“Lisa,” a member of my church in Illinois, had moved from Bolivia to the US, married, and started a family. When she and her husband bought their first home, I asked her how she liked it.
“It’s okay,” she said, with a disappointed look on her face. “But back in Bolivia, people spent their evenings on their porches with their kids playing in the street. It was so much fun. Everyone knew everyone else.”
“But no one does that here. In fact, there aren’t even any porches to sit on. It’s so impersonal. It’s really hard to get to know our neighbors.”
I’ve remembered that conversation often over the years. With the advent of air conditioning, porches disappeared from American homes, and so did much of the socialization that went along with them. Now, people often don’t even know the names of their neighbors, let alone talk with them.
Earlier this week, however, I made a fascinating discovery. My laptop was acting up. When I rebooted it, it decided to update itself, which was taking over an hour. With nothing to do, I decided to go for a walk. In the process, I walked through a new housing development near the coffee shop where I do most of my writing.
There are several fascinating things about this new neighborhood: All the homes have huge porches on the front, but the “front” of the homes are in what we would call the backyard, facing the backyards and porches of other homes. There are no fences and there is no street, just one long, big park separating the homes and their porches. The streets are in the back of the homes where there are also garages. Thus, the clear emphasis in this development is on community; getting to know your neighbors.
If there is anyone who should be interested in encouraging community, it is Christians. One of our mandates, after all, is to love our neighbors as ourselves. Part of that love is to help our neighbors discover each other. How we do that will take different forms, depending on our comfort level. I like this quote by Charles Montgomery in his book, Happy, Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design:
There is no one perfect neighborhood for everyone. We all have our own tolerance for crowding or quietude, our own thirst for novelty or privacy…. The systems in which we live undeniably influence our emotional lives.
Our culture has a massive thirst for authentic community. The church, which has been creating community inside its buildings for two millennia, has much to offer our culture.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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One thought on “A New Community Concept: Put the Front of the House in the Backyard”
If you find the perfect neighborhood don’t move there. You’ll spoil it.