2024-01-10 07:17:12
It is becoming less and less common for those who live on the same street to know each other. Not long ago, it was still common to know those who lived nearby, which gave the environment a dynamic and cohesive community.
The triggering element of this coexistence is so simple and so within reach that it seems unlikely that it originates it. This element is pedestrian mobility. When you walk, the speed of your step allows you to better understand your surroundings and identify those who are there. Walking you can have short conversations with different interlocutors in the distance between the house and the store, the pharmacy or the park.
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The visibility that is achieved of the environment covered is full, and the person walking also becomes visible in the environment, that is, recognizable by the locals. Being recognized by those who live in an area, due to the frequency of our trips on foot, generates an interesting form of trust, of shared familiarity.
Just a “good morning” or a very Saltillo “what’s the weather?” to cement a relationship of enormous mutual benefit. From the greeting you learn where each person lives, what they do, and who their family members are, thus generating a series of valuable inputs for community integration. Knowing that a neighbor has a hardware store will make you a reliable supplier for the next water leak or electrical failure. If someone has a fruit shop, they will be the ones who supply them with seasonal foods, and so on.
But the relationship is not established only with those who have begun a process of knowledge and discovery, but there is enormous potential to extend that relationship to your personal network of friends and known people. You will already tell who you know best in the vicinity, who is dedicated to a job and is good at it, who knows the person who can help you carry out some procedure or provide a service.
Thus, relationships begin to multiply and become increasingly broader and diverse, beginning to weave networks of community collaboration, which is probably the most important element in an inhabited environment. Although these interactions are born in spontaneity and the naturalness of fortuitous contact, they result in complex and functional frameworks, organized based on what the context and the moment demand.
Today we know of neighborhood organizations in closed subdivisions, as well as in neighborhoods where generations remain in the place and maintain mutual knowledge and neighborhood integration as a natural asset of the urban complex. However, they are no longer seen as much in the rest of the urban environment.
One of the main factors for this detriment in neighborhood relations is the use of the automobile for everything and at the slightest provocation. Traveling in a vehicle to the store, pharmacy or park means entering a bubble that isolates us from the environment and prevents the possibility of spontaneous contacts with those who live close to one’s home.
Interactions from a vehicle are very short and, although some are expressions of kindness and courtesy, a large number of them involve parent reminders and sign language (which, it should be said, is not intended to communicate edifying ideas). This depersonalization of the citizen with respect to the urban context they travel through and those who are in it, also generates an effect of depersonalization for the environment, turning it into a merely utilitarian space, lacking the elements that make it vibrant and give it life.
That is why it would be worth giving ourselves the opportunity to go out and walk around, open our eyes to what we see and who we see, as well as allowing a friendly greeting to those we meet along the route and who we will surely meet in others. Maybe this way, without much effort, we are building those relationships and networks that I talk about above.
Maybe that small effort a few minutes a day, a few days a week, going outside, allows us to make a very profitable investment in our environment, which will also impact the place where we live and the people we live with. Finally, there is nothing more valuable than peace of mind and what greater peace of mind than living among familiar people, with whom we form an active support network 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A small effort for a possible future.
#Good #neighborliness #profitable #investment