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Comment by vowelless | Hacker News Reader

Unlike other commentators, this doesn’t make me feel bad about my cubicle job working on abstract problems.

It does make me sad about living in a sterile mega city with no form of community with my neighbors. It makes me miss the days I used to live in a much smaller town, in my home land, where everyone knew each other, and we had shared festivals, feasts and fasts together.

Thanks for sharing the twitter thread.

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This story takes place in Atlanta. The metro area has something like 6 million people in it. Not a 'mega city' but also not a small town.

Perhaps it's not the city that is causing the lack of community with neighbors?

I disagree, having lived in large cities, everything always feels so impermanent and impersonal. Connections that should be easy to make with neighbors down the hall can feel more difficult than connections with neighbors down a driveway. I'm not sure what causes this phenomenon, but many people report feeling this way.

No sources, but I've seen this notion circulate in articles and other forums.

I wonder if it is because YOU are at an impermanent phase in your life. I live in Los Angeles, and would have said the same thing five years ago. However, in the last five years I have gotten married, had two kids, and bought a house.

I feel much more connected to my location now. I have met my neighbors more than I ever did before buying a house, and have met many who have lived in the neighborhood for multiple generations.

I feel like it takes making yourself more permanent before connections with neighbors become real.

What do you mean by permanent? Having bought a house and married? Or creating a static environment for a child to grow up?

I've felt some of this since I got married and had kids, but I've chalked it up more to the increased social connections than any kind of 'permanence'. I know my neighbors a lot better because my kids know their kids, or I see them at the school, etc. I owned a house for 10 years before getting married and didn't really have any neighborhood connections, so I don't think that just buying a house is enough.

Also, it helps in a lot of unexpected places, like at work. Now I have a lot more in common with managers and above than when I was a single guy. I'm very convinced that part of my recent jump in career progression has been this additional connection. Suddenly everyone sees me as management material, for better or worse.

You bought a house. That implies you moved to a suburban area. Having owned a house in a suburban area in a transitory time of my life, and lived in a city for what I thought was settled down - no, there's no question, it was the suburban lifestyle that allowed meaningful connections.

It's not exactly fair to throw out the population like that with no context - Atlanta is similar to LA in that it is very spread out, a bunch of "suburbs in search of a city." Friendly communities like this are rare in apartment buildings, as far as I've seen. I would love to know why or if there are any notable counterexamples - I would consider moving there!

I live in a dense part of Chicago and have a community like the one in the story. That's been true across housing types, from high rise, to mid rise to townhouse.

It's not the suburbs that make community. It's engaging with your community and its institutions. In this story, the mail carrier. But you can engage with all manner of other institutions and start to be more apart of where you live.

Zurich, Switzerland. There's only one family in my building I'm not really chatting with somewhat regularly. Everyone says I'll get to know them once the weather is right for hanging out in the common grassy area anyways. And that's despite the Swiss having an opinion for being like Germans, but without the openness and legendary sense of humour ;)

> And that's despite the Swiss having an opinion for being like Germans, but without the openness and legendary sense of humour ;)

Friendly help from a native English-speaker: I think you meant "reputation" rather than "opinion." :)

Indeed.

This happens in Marietta which is a sizeable city but not Atlanta. It's outside of Atlanta like how Irvine is outside of LA.

My family lives in Acworth an hour a way and there are chickens wandering people's yards. GA is a bit different in that regard.

As a former Atlantan (I lived in EAV or near it for 12 years) now living on the west coast I think the trend follows here as well: twenty minutes outside of Portland and you're in the "sticks." That said, the folks who live in the further flung suburbs, exurbs, and "sticks" outside Portland tend to be a good bit nicer than their Atlanta area counterparts in my experience

My upstairs neighbors in the mid rise apartment I lived in raised chickens on their porch, was fairly normal to have one wander down to my deck. I don't have a point other than to point out these days chickens are not a signal of the sticks.

FWIW, I live in east midtown and someone here is keeping chickens because I hear a rooster most mornings.

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