Hey, Buddy: Adult Friendships and the Future of Communities

"David Roberts over at Vox posted a new piece recently — 'How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult' — that really got me thinking. Any time I read a persuasive piece that positions traditional, compact, walkable forms of human settlement as inherently better than the more isolated, single use patterns we’ve come to characterize as sprawl, I immediately start imagining the counter arguments of those who’ve found perfectly happy and fulfilling circumstances in a subdivision somewhere."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about, they’d likely say. I live on a cul-de-sac that’s exactly the kind of car-reliant place you’re talking about. And yet I’ve made a slew of new friends, our children play together, and we gather in all the ways neighbors do — watching the game, evening drinks, helping each other out."

Doyon talks about why friends we make as an adult not only shape our lives, but also shape our communities. And our democracy.

No one is saying these people don’t like each other. Source: Roger Wilkerson, the Suburban Legend.