Amusingly, we live in a high-rise in SF and it's like what people talk about neighbourhood living. We have a Whatsapp group and people meet for ethnic festivals, borrow an egg, or sugar, or flour, or a jump start kit, or an iron. It's honestly quite nice.
It helps that you self-select for the audience by who can afford the building, just like they've done the same with their neighbourhood.
Perhaps it’s not. Perhaps the people in my building are just particularly pro-social. But that seems self-aggrandizing.
While I was able to find nice things to do and my neighbors have done nice things for me in the Excelsior, the Mission, Glen Park, and the Sunset none of those places had the frequency and scale of this civil interaction.
And certainly my life in the TL was characterized by gladness for lack of negative interaction than by constant positive interactions.
My experience in SF is that some neighborhoods experience greater pro-social behavior than others.
That's my experience in cities, but I don't see it tied to affluence.
I do see a tie to perceived threat - people who feel they are in danger don't want to risk interactions. First, a rule of the street is, 'don't get involved'. Second, you don't know if the person next to you is crazy.
But few places are that dangerous; if you do get to interact, the only varient seems to be the seemingly arbitrary subculture of that particular neighborhood.
I believe you missed the OPs point. I believe he's suggesting that this couple has it on "easy mode" because of the affluence of the area they already live in. If they tried this same technique in a more working class neighborhood they would likely have a harder time creating and maintaining this group.
>I believe he's suggesting that this couple has it on "easy mode" because of the affluence of the area they already live in.
That's actually even worse than I thought.
Working class neighborhoods already have stuff like this happening. Cookouts and block parties are pretty common! I'm not sure why it would be more difficult if the people were poor.
You're getting dangerously close to describing labor aristocracy when you use established working class communities to suggest that affluent people don't have an easier time starting and maintaining communities. What the original commenter is saying - and they are correct - is that, when you can afford to live in a place, you have way fewer obstacles to starting/maintaining community.
If you have to move every 6 months, work second and third shift, and are constantly having vehicle problems and other emergencies, you are going to have a way harder time. Obviously. Let's not create a mythos of the working class that obfuscates reality.
I am describing my experience living in working class conditions in the rust belt, before moving to the coast.
Describing that as a "mythos of the working class that obfuscates reality" sounds detached from reality, honestly.
>What the original commenter is saying - and they are correct - is that, when you can afford to live in a place, you have way fewer obstacles to starting/maintaining community.
I really don't think that's as big of an issue as you - or the original commenter - are making them out to be.
> I am describing my experience living in working class conditions in the rust belt, before moving to the coast.
> Describing that as a "mythos of the working class that obfuscates reality" sounds detached from reality, honestly.
No, what is detached from reality is asserting lived experience as universal experience. In response to someone benignly acknowledging that their material conditions ease satisfying their social needs, you made an assumption, rather abrasively, that they don't wish to associate with poor people and that they think poor people are incapable of creating/maintaining community.
> I really don't think that's as big of an issue as you - or the original commenter - are making them out to be.
Of course not, your lived experience doesn't allow you to see it that way. But there are experiences other than yours, such as the person in the part of my comment which you didn't quote: they are often stuck building their safety and security in the hierarchy of needs. If your mythos of the working class only includes your experiences rather than a culmination of varying experiences, it obfuscates reality.
>But there are experiences other than yours, such as the person in the part of my comment which you didn't quote: they are often stuck building their safety and security in the hierarchy of needs.
If anything I would say it's the opposite - individuals in less affluent communities are more likely to need the help of their neighbors, and thus interact and form relationships
It helps that you self-select for the audience by who can afford the building, just like they've done the same with their neighbourhood.