Have you ever heard the saying “it takes a village to raise a child?” Well, where I live, most people do not know the name of their next door neighbor.
This isolation can cause loneliness, but it is more than that. Having a community is helping people do jobs they can’t, it’s lending tools, it’s teaching someone something their parents never taught them, and more.
Luckily, there is a solution that is becoming common in both co-housing and eco-villages around the world. They utilize common areas or community centers, as well as outdoor spaces(such as courtyards or rooftop gardens). While you still have your private home with your own kitchen, you also have these spaces which are open to everyone.
Here are some ideas you might see in these common spaces:
- Indoor play area. In some, the retired senior citizens who like to keep busy volunteer to watch children in these areas while parents are at work.
- Dining room big enough to fit every person who lives there and guests.
- Community Kitchen. People take turns cooking, or they have occasional dinners together.
- Private office spaces (for work-from-home workers who still want to be around people).
- Tiny libraries.
- Outdoor play area.
- Outdoor sitting spaces.
- Community gardens and/or a greenhouse.
More Ideas:
- Window awnings which utilize passive solar, so the sun is blocked in the summer but not the winter
- A central courtyard for passive cooling. Examples: Skywells (China), Tsubo-niwa (Japan). Thevenin @beehaw.org adds that a retractable cover of some kind might be important to protect from wind pressure.
- Better insulation for better temperature control, and sound proofing.
- Bird-safe windows
- Rainwater collection for watering plants (or, the more expensive option: for piping into toilets)
- White roofs for cooling in hot climates, dark roofs for warming in cold climates
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What else would improve apartment buildings?
This is so weird. I’ve lived in high density housing nearly my entire adult life. I knew all my neighbors names… Even Alex, you fucking dick.
Seriously, though, this is silly. Plenty of us know our neighbors. 99% of mine are great. Not you, Alex.
Depends on the people I guess. I have zero contact with my neighbors and don’t know their names. I fucking hate that I can hear when my upstairs neighbor lets something fall on the floor, or vaccuums their floor though, but nothing I can do about that. So yeah, experience can vary
in most places i’ve lived, my physical neighbours did not want to be known, and did not want to know anyone else, either. granted, most of them really only used their apartments/houses as a very expensive sleeping place and nothing more. they didn’t really live in their houses; it was just where they usually slept between working.
even when the neighbours were friendly, there were no common spaces and the housing too small to accommodate get-togethers, and no third places to go to. and the friendly neighbours were always apart of the conspicuously racist pensioner cabal.
Maybe it’s a “where you live” type thing. 🤔 I know my neighbours(luckily, I don’t have an Alex haha), but I live in a small town where you’re rude if you don’t say hello to strangers you’re walking by.
HOWEVER, most my friends and family who live in the city(mostly in lower-income apartments) don’t. The only city person I can think of who knows her neighbours is my aunt, who has lived in her house for longer than I’ve been alive.
So it could be a mix of culture, housing type, how long you’ve been there, and so on. Maybe Canadian cold winters plays a part, too. 😂