Neighborhood Relationships

Neighborhood relationships

“I’m not to get too friendly with anyone. My husband does not believe in it.”

“People are too gossipy and they could get us in a lot of trouble.”

“It is best to mind your own business.”

The statements above all show that many citizens are avoiding themselves from becoming involved in neighborhood friendships. They strictly limit the number of their friends into one or two. However actually, it will be a disaster if most of citizens hold this thought.

Let me share one of my experiences studying in Beijing, my hometown. Once I took subway with my elder sister, a woman with ragged clothes walked into us. She was taking lots of toys and showed me a piece of paper wrote ’10 RMB per toy. Your small amounts of money will be a huge help for me. Thanks.’ She showed me that she is deaf and dumb and really needs help by her hand language. Although I was impressed by her at that time, I did not bring any cash on me, so I just spoke to her that I did not have money without thinking about her deaf ears. Unexpectedly, she just left me and went into somebody else. The truth is she can hear at least but she pretended to be a deaf to arouse sympathy. Such thing is really common in streets and people barely have street friendship or even street trust on strangers.

As I mentioned in my first blog post, I love walking as my favorite transportation because I love eye contact and communications on facial expressions between two strangers when they passing through each other. Smiling to someone reacts to the same result as breathing fresh air. However, in Beijing, people seldom have street smiling even when they are in a good mood. So many street lies lead to vanish of street trust and street smiling. I kind of disagree with some points in the Death and Life of Great American Cities since she mentions a lot about the disappear of street relationships in the United States. Actually, one thing that I like most about Atlanta is people on the street or in your neighborhood do not treat you as air. They are willing to smile back if you smile to them, and they are willing to talking to you whenever you start the conversation. It is not like people do not care anything rather than themselves, but they do want to contact with others. It is not like walking on the streets with eyes concentrating on the floor but on other people. Those behaviors seem to be trivial things in one’s life, but they are not trivial at all for a society. Elder people have formed our street trust over time from many little sidewalk contacts like getting advice from the grocer or giving advice to the newsstand man and we can not ruin it. Also, the success of forum on Internet has confirmed we human are born to communicate with others. Since street trust is decreasing, we find Internet a way to share our daily lives. However, why not just express ourselves to our neighbors? Face to face communication should always be more effective than screen chat. Therefore, even in a city living mode, we should still pursue a good street neighborhood relationship, which lead people to get contact, enjoyment, and help from the people around.

Admittedly, in city area where citizens is busy working and lack a natural public life, it is common for residents to isolate themselves from others. Also, Jane Jacobs mentions "nowadays in city life, privacy is precious and indispensable." in her book. If we contact too much with our city neighbors, it will generate a sense of threatens where privacy does not exist. Also, in planning theory, if anything is shared among people, much should be shared, which is mentioned as ‘Togetherness’ in Jane Jacobs’ book that may keep people from share their lives with us to protect their privacy. However, one thing that is always true is if we can not bear lack of contact, which causes distressing results. If people leave in a life where they never communicate with others, their mind can not hold the pressure of being alone. Therefore, although privacy is important, communication in a good neighborhood is even more.

Work Cited.

Jane Jacobs. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961.