Does anyone talk to their neighbours anymore?

One of the nice aspects of apartment living is that you have an alliegance to your immediate neighbours on your landing, a recognition with your stairwell passers and an identity shared with your fellow adresees… and you don’t have to engage any of them in conversation!

Is it because the more affluent and middle class we become the more unsociable we become.
Is social interaction only to be found in more primitive cultures?
People of working class areas have always had a strong social interaction with their neighbours….They had poverty and hardship in common which bonded them together.
People today have their wealth and the abundance of gizmos that they can buy with their money to occupy themselves……or maybe young people today are just boring and have nothing to say.

those in Belfast may find this of interest:

Voices of Cabrini
Director: Ronit Bezalel
1999 – 30 minutes.

A panel discussion featuring Ciaran Mackel (Architect), Billy Mitchell (Link Community Association), and Ciaran Kearney (Falls Community Council) will follow the film.

Shot over a three-year period, this superb documentary follows the residents of Chicagos best-known public housing development as their homes are marked for destruction in the interest of urban gentrification. The film captures the diverse voices of the community, many worried if the city will keep its promise to replace Cabrini with equally affordable housing. “…a gripping story about living in the city…”

The demolition of Cabrini Green is part of a nation-wide trend to tear down high rise public housing. What does this mean for the future of public housing?

Cultúrlann, 216 Falls Road, Belfast. Admission £2 @ 25 March 8.00pm

In the apatment complex I stay in in Dublin8 they only thing I’ve ever heard from any neigbour was a (music too loud) complaint that came from a neighbour via a caretaker to the landlord on on to an agitated phone call to tenant. Not the building blocks of community spirit.

But often people give a polite grunt to each while still within the cosy security gate, beyond that it’s everyone fro himself.

I’m sick of apartment living (especially noisy students at 5:30 in the morning (God I sound old)) so I’m upping sticks and moving to a 3 bed semi in the ‘burbs

Maybe it’s that apartment living is new to us all and that irish people arent really used to the concept of apartment living yet. Nobody wants to bring childern up in such places so they usually just contain young and or single people who move frequently.. for a community to develop, their has to be at least a reasonable percentage of permanent residents.

…I think the notion of Irish people being “friendly” is about as banal a concept as the average Irish person being a jolly alcholic..if we were ever perceived to be a friendly nation in the past, it was probably because we were such a beat-down lot grateful for anybody taking a interest in our damp little country… its essentially a marketing tool that has been used for so long that we’ve taken to believing it when it has about as much authentity as a John Hinde postcard..

I think the difference between today and comunities prior to mass urban environments is that people have large spheres of aquaintance now. In ‘ye olde days’ it was those in your immediate vicinity with whom you interacted- you didn’t just live near each other but worked in the same area,frequented the same shops and pubs and more often then not were related to people in the community. You only have to read someone like George Eliot to see how decades of inter-marraige and social reliance on a core group for economic prosperity (i.e a village or farming community) intertwines families and indeed the entire populas into longterm co-dependence. No bad thing, but today people create community within their workplace or among a group of similar minded friends. It simply would not be possible to bond and form these ties with several groups of people so we quite understandably pick and choose those who are most likely to have empathy with us. I think……I don’t really know its just a theory

Any from of apartment building has various areas in which chance encounters can take place. Car – parks, stairwells and hallways and the odd partition wall, which can be a contentious meeting ground!
I think that these meetings have a quality in that they have no strings attached – even a “grunt” is OK in my book. I would feel drawn in to inviting a neighbour around if I started any serious conversation. I would rather keep my distance.
One thing however – most stairways and hallways are built to a minimum size and are so claustraphobic that the physical proximity of a stranger can be intimidating. If we designed these spaces for chance encounters where both parties could feel comfortable enough to hang around for a chat in, then maybe more community spirit would develop.

Any from of apartment building has various areas in which chance encounters can take place. Car – parks, stairwells and hallways and the odd partition wall, which can be a contentious meeting ground!
I think that these meetings have a quality in that they have no strings attached – even a “grunt” is OK in my book. I would feel drawn in to inviting a neighbour around if I started any serious conversation. I would rather keep my distance.
One thing however – most stairways and hallways are built to a minimum size and are so claustraphobic that the physical proximity of a stranger can be intimidating. If we designed these spaces for chance encounters where both parties could feel comfortable enough to hang around for a chat in, then maybe more community spirit would develop.

Apartment living would be ok if the apartment your living in was built to a good standard. When you can hear you neighbours taking a leak in their bathroom and other normal everyday sound can penetrate the walls with ease it’s a turn off. Also where in Europe would they build block after block of apartments with standalone inefficient Electric heating. Missing the oppetunity to have shared heating systems must add thousands to the cost of the apartment over the years.

I heard a story about how, when ee cummings ended up living next door to Djuna Barnes when they were both aged people in New York, he used to stick his head out the window every so often and shout – Are ya dead yet Djuna?

A 48-year-old poet shows how Dublin ‘has undergone “globalization” and come out looking very much like the rest of the First World’ : http://slate.msn.com/id/2081596/

I agree with you WhiteCube, I live in Antwerp and everyone here is so damn nice and friendly
towards each other I sometimes expect to see Noddy driving by and offering me a lift to Toytown.

Who wants to talk to their neighbour anyway, what you want when you come home after a hard days graft is some peace and quiet. So long as we’re friendly(a good morning to you etc…) and respectful towards our neighbours we can all live and let live.

I was in an apartment complex for the first time in my life the other day (shame on me), it was brand new, in Terenure.
I was astonished how utterly lacking the place was in – not just community but indeed any form of life at all!

I was making a programme there, and from one end of a shoot to the other we saw not one soul in the place (although I suppose people would be working) but just the labarinyth of banal corridors with door after door after door, it was totally mundane, everwhere painted white, the walls, ceilings, doors, the floors, the cut stone slabs…
It seemed it was purposely designed to hinder any type of social interaction.
And this was an upmarket development, undoubtedly similar to most around the city/country.

Brief, Design an apartment build to accomodate X amount of people.
You would imagine the first thing you would do is devote a huge amount of space to the foyer, with seating receprion etc… No No a narrow hall just wide enough for two ppl to squeeze by and miles upon miles of corradors, Each floor containing the same furniture (if your luck) and prints on the same spot in each floor and each floor identical to the one below it! Developers!!!!!

BTW Shooting for what?

So do you think that community is being lost in places of residence vs. lost in general?

Has community, for some, moved online like this forum?

Or maybe the internet has allowed some of us to lean on communicating electronically vs. face to face, thereby neglecting the “conversations over the backyard hedge”?

The more middle class and well to do we become …the more reserved, uppity and private we become. There was and has always been a neighbourliness among working classes……which goes hand in hand with the borrowing and cadging culture. Human nature I suppose.

Its snobbery. And contrary to popular beliefe snoddery is not found in the upper classes. These people’s parents worked their asses off in order to send their children to college thiking that it would make them better people, it has infact done the complete opposite.
A certain precentage of new developments must be made avalable for “social housing” (i’m sure you know the exact amount) and i’ve heard people say, why should we pay X amount when Johnny Nojob gets the same house for 20 euro a week, etc.
I’ve read about apartments in the docklands area where people have paid enormous amounts for a shoe box (why anybody would pay those proces in the first place is beyond me but the developers are happy and thats all the seems to matter) and right next door are “ordinary people” paying a realistic rent to the Corpo or “Dublin City Council” I see this only as a good thing.The sooner those people who turn their noses up at others because of where they live or what they work get down off (or fall off from a great height!) their high horse the better thise country will be for it.

thats quite a generalisation aken.

the reality of the social housing requirements are that every new development, be it apartments or an estate, have reduntant, unattractive properties included. the council cant choose which units they get, they are just given their requisite 20% and they can like it or lump it. this normally means a terrace of small houses in an otherwise detached estate, normally removed from the main public and parking spaces, or else a bunch of one bed or studio apartments in a complex of family sized apartments. in many cases this seems to disuade the local authority from taking the option, especially when they could just as easily spend the money on their own building to their own design.

has anyone seen the corpos new apartment building going up on dominick street, just off bolton street. in house design from wood quay, 46 units on a compact site with storage facilities for the corpo to use or rent. not a bad scheme, light, social interaction, and some degree of “opulence”. private entrances and terraces, an improvement on the big bad blocks around constitution hill and their ilk.

on the point of good neighbours, maybe its the clear distinction of peoples social class and earnings that create problems? just a thought

I recently had a converstaion with some of the carpenters in work, one of whom is in the process of buying, another who has just bought and one ignorant halfwit who piped up and declared that he had just go his girlfriend pregnant so they would never have to worry about that kind of thing, as the government would give them a house (needless to say he was useless at his job and got laid off soon after). He is the kind of person getting the social housing. I have no problem with affordable housing going in but think the criteria for social should be restricted to those who acually need it and let the lazy gits suffer.

As stereotypes go too ….I bet the last guy who gets the social housing will neglect his abode ….so the weeds will be up to the windows ……the manky curtains will be hanging out….the gates will be hanging off the pillars…..there’ll be a jallopy in the garden, everthing could do with a coat of paint….there won’t be bit bite or sup in the house and not a child washed either… …..poor craters! ….but Man Utd and Robbie Williams will be the order of the day….as well as anything on Sky TV.
Stereotypical….but true too….why is this always so…..is it the lack of teaching of ‘Civics’ in Irish schools. The ‘begging bowl’ culture is rife too…as well as the ‘robbing’ culture.