Australians don’t know our neighbours anymore

My 14-month-old has been attending a daycare centre for a few months.
Every day I pick him up and his teacher tells me about his growing “friendship” with a particular little girl.
I also get a daily newsletter, which includes pictures of the two cute toddlers playing together.
I mentioned to my husband that it would be good to get to know the parents — maybe one day we could arrange a play date outside of daycare.
Last week my mother-in-law was taking my son for a walk when our next-door neighbour was also leaving their house. She introduced herself, and asked my boy’s name, and whether he attended the local daycare centre. They soon realised that our kids are best friends at the centre, yet we didn’t know they literally share a common bedroom wall.
What’s worse is that we were both on maternity leave at the same time — yet we still didn’t interact beyond the occasional hello.
I live in a fairly friendly community. We talk to people in the playground, I have a great mum’s group, and even the local butcher knows my name.
So it got me questioning — why don’t I know my neighbours?
Andrew Leigh is the Federal MP for Fraser and former professor of economics at ACU.
He’s also an expert in the way we interact as a society — he’s even written a book on the subject.
Mr Leigh says there’s a long-term trend in Australians becoming disconnected from their neighbours.
In the mid 1980s, the average Australian knew 7.1 people in their local area they could ask for small favours. In the mid 2000s, that number had dropped to 5.7 people.
He said there are a number of reasons we’re losing these important relationships.
“We’ve seen a rise in long and unsociable hours. The number of people working over 45 hours a week has risen. Plus more people are working weekends, and shift work is increasing.”
He says it’s not only our hours away from the home that make it hard to get to know our neighbours, but how we chose to spend our time when we’re there.
“We’re spending more time engaged with technology — TV, the internet, and computer games. They’re not crowding each other out, but (the time we’re spending doing those activities is) crowding out activities such as backyard soccer,” he says.
Not only is the way we interact with our immediate neighbours impacted by changes in society — but it affects the local neighbourhood.
“We used to get our money from a bank teller, or buy our groceries from a person at the local store. Now we just use a machine,” he says.
He argues this shift in our behaviour has affected our social skills — we need to talk to people every day to know how to build relationships.
Not only have a lot of our interactions moved online, but our physical way of living his changed.
There’s also been a sharp rise in commuting times — with most people commuting by car.
“That’s time spent in a metal box on your own. You don’t form a better view of your fellow humans (while commuting). You can get pretty frustrated about the world,” he says.
He even argues that commuting time is more of a problem than spending hours a week gaming.
“An hour spent in the car degrades your community life much more than an hour gaming,” he says.
While more people are living in apartments rather than quarter acre blocks — Mr Leigh says that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“It’s a different interaction rather than a worse one,” he says.
He explains that people living in small apartments in large cities like New York can feel very connected to their community as they’re constantly walking around and using the spaces around them.
But there are simple steps we can take to improve our relationships with our neighbours.
“Hold a street party. Christmas is just around the corner. It’s not hard to organise, you can do it in less than an hour. Use the magic acronym BYO, and you won’t have to do much,” he says.
He says even if you live in an apartment on a busy street, you can invite your neighbours over for a Christmas gathering.
“You’re investing half an hour a year in relationships with people who could keep an eye on your place. You might even stop your place being robbed,” he says.
While getting to know our immediate neighbours is important, Mr Leigh also says there’s plenty we can do to improve our relationships with people in our local community.
“We should use local stores, reclaim the footpaths and, use technology to supplement face to face interactions — not replace them,” he says.
He says sites like meetup.com and foursquare are good for moving online relationships into the real world.
News.com.au journalist Deb Killalea says the benefits of knowing your neighbours goes far beyond having someone to water your plants when you go on holiday.
She believes she lives in one of the best streets in Australia.
“The day we moved in was almost like a welcoming committee — something I’ve never experienced in my years in Australia and overseas,’’ she says.
“I know my neighbours are great, not only because we regularly have get-togethers but they’re also forgiving when it comes to really annoying, menacing pets, well okay especially mine.
“Despite my cat menacing theirs (who is now to scared to go outside) they still talk to me. That’s the definition of nice.
“My neighbours also babysit my toddler and are ready to help out when we get stuck with pretty much anything from taking the bins out to feeding each other’s pets.
“In fact they’re so nice that a walk out to the mailbox often turns into a half-hour jaunt.”
“I know I’m lucky and this is better than any Ramsay street.”