The good neighbor policy

Carlos Ramos grew up in a small ranch town in southern Mexico, where front doors were always open, children played on the street from dawn until dusk, and families cooked for one another. He has always hoped to duplicate this neighborly experience for his own children.

But his wife, Sara Jane Whitman, is skeptical. She hardly knows the people with whom they share a three-family home. It's better that way, says the resident of Port Chester, N.Y., who calls herself "skittish by nature." Since the events of Sept. 11 and summer's string of kidnappings, she has become less trusting. She worries when Carlos strikes up conversations with strangers, and she is concerned about what they will teach their 18-month-old daughter, Isabella.

A recent Monitor/TIPP poll shows that most Americans' attitudes about neighborliness fall somewhere between those of Carlos and Sara Jane.

People may not want an open-door policy, but they do believe in reaching out. Of those polled, 91 percent feel that it is either very important or somewhat important to get to know their neighbors; 89 percent know the names of at least some – if not all – of their immediate neighbors; and 45 percent have shared a meal with some of these neighbors. (See graphic.)

Certainly the events of Sept. 11, 2001, stirred up a desire for deeper connections, if only to develop a support network to depend upon in times of crisis or to decipher neighbors' trustworthiness. Stories of increased community spirit are legion since then – although block parties and kaffeeklatsches are probably fewer these days than in the weeks following the attacks.

But some neighbors were already devising ways to develop deeper bonds and counteract the impersonal nature of America's fast-paced society, where people shuttle from the seclusion of office cubicles to that of their homes, with computers and automatic-garage-door openers thwarting human interaction.

Examples of neighborliness pre- and post-9/11 can be found all across America. Today, the Monitor looks at three groups of neighbors and the ways they connect with one another.

Apartment dwellers two blocks from ground zero in New York who rarely spoke are now exercising their dogs together. Neighbors in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, heeded the call of a city council member and went out to mingle on their porches and driveways for two nights in June.

And a group of neighboring farmers and home-based entrepreneurs on an isolated street in the Cascade Mountains, three hours from the closest cities – Seattle and Spokane – came up with an unusual way to learn more about the people who live nearby.

Before planes hit the World Trade Center towers near their 11-story apartment building in the TriBeCa section of New York, Jennifer Steckler and Victoria Grantham frequently rode the same elevator in silence. Now they talk often – sometimes several times a day – when both visit the neighborhood "dog run."

The dog run is on a squared-off section of asphalt just a half block away. It used to be virtually empty. But since the terrorist attacks last year, it has become a popular gathering place for residents and their pets.

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