The First Annual Zócalo Public Square Book Prize was made possible by the generous support of Southern California Gas Company.
What inspired Peter Lovenheim to get to know his neighbors was a shocking killing that took place on Lovenheim’s street in a suburb of Rochester, New York. A neighbor had killed his wife and then himself. Lovenheim had seen the couple occasionally but never gotten to know them personally. Upon reflection, he realized that almost everyone on his block was a stranger. Who were these people sharing his street?
Eventually, Lovenheim knocked on every door and asked, politely, to stay over for a night. The product of this effort is In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time, this year’s winner of the Zócalo Book Prize, selected by our judges. Lovenheim’s book is a subtle and elegantly written exploration of how to create community in a fragmented age. “As Faulkner said, you only have to know the little postage stamp of the world that you’re standing on, and Lovenheim’s postage stamp is one street in one old neighborhood in Rochester,” writes one of our judges.
In the Neighborhood paints haunting portraits of the different lives unfolding on a city street and ties them into questions about the fraying of America’s social fabric over the past several decades.
On Friday, April 8, 2011 Lovenheim will visit Zócalo to receive his prize and deliver a lecture: “What is a Good Neighbor?” In addition, the winners of our High School Essay Contest will receive their scholarships. The award ceremony, sponsored by Southern California Gas Company, will take place at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Grand Avenue. Admission is free. For more event details and to RSVP, please click here.
Zócalo recently spoke to Lovenheim about his work:
Q. You conclude your book by encouraging us to knock on our neighbors’ doors. What good is that going to do?
A. It does a lot of good, both on a personal level and societal level. Looking at the big picture, I think neighborhoods were meant to be a fundamental building block of a healthy civil society. When we live as strangers to each other, we lose something in terms of personal safety, convenience, and enrichment, but we also lose the opportunity improve the social fabric of a healthy community.
Q. If the benefits of getting to know one another are so great, why don’t we do it?
A. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but one thing that surprised me is that there’s just no social stigma attached anymore to not knowing the people next door. We can live side-by-side, driveway-to-driveway, for decades and not know the neighbors. Many factors contribute to the situation. The rise of two-career couples means that there are fewer people at home during the day. We also spend more time in front of the television, more time on the Internet.
Even the built environment has changed. In suburbia, over the last generation, lot sizes and house sizes have almost doubled on average, so we’re physically further away from each other. There was a time when you if you put a fence up in your back yard it was considered a slightly hostile act. But today you can find new housing that comes with fences already built.
On top of that there’s the whole “stranger danger” thing. I teach writing at the college level, and I have some students who are 18 and 19 years old who have spent their whole lives learning about stranger danger.
Q. Do you think neighborhoods are less cohesive than they were when you were a kid?
A. The studies show that they are. They show that on average most of us have about half as many meaningful contacts with neighbors as people did, say, 50 years ago. And that’s not just in suburbia; it includes urban neighborhoods, as well, such as high-rise apartment buildings in major cities.
Q. Do you feel the people in your neighborhood were actually brought further together by your book?
A. Well, certainly with the neighbors I got to know at a meaningful level through writing the book, subsequently they have also gotten to know each other. Since the book’s been published, we’ve all gotten together, and they’ve read about each other. So they know each other in a way they didn’t before. I’m also glad to say we’ve had more efforts to bring people together within the neighborhood in the last year or so. Whether that’s because of the book or not is hard to say, because it’s hard to know how many ripples it spread out.
Q. How does someone who doesn’t have a book project as an excuse go about approaching neighbors?
A. I think you just do it the same way. One of the things I learned from writing this book is that for the most part, most of us want the same things. The desire and need to connect is universal. Even the people whom I approached who weren’t interested in participating in the book said they wished they felt more connected. Now, some people are more outgoing than others, and some have more time than others. But I think it’s fair to assume, until you find out otherwise, that your neighbors are interested in connecting. The good news is you don’t have to sleep over at their houses. Just make the approach. I’m confident that most of them will be receptive.
Buy the book: Skylight Books, Powell’s, Amazon
I lived in Rochester during my early adolescence and I still recall the names of most of our neighbors. I’ve lived on the same street in Santa Monica since 1987 and only recently got to know the names of some of my neighbors, through the efforts of one family that had get-togethers for the whole neighborhood.
“I think neighborhoods were meant to be a fundamental building block of a healthy civil society.”
What is the word for when people ascribe order and design to random events?
Except for a few master-planned communities, neighborhoods were designed as places where folks could have a place to live, no more, no less.
When economics got better, houses and lots got bigger, no more, no less.
Folks got to know their neighbors better when conditions caused them to interact more, less when conditions didn’t, no more, no less.
Folks get to know their neighbors exactly to the extent they wish, regardless of the pleasant sounding desires they self report to an interviewer.
Is it against the law to see things as they really are, rather than as we wish they were?
The reasons for my reply are two-fold: I grew up in a quaint small neighborhood in Rochester, and then recently lived in Manhattan. A high-rise overlooking the Hudson with 600 units. It made me wonder about the exact same thing Peter writes about and Don commented on. Who were these people? I knew my neighbors growing up, but in such a large city, no one. They were all so close, walked the same hallways, shared the elevators and walls…but I didn’t know any of them.
The idea of community stems from necessity since the beginning of humanity. We gathered for safety and survival, then convenience and now desire. It’s human instinct to connect and worth the discussion. Except, maybe, for Don.
School, church, clubs and retail. If your neighbors go to the same house of worship, send their kids to the same school, belong to the same local club, and work at/own neigborhood stores, then you will have interactions and those interactions will grow and multiply. That was my experience growing up in sixties and seventies. I don’t know my neighbors now in large part because none of those institutions apply to me.