The Vancouver Foundation created quite a stir with its “Connections and Engagement” survey.
The first report we produced was a 44-page document that provided a high-level overview of the key findings and gaps in our community.
However, with so much interesting data to explore, we’ve decided that, over the summer, we will release a series of mini-reports. This series, which we are calling A closer look, will focus on some of the detailed analysis and findings from our survey of 3,800 metro Vancouver residents.
This first in this series examines the effect of apartment living on neighbourliness. It looks at key questions and compares the experience of people living in single detached homes to those residents living in high-rise apartments/condos.
Click here to read: The effect of apartment living on neighbourliness.
Here’s a segment of the results:
My questions:
Does it matter if the buildings are high or low? Is density a factor more than height?
Does it matter whether they are rental, condo or co-op?
Is class a complicating factor? Or culture? Or race?
How about the role of children, or dogs, as intermediaries?
Does interaction incease over time if the occupancy of a building is stable – that is, as residents get to know each other over time?
Is it a function of social capital – the amount of emotional energy people have to expend over a day? In a bigger, more crowded city, are people more reserved because they have to interact with so many others, thereby conserving intimacy for those they select rather than the occasional stranger they may run across in a small town?
Technology! As online and real worlds interact (hello, Grinder), do the ‘Third Places’ (like gay bars) lose their relevance, and then their viability?
Is this just a First World problem? Unique in some ways to Vancouver? Or a reflection of the absence of other, more urgent problems?
Do we care?
I have lived in high-rise buildings (condo, grad residence, rental) in suburban Toronto for the past 10 years and have witnessed high-rise community (or lack thereof) first hand. Age, race, language, stability in tenure, family situation all economic standing each play a role. I wonder if there are a couple other factors.
First, studies that look at defining neighbourhood tend to define a single high rise as a neighbourhood, ignoring proximity to other neighbouring buildings (high or low rise). Low rise and single family dwellings benefit from a larger catchment area.
Second, I’m, currently in a 30 storey building with 225 units, but there are only 8 per floor. Those are the only households I would count on seeing regularly. It’s actually rather low density when you think about it. Waiting for the elevator with others in the building is kind of like expecting to start a conversation at a stoplight with a stranger. You may, and some do, but reluctance can come from the theory of finite social capital.
As an aside, many of the small tasks that apply to single family homes, like picking up mail and newspapers, mowing lawn and shoveling snow simple don’t apply in a managed, secure high-rise.
I think it depends on what type of person your are.
If you have a “life” outside of work, you don’t hang out with work colleagues.
If you have a “life” that does not revolve around your home, then you would not hang out with your neighbours.
As mentioned above, in the case of single family houses, there is much more opportunity for interaction, since you may be doing yardwork at the same time as your neighbours. You may exchange fruits and vegetables. Those opportunities or commonalities do not typically exist in a highrise, since “management” performs those tasks. You may be more in tune with your neighbours if you are on a condo strata council (at least other council members). There’s also a higher turnover of residents in an apartment building.
But whether or not you have true friends depends on a commonality of interests other than just conversing over the fence and niceties. Most people have friends from university (or even high school). Others have friends with similar athletic pursuits, whether running, cycling or paddling.
And, of course, one of the reasons people live in a downtown condo is because they lead active busy lives, and don’t have time to deal with yardwork, etc. – so chances are, they don’t have time to – and are not looking for – new friends.
I lived in a 3 storey apartment in Richmond for 12 years. I knew the name of 1 neighbour until about the 10th year when I volunteered to be on the strata council. That helped a litte – but not much. Part of the reason perhaps… everyone thought it was the appropriate way to respect one another’s privacy. Also language barriers seem to add to the alienation.
2 years ago, I elected to move to a low density townhouse complex in Ladner. The afternoon of my move, my next door neighbour arrived with a plate of fresh baking to welcome me to my new home. Within 24 hours, 3 other neighbours had stopped by to introduce themselves and offer to help with anything I might need. It is common practice for the neighbours to stand out on the private roadway in the summer and chat endlessly. The complex has an annual BBQ and garage sale that is well attended.
Not sure if community location, demographics or culture that is the difference. All I know is, I have no doubts about where I prefer to live – even with all that nasty tunnel traffic.
The exception to the highrise residents not knowing their neighbours would be kids & dogs. Having a baby just draws people into conversation. I rarely talked with strangers on transit until I had a child, now it’s unusual if I don’t have at least two or three people talking to me on even short bus rides. Kids also cause their parents to be in the same place (the playground or park) with other people (parents, dog owners) for extended periods of time. I imagine if you did this survey on a building with lots of families & a playground on the grounds, you’d find different numbers.
Density in a high-rise definitely doesn’t operate the same as a low-rise one. For many modern ones security features mean you can’t even access any floor but your own and so you might have the chance to easily visit/see 4 to 7 families is your real density.
The ability to see activity and the level of effort to interact is the main factor though. In the townhouse example its easy to see people moving in, you know which address they moved into, going to say hi is easy to do. You can see people coming and going and just living outside more easily in a lowrise or a house and the ability to get used to seeing and recognizing people can go a long way.
Jan Gehl also discusses the issue in his books a bit. He points out that the distance from balcony/window to ground above 5 stories starts to make it hard to see details of people out in the streets and the time and effort of going down to get involved in street activity gets large enough that it becomes far less likely to happen spontaneously.
In the end if you only ever see people in or waiting at elevators (an awkward personal space box if ever there was one.) you aren’t getting the best opportunities to build community.
good fences make good neighbors
so the adage say.
when you live in a Single family house…you can retrench behind the fence…choose to interact or not with the neighbors…and as someone pointed out, gardening and all other activity involved by detached house, make you spend more time on your house and your neighborhood…and you eventually need to nurture good relationship with your neighbor, to watch after the house (…and avoid denunciation for this illegal basement suite, or deck).
apartment living is another animal…the time spent in the lift is not your choice.
if you decide to lower the fence with your neighbors, you can’t raise it anymore…what happen if the relationship go sour? In the detached house, you can watch by the window and decide to not go out, or go by the laneway to avoid the nasty neighborhood…in apartment no such a choice…
Michael Geller, using to exchange house, mentioning one important thing: “anonymity”…
in apartment, neighbors are so close, that they know more than you could wish of your intimacy…and anonymity can be a good barrier…eventually a required one to a peaceful apartment lifestyle
As mentioned by a previous poster, it doesn’t means appartment dweller don’t have a social life, they simply apply on a different geometry. and in high density neighborood, it is easier to build a relationship according this different geometry…and since it is all managed by a strata, those apartment dweller have more time for a productive social life.
Good questions. I wonder why the interior structure and spacing of high-rise apartments is still the way it is – spaces designed for maximum isolation and minimal opportunities to get to know one’s neighbours. Think, for example, about corridors: endless hallways with blank walls and solid doors. But a corridor is similar to a neighborhood street, isn’t it? Why don’t we treat it like one, with windows that face in, daylight, benches, greenery? How about a mutual social space, a neighborhood “plaza”-lobby that services two floors? Privacy is always a concern, but I’m sure that there’s enough of a market out there for social apartments.
I’m pretty sure a dark, narrow neighborhood street that faced nothing but concrete walls and solid doors on either side would be equally poor at fostering community.
Theo makes a really good point. Design could possibly solve some of the issues at hand. Makes me think of a university residence I visited once in Honolulu. From the exterior, the cylindrical towers looked like beehives. Inside, all the pie-wedge-shaped rooms opened into a walkway that was open to a two-storey high common area. Every other floor had one of these areas to share & I imagine it did a lot to foster community among the students in the residence.
Trouble is, building communal space rather than more condos to sell/rent would affect the developers’ bottom line, so how likely is it to happen?
But a corridor is similar to a neighborhood street, isn’t it? ask Theo…
which theorize the “interior street”.
looks great?
well, some architect was thinking so (even better, a street where it is always bright and never rain!).
The Theo suggestion , let me think of the Corviale residence in Italy (a post LeCorbusier architecture, since the social function of the street is at least recognized).
Well, it has been lot of experiment like it with common area, street-corridor, like Villeneuve in Grenoble (olympic village for the 1968 winter olympic game), during the great social experiments of the 70s. Today, abandoned by their residents, they are more often that not the prey of bulldozer…
Shopping malls also have a lot of the same pieces as pedestrian shopping streets with similar mindset of the always bright, never rain and easy to control. But the design rarely actually works to provide the same benefits of a shopping street in terms of neighbourhood or community. So too with many of the enclosed apartment neighbourhood experiments with all suites facing and opening onto interior courtyards which rarely work as intended for the imposed neighbourhood of the apartment building and ignore the street and surrounding buildings that could collectively form the actual dense neighbourhood with social connections etc.
I also wonder at how narrowly this study defined neighbours. I would also be interested to learn if people in high-rises have more or less acquaintances or friends and other such info about the differences in types of social interactions. Knowing names and doing favors are nice and all but it seems a bit arbitrary.