the four-story 1910 brick buildings backward and unattractive. However, it is an excellent way for children to meet each other to play and for parents to get together and compare notes on raising kids and surviving life in the military. It also offers an opportunity to share very useful ‘watercooler gossip’ between departments and commands, which goes a long way to answering subordinates’ questions about why their bosses are asking them to do this or that seemingly off-the-wall task. It is also efficient of energy, as the larger structures have a larger volume-to-surface-area ratio, which conserves heat in the winter and cool in the summer. The arrangment is also extremely valuable when a spouse is deployed for extended periods. The other spouses are very close by (like, across the hall) and can help with kids and dinners, and generally help fill the void.A commonality between small towns and military bases is that there is a powerful sense of commonality among the individuals and families in the vicinity. Our neighbor in Annapolis actually met us in New Orleans last year and helped us find our house. Because she knew about our situation from conversation, and she appreciated our situation because she was in a similar situation.
We used to have picnics on the common grounds of Perry Circle almost every weekend in the summer. Grills and potato salads would just start appearing and all of a sudden there would be fifty people. In the winter the gatherings were generally smaller, but still plentiful. By contrast, we had a backyard barbeque in New Orleans for our neighbors this summer; they said it was the first time they’d done something like that in as much as 30 years. There were people who lived within a few houses of each other and had never met! In the thousands of years of human development, that’s bizarre!
There should be a link in the second sentence of my comment. It should read “Here’s a Google Map of the Perry Circle apartments at the Naval Academy. And the link is http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=10+Phythian+road,+annapolis+md&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=38.989553,-76.497245&spn=0.002527,0.004908&t=h&om=1
You might be looking at the wrong variable. I lived in Lincoln from 1989-1999, and it is great for meeting fellow homeowners. 2-acre zoning means you are not constantly in each other’s face, and we had the best block parties ever. A single person I suggested Lincoln to, rented for a year and had a terribly boring time. Since all homeowners in Lincoln have “arrived” to a small degree, they had their own deep friends before moving, and are pleasant to newcomers but not desparate to connect.
Do you want to meet a bunch of 40 or 50 something upper middle class homeowners on a warm casual basis? Meeting people is about phase of life. Go somewhere where lots of people have just moved (not Lincoln) and you will find lots of feelers extended. First day at school. Grad school. California in general ( although prop 13 has added some ugly stability to it).
In short: if you are going to sort geographic areas by ability-to-meet-people, figure out what kind of relationship you are looking for (friends, country club chit chat, spouses, business partners, etc.) and find a place where there are lots of new faces (not Lincoln) and people feel safe and secure (US apartments often not).
> A lot of military housing is designed in the Pattern Language way.
This is one of the more interesting sentences I’ve seen in a long time. Either I am clearly not giving enough credit to military housing, or Niels is reading a different “Pattern Language” than I am. However, his description of the military enviornment certainly sounds socially interesting.
It’s difficult to separate the pre-arranged social aspects of military housing from the benefits of the environment and architecture. Those living in military housing have a shared experience and lifestyle which helps bind them together. It’s far more interesting when many different people of different ages and incomes find themselves interacting socially simply because of the organic nature of their surroundings.
I am lucky enough to live in a vibrant area of South Melbourne, Australia where there the parks and local marketplaces have become a mixing pot of many different ages and walks of life. Knowing people here is very easy and almost unavoidable and because of that, it feels safe and comfortable. Meeting people results from a large number of random encounters with many different types of people doing their day to day shopping, dining, and loitering around the cafes. The interesting meetings are not the ones you are trying to find, but rather the ones that find you.
” I’ve heard it expressed time and again that today’s citizens simply are not as hospitable and as amiable to making friends as we once were. ” — from someone involved in land-planning? So … if the problem is the people not the planning, why try? Bull.
Step outside your home. Stand in the middle of the street (or if you are really lucky – in the park outside your front door). Imagine at this moment everyone was home, and would be happy to meet you if only they knew you were outside. What do you see?
If you find yourself standing in heavy traffic – that’s not gonna work.
If you live in southern California style suburbia (much replicated elsewhere) you see cars and garage doors, mainly. The most-used living areas are in the back. No one knows you are out front, so – that’s not gonna work.
If you find yourself on a crowded sidewalk – that’s not gonna work.
If you find yourself in a neighborhood with cars in the back, front porches and most-used living areas in the front – guess what? You are going to meet folks.
So … neighborhood planning is not rocket science.
Now let’s think about the community. Imagine there is one common gathering place for shopping and dining (a town square perhaps). If no one goes there, nothing is gonna happen. If too many people go there, you never see the same folk, and nothing is gonna happen. If a modest-sized community shares one school, one main park, one most-accessible eating and shopping area – you are going to run into the same set of folks quite a lot. Things happen.
Community planning is certainly more complex, but not a mystery.
Instead we have “planners” who (for lack of a better idea) think old-style street grids are somehow magically better. Um, No…
You can get tight-knit social groups even when homes are spread out (as in farming communities), given common logical gathering places. You can be miles out of town, but distance does not matter so much with near-nil traffic and a car covering a mile-a-minute.
It’s interesting; you’re probably right about the density and layout being ideal for meeting people. There’s a school of planning called “New Urbanism” which advocates mixed-use medium-rise building with a large amount of shared space. It essentially seeks to replicate the Harvard Square physical environment in other places.
Unfortunately, most people simply aren’t like the inhabitants of Harvard Square. From what I infer, Harvard Square is positively loaded with students, academics, professionals, well-heeled intellectuals, and their similarly educated and fascinating significant others. (Even some interesting semi-retired dot-commers). These are precisely the sort of people a law-abiding person would be delighted to encounter on a day-to-day basis. In most other, better socioeconomically mixed areas, increasing the number of interactions with your neighbors is going to increase your number of negative interactions as well. Everyone has their own tolerance level for street crime; mine’s extremely low. There was an article on reason’s website about how this kind of physical layout appears to dramatically increase the crime rate, while good old fashioned suburban cul-de-sacs appear to provide “defensible space” http://www.reason.com/0502/fe.st.crime.shtml
In the Harvard Square example, the navy example, the positive Lincoln experience, and, with a slight caveat about necessity, the rural example, I think that the shared interests probably trump the physical layout as far as enhancing the ability to meet people and make friends.
There’s a place outside Sacramento, Ca. called Cameron air park. It’s essentially an exurban subdivision built around a small airport http://www.airnav.com/airport/O61 where the houses are actually on taxiways and they have attached hangars where their garages would normally be. I’ll bet if Philip had showed up there with his helicopter, airplane, and love of aviation, and spent a summer, he would have met a bunch of interesting people in a community like this:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/05/MNGMIHITQE1.DTL Although, it needs to be pointed out: other than the aviation, the foothills above Sacramento are pretty “rural” in character, considered by us urbanites something of a cultrual wasteland. If you want to go to clubbing with beautiful young people, you’ll be better off in miami beach, and if you want to go to the opera, you’ll prefer new york.
It sounds like Philip would have met more people over the summer if he’d had a wife and a couple of toddlers.
It seems like today, there are so many opportunities to meet people (through online communities, for example) that things other than physical structure will have more of an impact on your ability to meet people.
I live in Lincoln and I say over an over again that it is the best place to live in the world. I live in Walden Woods, about a quarter mile from Walden pond. I am 22 years old and have lived in the same house for my entire life. During this time I have been able to enjoy living in the middle of the woods and also been able to be as close as 25 minutes to downtown Boston. It is the best of both worlds out in Lincoln. I have read your blog for about 8 months on and off and had I known you were in Lincoln maybe I would have been more apt to have a conversation with you. The people of Lincoln are educated, wordly, and open to new ideas. I like Cambridge alot, and maybe you will bump into people more often, but Lincoln and Cambridge are one in the same when it comes to politics and general behavior. If you prefer to have more space, Lincoln is the town to visit.
Awhile ago I started to take notice of more and more anti-loitering construction on the streets… few to no benches, and metal pointy things bolted on to any incidental surface that could be comfortable enough to sit on. Perhaps it’s been this way for a long time, or perhaps it’s getting worse… hard to tell. Maybe it makes sense in some places, e.g. a high foot-traffic subway corridor, but I see it a lot more than that. I understand it’s a function of street sketchiness… if you live near gang territory you probably don’t want to put out a bench or take down your fence. But still it seems unfortunate this not-in-my-backyard, shoo-away, I-can’t-stop-you-but-I-won’t-help-you ness that is somehow a part of many neighborhoods (I live in san francisco).
I just got back from a trip to paris, and on the surface it seemed much more community oriented… cafes everywhere with tables and chairs flowing into the streets, drinking seems to be allowed in the streets and parks, people seemed very friendly (despite french snootiness I had been warned about). Of course they have much higher taxes, which perhaps solves litter and loiter-liability issues, or perhaps it’s just part of the culture. and I’m sure it doesn’t hurt to have all the beautiful and historic space around.
I think the real issue is the relative ease with which you can get in your car to travel two blocks vs. walking the two blocks.
Many suburbs and the retail places they server are designed almost exclusively for the use of the car to travel. For instance, the local mall that has Old Navy, Home Depot, a grocery store, Circuit City, etc. is laid out in one long strip with parking all around it. You would be a fool to walk the quarter of a mile from one end to the other. Instead, you visit each store, then hop in the car to get to the next one you are interested in. Nothing about it is pedestrian friendly.
Regarding Scott D’s observations, what if the lack of community and the lack of personal social interaction were a root cause of gangs, crime, and “street sketchiness”? Then the reaction of “anti-loitering construction” would only exacerbate the problem by further discouraging community and social interaction. I don’t think either urban planners or the police and politicians are capable of considering that possibility, since they’re rewarded for providing the illusion of safety rather than addressing complexities like root causes.
In Paris, the visible community orientation (and the public spaces that encourage it) may be doing more to solve (or avoid) the “litter and loiter” problem than taxes or police. But it’s not surprising that an American would assume it’s the taxes and police because our politicians and law enforcement officials have us conditioned to believe that once we build enough prisons and hire enough police to fill them, we’ll finally achieve Utopia.