
The New Old Home - jger15
https://www.yakcollective.org/projects/the-new-old-home
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samcheng
Fascinating stuff!

Do any of these people actually live in the suburban household they assert
will become more popular?

There isn't a single mention of the neighborhood... Mine was previously mostly
emptied during much of the day, as people left to go to work or school. It is
now full of pedestrians, bicyclists, and children in the afternoon. Front-yard
conversations with neighbors is MUCH more common when everyone is working from
home.

What will happen to community in this post-COVID environment?

~~~
adingus
We take a lot more walks and see a lot more neighbors as well. We even had a
socially distanced happy hour with another family in the front yard.

I think a return to having a tightly connected neighborhood would do the US a
lot of good. People may pay more attention to what's happening in their town
and local politics which could help change things from the ground up.

Most importantly though, I think tighter neighborhoods would help people see
those they don't agree with as actual people with more in common with them
than not. As Thomas Jefferson said, "I never considered a difference of
opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from
a friend."

As an aside, I have been thinking about how much I would love to be able to
buy an empty lot in my neighborhood to open it up as a community space to
bring people together outside of social networks.

------
icebraining
I like it, and it's great that people are thinking about it.

One thing that felt unexplored is socialization, and in particular meeting new
people, and in particular dating. I know that a lot of people use dating apps
nowadays, but many (most?) use them only for first contact, and still prefer
to meet in shared spaces like bars, which is harder to accomplish if these are
scarcer and if people live much further away.

One of the effects of the move to concentrated coed spaces (factories and
offices) and of the increase of housing prices in certain areas seems to have
been an increase in the number of people who enter into a relationship with
someone of the same economic class. But if your coworkers and colleagues all
live two states away, and if more uniform land prices make it more likely for
people of different incomes to live in the same area, there might a reversal
of this change.

