[scoofy]

Good to see they finally point the finger at what is fairly certainly the culprit: the automobile.

When i lived in NYC, i knew most of my neighbors. Why? because we literally bumped into each other coming in and out of the building. When you have a common destination (subway, bus, market, etc), it's nice to have someone to chat with, but when your commute is in an automobile, you never get a chance to ask. Living room, garage, automobile, parking lot, destination.

With automobiles, there is no opportunity to, say, bump into your neighbor and ask, and then follow up with quickly knocking on your neighbor's door to see if they are still interested in joining you. Without those quick opportunities, relationships cannot form. Without relationships forming, it's culturally awkward to ask directly.

The single occupancy automobile, and the decentralized suburbia that formed around it are very probably central to many of the ills detailed in the article.

[nsxwolf]

My suburban neighborhood consists of single family homes on roughly quarter-acre lots. I "bump in" to my neighbors a lot when we're in our front yards. But I hate the "stop and chat", so when I see a neighbor outside I employ the following strategies to avoid neighbor contact:

- Driving into the garage and lowering the garage door even when I really wanted to park in the driveway

- Peeking through blinds to see when my neighbors go back inside

- Getting into my SUV from the passenger side so they can't see me through the smoked glass

- And more!

[anigbrowl]

That's kind of pathological. I also don't care for ad-hoc social interactions, but you can learn a few routines to manage them, like wave but don't engage, or greet but say you had a long day and you'd prefer to talk later. It's probably not worth seeing a therapist over, but a little work on dealing with the small talk is much less stressful than the anxiety of skulking around hiding from eye contact. If you can't get past this then you should see a therapist, letting it stress you that much is unhealthy.

[scoofy]

Why do you hate chatting? I can understand if one of your neighbors is annoying, but my point is that if you weren't driving, you'd certainly know more than just the annoying one next door, and you almost certainly get a kick out of dogging him with the person on the other side of his house.

If not, hey, there's always one or two annoying neighbors, and if you can't find them, it's probably you.

[icebraining]

you almost certainly get a kick out of dogging him with the person on the other side of his house

Well no, not everyone enjoys that kind of behavior. To me, it's one of the repellants in neighbor relations. I'm happy to help them out, but that kind of shit talk is poisonous.

[nsxwolf]

I really don't know! I just get this deeply uncomfortable feeling when I see that I'm going to have to have some kind of unplanned interaction with them. I'm not a terribly shy person, there's just something about the neighbor encounter.

[pcrh]

It's because you don't know them well enough. Or maybe because you haven't been "formally introduced". This makes you nervous of the impact that an accidental disclosure of information might have.

Invite them around for a BBQ (if you're American).

Even better, if you notice one of them having a minor problem, offer to help with it.

[gtremper]

I feel the same way about neighbors in my apartment building and deploy similar strategies. I think its a mild form of social anxiety.

[sliverstorm]

If you get to know them better, will you feel less anxious?

[nsxwolf]

Possibly, but I think maybe it's that I like social interactions to be on my terms or anticipated ahead of time.

[shutupalready]

When I worked a few months in Silicon Valley, I noticed something similar there:

There's a McDonalds in an area dominated by software and engineering companies. At lunch, people would go through the drive-thru, park in the McDonalds' parking lot, and eat in their cars. The parking lot was full; the large dining area inside was usually empty.

The saddest part is that I myself started doing the same thing after a while. Although Silicon Valley is the center of the universe for my profession, I found that it is also a lonely experience compared to other cities/countries.

[eru]

This is satire, it must be.

[santaclaus]

Where in NYC? I find it really varies. At present in Bushwick, none of my neighbors talk or even make eye contact in the hallways, it is a pretty strange social situation. It is in pretty stark contrast to when I lived in Park Slope, where I would run into people in local bars, etc.

[nine_k]

Yes, I live next to Prospect Park and I know faces of most of my neighbors (at least in the same 4-story building), and regularly 'socially interact' with some of them.

High density is one of the principal things I like about proper cities (like NYC or London or Moscow).

[hrasyid]

During my 7-year stay in Singapore (a city with very low car ownership and where almost everybody commutes with the public transport) - neighbours don't typically chat either. People commutes at different time, and people who wait in bus stops or train stations usually prefer their gadgets/phones/iPads to talking to strangers

[AnimalMuppet]

Unfortunately, you cannot now fix it by removing the automobile. Now, even when you bump into people, you don't have a conversation, because they're on their headphones or texting on their phone or whatever. Nobody's available to talk to, even if you would be willing to do so.

[a3n]

When I see people standing with their head down, cradling their device in their hand, I imagine Cthulu's tentacles reaching up from the device, sucking their souls out.

Cradle Your Device: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GhETtqN_I

[scoofy]

Yes, you can. If everyone is walking to a centralized transit location, then those that would like to know each other will easily identify themselves. Catch the bus at 8AM? You'll soon learn who else is walking that route. Headphones or not, human interaction isn't that awkward. Even if you never talk in that context, it only takes one out-of-context interaction to end that. At a coffee shop: "hey, don't we walk the same route from the metro every day?" or "Didn't i see you at the farmers market on Thursday?"

To know people locally, you need to live locally. If getting dinner involves a commute, then you're never going to meet people. It takes more than one or two instances to get past the earbuds. Remove the automobile and immediately you're seeing the same people dozens of times a week.

[jiggy2011]

When I used to take public transport to work, I'd see lots of the same people every day but never spoke to any of them. They didn't speak to each other either.

[Systemic33]

It's quite the paradox that humans are incredibly dependent on social interaction, but we would rather avoid contact because we are afraid of the what consequences it might have on our life.

[Dewie]

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/kubrick-subway-newspapers...