We no longer live in a time when people know all their neighbors and consider them to be friends. A shocking number of people have never had a conversation with their neighbors, and some couldn't pick them out of a lineup. Introduce yourself, or invite your neighbor over for coffee. Neighbors are not only a great potential source of friendship, they make us feel more comfortable in our homes, which is where most of us spend much of our time.
New houses are being built across the country with an amazing new feature: front porches. According to the National Association of Home Builders, space that once might have been dedicated to a living room is now more likely to be used for a front porch.
Architects, builders, and town planners see the front porch as one remedy to the unhappy and uncomfortable social distance that characterizes many neighborhoods. Many of us don't know who our neighbors are, and often we don't know anything about them. This despite the fact that we have something tremendously important in common—our neighborhood, our surroundings, the place we begin and end each day. Front porches are making a comeback because most of us would like the chance to venture outside our front door and meet the people on our street.
Greater community interactions can increase happiness by almost 30 percent.
Sugarman 1997
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