A neighborhood could be described as an area near a place or thing that is in the vicinity. People living in the neighborhood are supposed to portray neighborly conduct, friendliness and a feeling of identity. In a modern setting, a neighborhood is a community of people who live close together and their share some similar characteristics.
Ideally, the neighborhood is a structure that is used to cultivate communities. Through relating well and cultivating the growth of social networks neighborhoods grow to established communities. Neighborhoods often possess commonly named boundaries, more than one institution identified within the area, and more than one time of shared public space or social network. A neighborhood can also occur as a limited territory within a larger urban area where people inhabit dwelling and interact socially. Thus a neighborhood is a geographic unit within which certain social relationships exist. A neighborhood is important structures in that they foster the development of people’s social life through interaction, relating with each other, at local public space. The interaction may occur in the streets, parks, in shops, and pubs and help in building a social network.
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It is important to note that a neighborly behavior and conduct are non- intimate, convivial relations between people who know each other to nod and wave to. Or engage in limited conversation with and who are available to call on in emergency situations. Sometimes in a neighborhood might not be as close and they might rarely know each other. According to Lovenheim (2010), the couple who was involved in a shooting lived in the neighborhood for seven years but “my wife and I hardly knew them.” Therefore the aspects of the neighborhood in which people interact and establish social networks have changed over time. The other neighbors hardly participated in the funeral and burial of the dead couple. The children were taken in by the grandparents who lived in another part of town. The author reports that “the only indication that anything had changed was the for sale sign on the lawn” (Lovenheim, 2010).
A close-knit neighborhood leads to the development of a community. A community is a collection of people who share something in common without necessarily living together. A community or neighborhood might be a connection to others, of belonging and identification as in “community spirit or sense of community. The relations can be a collection of people who do related kinds of work as in “the health community” or the "academic community." Lovenheim, (2010), mentions that people in the neighborhood were physicians, business owners, and other professions. The most applicable definition is considering it as a collection of people who share a geographical territory and some measures of interdependency that provides the reason for living in the same place. People within a particular neighborhood identify by the name of the place, and this gives them a sense of identification and belonging.
People within the community often have something that brings them together. For instance, people might consider living within the same locality when they are from a particular profession, they do some business together, or they follow some particular religion. The neighborhood that the author narrates was made of the affluent people in the society. They were physicians and business people.
In American setting the neighborhood might be formed of people living in the vicinity, sharing particular talents, hobbies or purposes and natures of being. This factors help in linking people into a network with other show have similar interests. However, it is important to note that people value their privacy and they mind they own business.
According to Lovenheim (2010), the neighborhood in American community sometimes is made of busy people who value their privacy. Some people move from one neighborhood to the other in search of privacy. In the American neighborhoods people are cordial, but they like their privacy and would go about their lives largely detached from those living around them (Lovenheim, 2010). That is why people live with less connection to each, and they simply kept to themselves. This is the reason why the society is reportedly fragmented by income, ethnicity, among other factors. The author mentions that people are divided along divided along invisible dotted lines. There are also property lines that are isolating people who are physically close to each other.
A neighborhood can be fostered by a few people who have a vision of uniting the people. In the book, the neighbor narrates of how he was disturbed by the fact that people were isolated and divided yet they were living in the vicinity. He claims he was concerned about how people were living and the fact that they were evidently divided. They could not interact, and everybody was busy establishing their privacy. The author wanted to know the people around him were- not just what they did for a living and how many children they had but the in-depth of their experience and what kind of people they were. Such are efforts that make it possible to establish a good neighborhood and community.
One of the aspects that are meant by the statement that American was partially built upon the neighborhood and this involves living and relating to neighbors is that the strength and the unity of the people are based mainly on how well they relate to each other. The neighbor knew that if people remained divided they were more prone to suffer in case of emergency and they would not come together to assist each other. This is the reason he stood up to unite his neighbors.
The author thought that planning for frequent sleepovers would serve to unite the neighborhood. It worked during his childhood days, and he felt this simple concept would apply in his neighborhood. He recounts of a time they used to have a summer house exchange with families in Europe. He reports that this other family stayed at the author's house during summer and the author and his family would go to have slept over’s in the other family’s residence. By doing the meals together, conversing, waking up on the stranger's beds they would get a strong feeling of what the other people’s lives were about, something that would not be achieved through mere conversations.
How Contemporary Values and Lifestyle Inhibit Social Connections among Neighbors
The major value that is inhibiting social connection in the American neighborhoods is the need for privacy. People are becoming busier, and they are becoming more isolated, and they keep to themselves. Some feel they are doing fine by themselves and they don’t need other people’s intervention in their life and welfare. A good example that can be used to demonstrates this scenario is when the author attempted to convince the neighbors that sleepovers would help establish good social connections and help them understand each other much deeper. A good number of the neighbors turned down the request – his next door neighbor was the first to turn down the request (Lovenheim, 2010).
Moreover, people who have little accomplishments in their lives feel unworthy, and they turn down any opportunity to establish social connections. During his social experiment, the author approached one of their neighbors and requested for a sleepover. In this experiment, he would closely interact with the welcoming neighbors and record down some vital information about them. He would identify the people by their real names and try to get a glimpse of the lives they live. Mr. Lou was welcoming, and he let the author record information about him. However, he reports that “I will be boring. I have nothing going on in my life- nothing. My life is zero. I don’t do anything (Lovenheim, 2010). Mr. Lou was not comfortable because of his underachievement this is a reason that could inhibit his capability of establishing social connections with his neighbors.
Peoples within the neighborhood spend an appreciable portion of their time engaged in activities outside their immediate neighborhood. Therefore people cannot connect with what goes around their neighborhoods, or they might be completely unaware of the activities in their locality. For instance, the neighbor's plan of having games, meeting or other activities and one of the neighbors spends little time in their home; then such a person might not have the opportunity to connect with other people and attend such activities.
The people who have not received a good education have a problem interacting with the educated. The author claims that as long as neighbors might have a desire to interact, education plays an important part in establishing connections. Lou, a retired surgeon, is liked by most of his age mates- in fact, they look up to him. They know he is learned and good at establishing a conversation. However, Lou feels they miss part of the conversation because they are less educated. “Sometimes I will say a word and realize they do not know its meaning. I have to watch out for that” (Lovenheim, 2010). It is advisable that people should look beyond people’s grammar and the levels of comprehension to establish good neighborhood where people can interact more freely.
Shocking experiences can cause people to withdraw and limit his or her interaction with other people in the neighborhood. As the author realized some people were suffering chronic diseases and others had lost their loved ones. For instance, there is a woman who was spending most of her time indoors, and she was sick, windowed, and her daughters were young. The woman could not count on the neighbors as friends. She rarely interacted with them and therefore did not have a neighbor that she could approach for support. Lou on the other hand, despite has practiced as a surgeon lives all alone and he sees himself as a failure. Lou had cared for many friends, but they were now dead. He felt he has lost most of his friends and this is the reason he prefers to live all alone in an isolated home.
People are turning out to be ungrateful. One of the neighbors, who reports that he is a widower reports that he had tried to establish neighborly relations with the people around him, but they seem busy and not interested. She has tried talking to a female neighbor who has a dog, but she does not respond well. Lou tried to serve the community in a bid to establish a good social connection, but people fail to respond as expected. “One day I took over a fish fry in a box from some takeout place. The guy takes the fish, and we talked a little, and he says, you will have to come over and have a beer,’ but I have not heard about him since… about two years” (Lovenheim, 2010). It is apparent the neighbor who received the fish fry was ungrateful.
Meaning of Lovenheim’s "Tribal Neighborhoods"
The tribal neighborhoods are a situation in which people are isolated and turned down by their next-door neighbors or people within the vicinity. When a murder-suicide occurred in the author's neighborhood, it served as an impetus of social experiment that served to reveal people were highly divided, and other were suffering as result of the isolation. For instance, Lou, the kind retired surgeon who had been serving the community in matters of health suffered spasms on his back, and he had to call his relatives who were a distance away because his neighbors were not of help to him. Additionally, when his wife was suffering, and there was ambulance coming to pick her, no one came to know what was happening. Relatives of the Renan family- the physician who was murdered by her husband- claim that the deaths would not have occurred if there were good relations in the neighborhood. Her relatives mention that “she felt isolated. There were some neighbors who knew of and had met her but did not get the feeling that neighbors knew her or knew them as a family” (Lovenheim, 2010). People in such neighborhood found a feeling of a community elsewhere such as the clubs they subscribed to and the workplace.
In a tribal neighborhood, everyone is committed to his or her own life, and they don’t have time to interact with each other. Some neighbors lamented “everyone’s is busy doing their own things. This is not a neighborhood of neighbors… no one cares, no one wants to be bothered. They are not neighbors in the truest sense of the world.” it’s unfortunate that this person could not establish worth relationship with the neighbors but could start a friendship with strangers at the mall and the café. A good neighborhood would have been established on the relationship of reciprocal responsibility based on physical closeness and the potential need for mutual aid.
How Tribal Neighborhoods Were Structured In Space
According to Lovenheim, (2010), the tribal neighbors were structured in such a way that people were segregated according to race and class. There was an invisible dotted line that was used to divide people. The neighbors had their homes design in such a way they served as a physical barrier with the intention of establishing privacy among the house occupants. The author mentions that the physical design of the neighborhood promoted division. “By code, houses had to be set back from the street at least fifty feet. Lots were wide” (Lovenheim, 2010). This discouraged activities around the houses. If any activities were to take place in the homes, it was in the backyard where the neighbors lacked access. The other issue with this kind of setting is that the neighborhood lacked a public place where people could congregate.
In tribal neighborhoods, every space that people used to gather had been leased out to influential people. The author writes that “public space today has been largely privatized” for this reason people had to rely on ‘private commercial spaces, like the video stores, supermarkets, and chains bookstores… they are the new public spaces. And if you want to meet people, that’s where tend to go”. Additionally, people started treating cafes as the new public spaces, but this was not attractive as the neighborhood parks, commons, and the corners store of the old. In this setting, it was possible to make friends with people that that is unfamiliar and yet they have fewer chances of being a neighbor or knowing their behaviors and conduct.
Spatial structure for the concept "neighborliness"
The spatial structure of a neighborhood that allows for the opportunity to interact would involve a structure that promotes diversity; diversity of housing types and a mix of neighborhood uses. The homes should have attractive and well sited on reasonably sized lots with private outdoor spaces. Differences in building designs with lawns to allow easy movement. There would be balconies and a backyard which are accessible to people in the neighborhood. The backyards need not to be private, but people within the close vicinity should have the opportunity to use it for social connection.
The other characteristics that need to be put into consideration are the street settings. Streets should be interconnected; narrow and designed to minimize speeding and shortcuts. The streets should not be designed to carry thorough traffic, but they should allow easy movement and yet allow neighbors to interact more freely. It is good to a have setting that has boundaries; separating one neighborhood from the other. A community center would be important in linking people together. Facilities such as schools, shopping areas, and parks connected by sidewalk and trails can also serve to linkup people within the neighborhood.
The social networking site "Next Door"
The social networking sing next door is what Lovenheim, was striving t establishing by spending sleep over’s in his neighbors’ houses. He was sure that by starting the connection and understanding his neighbors a deeper level would help to foster a neighborhood feeling. Subsequently, the author requested the neighbors for a chance to sleep at their place as he was conducting a social experiment of how people live.
The major benefit of the next door approach of social networking is that it would promote street life, neighborliness and promote contact among people within the vicinity. Through it, it is possible to network with people and start relationships with people around. It would also help to set and promotes the normal and values that the community desires. If people spend time at their neighbor's place, they will become aware of the hardship they go through, and in return, they will know how to participate in alleviating the suffering.
Developing neighborhood connections
Neighborhood connections can be established by starting simple conversations. People can make the connections by interacting with their neighbors, greeting people on the streets, looking and guarding the houses for their neighbors while they are away, sharing meals with immediate neighbors and building connections that in good times can enrich your sense of community and in bad times can give you someone to call for help.
Furthermore, people can build connections through knowing other people details and the way that they can help them in times of emergency. The author, in one of his sleepovers, discovered that one of the neighbors had muscle spasms that made him suffered, he then offered to ever support her, and they exchanged phone numbers. They would later use it to check on each other. It is also important to know how to access neighbor’s houses. There is a neighbor who informed the author of the door he would use to access the house if the neighbor was away or in an emergency. The author also reveals the secret place where he hides his house keys. Social platforms can also be used to establish the neighborhood connections. It is apparent that social connections can be used to avoid tragedies.
References
Lovenheim, P. (2010). In The Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street. One Sleepover at a Time (New York: Perigee Trade, 2010), passim .
