Hacker News Reader

Comment by oldnetguy | Hacker News Reader

I lived in New York City my entire life and I am now wanting a house. I am tired of living in an apartment building. This idea that people live together communally within buildings or neighborhoods is very overrated.

I have lived in multiple apartments and never has there been a real community there. The building has one holiday party and out of 144 apartments maybe 15 people show up. The posts on the chat board that the building now provides is more about neighbors complaining about each other.

I know people who live in houses and they have more communal respect then the people who I have lived with within the various buildings I have lived.

I understand why people have houses, I just cannot afford one right now.

View on HN

> I lived in New York City my entire life and I am now wanting a house. I am tired of living in an apartment building. This idea that people live together communally within buildings or neighborhoods is very overrated.

I feel the same way. I grew up in an urban environment, moved to rural areas, now back in an urban environment. I can't wait to get out of here. Too many people, too much noise and too much energy spent looking over your shoulder. I don't understand the desire to be around people just for the sake of it. I'd rather live on the quiet "un-walkable" outskirts or suburbs of a city and occasionally go in if I need to. More than anything I hate the lack of privacy that comes with city life.

> too much noise and too much energy spent looking over your shoulder.

That's the bane of american cities. They're noisy, and sociopathy is tolerated by the authorities. Living abroad has shown me cities, significantly more dense than the US, that are neither noisy or unsafe. Walkable cities can be quiet, almost eerily so. America needs more urban environments like that.

> Living abroad has shown me cities, significantly more dense than the US, that are neither noisy or unsafe

Just because you can find quiet isolated pockets in any given city doesn't mean the rest of it is like that. All cities are loud and require being very aware of your surroundings, some more than others. I've spent months traveling through many European cities and been victim of crime and saw a lot of crime. As for being quiet, that's ridiculous. There are still tons of cars and constant construction even in the most walkable cities. Even in Venice where there are no cars it's pretty loud until you wander off into some back walkways.

I guess we were in different places.

What cities are you referring to? Surely not the larger ones like London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Berlin, etc...

Yeah, certainly, they were smaller. Lived for a number of years in Ghent and Leuven. Like living in a palace. There's nothing that compares to it here. :(

Pitbulls should be designated the fifth pest. It would go a long way towards making cities safer to walk and bike.

There is a middle ground. Walkable suburbs were commonplace in the pre-war era.

New York really isn’t what I think of city life. You’d have to go to europe for a good example

Yeah, I have yet to live in an apartment with a sense of community. In the apartments I lived in, neighbors barely acknowledged each other. I lived in one complex for six years and couldn't tell you the names of any neighbor: most folks just quietly walked in, shut their door, and stayed inside. When I moved to the suburbs, I actually had more community, as neighbors actually came to introduce themselves when we moved in, and they still happily make small talk when we cross paths.

When you moved into the apartments, did you go and introduce yourselves to your neighbors?

Nope, nor did anyone introduce themselves to us when they moved in. I also very rarely saw other sets of neighbors interact with each other.

Maybe if you make a small change in how you behave …

Reply on news.ycombinator.com