Learning to become good neighbours (again)

Pop quiz hotshot. What is the name of your next door neighbour? And across the road? If you're like me and plenty of other suburbanites, you've probably not met or spoken much with your neighbours. Or worse, with your colleagues. This isn't your fault (well it is, but you have mitigating circumstances).

Because of the chase to work, and the rush home to live, there is very little time for the touchy feely stuff (like smelling flowers and inviting the neighbours for a cup of tea).

But whether we like it or not, we will be meeting our neighbours in the future as our lifestyles and workstyles become increasingly local.

What is the force driving localisation (as opposed to globalisation). Well, simply skyrocketing resource and in particular expensive energy prices.

People are increasingly going to have to make do with what they have closer to home. Additionally, there is going to an increased demand for walkable communities, and urban design that facilitates both car free environments (bye bye ugly parking lots) and more urban diversity. After all, while we may not care how far we have to drive, when you walk you want somewhere (nice) to walk to...

The real world plugging back into the environment is underway, moving gradually. This is also well underway virtually, where social media is resuscitating to some extent the stagnated social networks that suburbia promised (but never delivered).
The thing that basically prevented people from talking to each other is becoming increasingly troublesome, and some feel that it faces some kind of obsolescence. That thing is the motor vehicle. It is a thing that insulates and isolates, people see and move by each other behind tinted glass shells, each box allocated a number, each box a separating entity.

For too long we have been not real communities living without any kind of social networking. Suburbia promised country living, but it has always been a mockery of the benefits, with all drawbacks and even curses of city living (crime, pollution, stress, health impacts, costs, distance from relatives etc).

We can start this process of redeveloping social networks online, but really, it needs to be lived out there, in places like Rosebank and those areas we call home. Home needs to be a place for ourselves and our neighbours, and our neighbours (tray of cookies and a Labrador in tow) need to come knocking on our doors too.