When you live this close to your neighbors, you better behave yourself

Let me start by saying 95-99% of people are nice, fun, reasonable and great neighbors.  Then there’s the rest.  Every neighborhood has them: the nutbags, the jerks, the clueless, the just plain unpleasant people who bitch about EVERYTHING.  The difference is, in a new urbanist neighborhood (well, at least mine), everyone knows who these people are.  Quickly.  Design that fosters social interaction means people are frequently out in public, assholes included.

My suspicion is, in a sterile, non-interacting subdivision, these people are relativley unknown (unless they are really extreme).  I was discussing this blog post with a neighbor at one of our events last night and she commented that “as long as they mow their lawn, no one will know what an asshole they are” in a non social neighborhood. They can hide in a way–not so in a community that interacts all the time.  I swear a pin can’t drop in my neighborhood without everyone knowing about it in short order.  There are pluses and minuses to this.  One of the pluses is that people who can’t behave themselves in a community move.  A community as social as mine (and other new urbanist neighborhoods I’ve heard) is somewhat self-selecting.  Sounds a little Orwellian, but frankly it works in our favor.  So, if you’re an asshole, do yourself (and us) a favor and move either to acreage, or to a faceless, anonymous beige subdivision where your jerkery will go unnoticed.