A 50 year plan: Community

Something we seem to be missing in this TikTok era. My second in the Tuesday "50 year plan" series originally published in 2007.

This is the house we used to live in when we had the neighborhood parties. Where that fence is was a house that’s been demolished in the last couple years. Ironically, back in 2011 or so it looked like my house would be the one demolished: it was boarded up as a foreclosure. This is from Google Maps 2023.

January 20, 2007

I've decided to continue my "50 year plan" series with a look at what I call community. This isn't necessarily political or issue-oriented, it's more about what I feel is missing in the modern day and yearn to see come back.

Many years ago, I wrote a short essay called "Giving Back." I think I wrote it for inclusion in the Rogue Elephant, which was the newsletter the Toledo Young Republicans did at the time I was involved with them. Unfortunately, I either didn't keep or lost the copy so that essay's pretty much lost to the mists of time. (In looking for it I found a lot of other interesting stuff but, alas, not what I was searching for.)

But I do remember the main points and that's what I wanted to write about today.

As long as I can recall, State Farm Insurance has gone by the slogan, "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there." I don't bring this up as an advertisement for their insurance but as a commentary on being good neighbors. Despite all of its problems, America remains blessed with the First Amendment freedom of the people "peaceably to assemble." The problem is that in society today people tend to insulate themselves from group settings as much as they can. Many of today's teens interact with each other through Internet sites like Myspace Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, etc. instead of doing what my generation did and hang out at the mall. Or, in generations past they would gather after school or on weekends at the local malt shop. Regardless of where these interactions occurred, they were a part of normal life.

This trend is even reflected in housing. Because I'm in the architecture business, I notice these things more readily, but it's also a function of where I've lived. I've lived in a total of nine houses in my life, and these houses were built anywhere between 1897 and 1976.

In the four of these houses that were built prior to World War II, they all had pretty similar traits. All were fairly close to the street, and all had at least some covered front porch to them. This was pretty common among the houses along those particular streets and it encouraged neighborhood interaction. People would sit out on their front porches during summer evenings and visit if they saw a neighbor outside.

But the other five in which I've lived (including one my parents had built new when I was 11) only one had more than a small set of concrete steps in front and that porch was uncovered. The others were all relatively far away from the street (with part of this being setback requirements adopted in recent decades) and they had their family gathering areas in the rear of the house, either a concrete porch or a deck. (My parents built an enclosed porch on the back of theirs after I moved away.) It reflected societal trends away from interaction and toward more privacy. This was also reflected in those houses having larger yards and being farther away from the main city core.

In more recent times, some architects have questioned the role of housing in the community and an urban design trend restoring the central core has emerged. While in the case of this website "New Urbanism" has branched out into an anti-sprawl screed, I think there are other benefits to this type of community. It does take up less open space and infrastructure needs are reduced. Moreover, notice that many of their examples are in Europe, where cities were laid out centuries ago. As I stated before, most subdivisions now (aided by local zoning codes) spread out the houses and push people farther apart.

So where does my 50 year plan fit into all of this?

While we can't just tear everything down and start all over, it seems to me that we as a society need to get away from being aloof and self-centered and get back to being more neighborly, regardless of housing style. The example I used about housing style just serves as a metaphor for what's happened to us over the last several decades. We've become a nation that has let the 2% of bad apples dictate how we interact with others. By moving our collective selves off the front porch and out of sight, we insulated ourselves from the benefits of community.

People in my neighborhood most likely don't know me from reading this blog. But if I say that I'm the guy who they see on his several times a week walks up and down the neighborhood streets, they may say, "ok, now I know who you are." Hopefully when the weather warms and more people are outside they'll recognize me and wave or say hello or whatever they do. And like most people, I'm not out here casing your house to burglarize it or looking to kidnap your child. I'm getting out because I enjoy walking through my adopted neighborhood and interacting with people I see, plus it's good exercise.

At some point in the future, I'm going to use a "50 year plan" post to discuss consumerism, but for the purpose of this essay I'd like to touch on a little bit here.

To some in our nation, it's all about "stuff" (i.e. he who dies with the most toys wins). For me, it's more about experiences. I probably could afford a larger house and more expensive car, but what I have is just fine and suits my purposes. It's my opinion that people need to spend less time and worry on stuff and more time on what's important, like being part of their community.

To that end, I'd love to see the next generation start to get off the PlayStation a little bit more and do other activities. Join a community organization, get into a bowling league, even just get out and walk around the neighborhood. If you have kids in school, get involved with their PTA. And believe it or not, my ex-wife and I raised a child in the 1990's without her having a TV in her room, her own personal phone, or us having cable TV. You can do this and turn out a child who becomes a productive adult. We made mistakes along the way and so has she, but nothing too disastrous and we all learned from them. One mistake we made was wanting "stuff" we couldn't afford - fortunately we worked our way through it.

I live in a nice area of somewhat older homes (circa 1950's) that's not too expensive and built back when craftsmanship wasn't a lost art. No, these homes aren't all really big and they're sort of close together, but I like it that way. And I think it's something we need to get back to.

I'm going to close with a fond memory. When my ex-wife and I lived in Toledo, we lived on a street of mostly older homes in a fairly middle-class neighborhood. The most fun we had were the couple times where we petitioned the city to temporarily close our street for an afternoon and one of my neighbors brought their cousin in to do a hog roast - the rest of us did potluck. The kids could run up and down the street while we caught up with our neighbors and dodged water balloons. Everyone ate well and we all chipped in $5 for the hog roaster.

The reason this worked so well was that we had a good neighborhood where people got to know each other because they'd be outside on the front porch or out doing their yard work. Most of them were older and raised in an era when being neighborly was valued, not having the nicest car or the biggest TV.

So this is a call for community. Let's find ways to come together and by gosh have some fun with other people!

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I did a bit of digging, and regarding the above photo: the person who purchased my old house from a Sheriff’s Sale (which was about to happen when Google Maps happened by in 2011, hence the house being boarded up) also purchased the other property that’s now fenced (plus a bit of the property next to it) and demolished the house. It’s now listed as a duplex, which boggles my mind because mine was a small house to begin with!

On the other side, the family that built the house in 1925 had it in their family for forty years. It was sold twice afterward before we bought it.

But I was the last owner-occupant, which makes me sad.

And remember: you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.