Word On the Street: An Experiment in Neighborliness in Brooklyn

I came across this article on Brooklyn Cohousing on the NY Times site this morning. Brooklyn Cohousing is essentially a real estate development in Brooklyn designed for 40 or so households who aspire to "village" life and all its neighborly benefits within an apartment complex. Each family has their own private apartment, but they know all their neighbors, can cook and eat meals in a shared dining room, vote on decisions that affect the community, hold art classes and other communal activities and watch after each others children. It's not as strict as a commune and sounds like a nice attempt to establish a sense of connectedness in the city. Only time will tell if this works in practice--it's not set to open until Spring 2010--but I, for one, think it sounds practically utopian.

On My Mind: Shut-In NYC

Confession. I haven't left the house in two days. Okay, not so unusual for someone who works from home, but it made me think of how easy it is to be a shut-in in this city. With the Internet, Facebook, email and phone...oh, and TV (the people are almost real!), it's easy to think you're connecting with people when you really aren't. And it's easy to stay home and avoid the crowds, the dirt, the noise, the spending of money, and it's way too easy to start spiraling into an inner world of your own creation until your next scheduled dinner/lunch/social outing.

According to the Census Bureau, this city has 8 million plus people living in it. A person shouldn't get lonely with that many people around, but sometimes it's like trying to reach out and grab a fish when a school of fish is swimming by (I just got back from diving, so excuse the metaphor). When you're not going to the office every day, your social interactions have to be formalized. There's very little spontaneous human contact. You have to make a real effort, and I can imagine that for some people, that effort becomes too much. I wonder how many people live this way, just walls separating us from them, but silent and invisible.

I have this idea about small towns and cities. I imagine everyone's in your business, all the neighbors talk when you don't mow your lawn and know more about your marriage than you probably do, but they'll bring you soup when you're sick, and if your newspapers pile-up, they knock on your door to see if you're okay. I've never lived in a small town, but I fantasize that it's a little like living in Stars Hollow. Sometimes I wish I could knock on my neighbor's door and offer up cookies I've baked, or ask someone to water Begonia while I'm away on vacation. I wish I had a group of friends, like Seinfeld or Ross and Rachel do, people who just come over unannounced...but maybe this kind of neighborliness gets annoying in real life.

Maybe a great number of us who move to New York are control freaks who really do like being able to control how, when and where people interact with us and how much they know about us. Maybe occasional loneliness is the trade-off for maintaining the illusion of perfection? Maybe all that neighborly intrusion would just be a form of procrastination, a reason not to get the things I really want to get done done?

Whatever. I need some fresh air.

On My Mind: Do You Know Your Neighbors?

Maybe it's because I live in a rental, or because I live in a high rise building where you don't get to bump into your neighbors in the stairwell on a regular basis, or because this is NYC and people come and go, but the fact is I don't know any of my neighbors. I'm a friendly person. I don't have trouble talking to most people. In fact, when I first moved here from LA, I realized some New Yorkers would get suspicious when you smiled and said hello for no reason. Either that, or they took your friendliness as an invitation to stalk you.

I've lived in three different buildings in the city since moving here, and in not one of them did I know the names of the people who lived on either side or across the hall from me. The other day, I'd just come home and put the key in the lock when I noticed the door to the next-door apartment open up, and I swear, someone stuck their head out and seeing me, popped right back in like a mole in a hole. That's my quiet neighbor. I imagine he's the one who's listening in when City Guy and I have our little spats.

I don't fault him or her. I've had a similar skittishness about seeing my neighbors. It would have been okay had we introduced ourselves when we first moved in, but now, I know too much about them. The walls are thin here. To the east is the quiet, skittish neighbor who snores so loudly I have to wear earplugs to sleep. To the west is the loud couple who fights when they come home drunk at 3 pm. I feel like I know them--the guy's got a southern accent and is always yelling from across the apartment for his girlfriend- "Honey!!"--just once, couldn't he just get up and go to her? He's so g-d loud! If it's not yelling at his gf, he's shaking the walls yelling f-bombs at the TV or screaming into the phone at god knows who. You can understand why I don't go over and introduce myself.

I fantasize that when we move to a condo, we'll meet everyone on our floor, and our future kids will have play dates with kids down the hall and when I'm bored, I can just trot down the hall and call on Lucy or Ethel. Wouldn't that make this city feel more like home? Then again, does living in NYC mean the freedom of anonymity? Is neighborliness just a fantasy? Anyone experience this problem? Anyone have advice on how to solve it?