Go Out and Say Hello
Small connections, big resilience – a call to meet your neighbors.
What I read: “How to get to know your neighbourhood” by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani. Published April 8, 2026.
I’ve long been a proponent of people getting to know their neighbors and neighborhood. People have so much power at their disposal to live better lives if done collectively and not cocooned as individualists who avoid interacting with people or the places in which they live.
In “More Reasons Why Community Is So Important,” I alluded specifically to the horrific happenings unfolding our country right now because of national leaders who seek to do more harm than good, to grift and profit rather than give all people a good way of life.
Right now, more than ever, we need community. It’s only by having strong communities will we be able to weather the current storm of upheaval in the United States. Plus, it’s not as if the US is the only place on the planet dealing with or potentially dealing with difficulties that community can help people survive.
Whether it’s political dysfunction, a climate change fueled disaster, or any stress test a town or city might experience, it’s the strength of neighbors and connections between them that will help ensure survival and resilience amid such misfortunes.
When the current US administration took office, I knew things would get bad. I didn’t realize quite how bad at the time, but I always knew our country was going to be in trouble. One of the suggestions I floated among some local elected and community leaders was a Meet Your Neighbor Day. At the end of this post is my draft proposal I’m replicating here in case anyone else wants to use it as inspiration for something in your own neighborhood, town, or city.
The article by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani offers some great ideas about how to get to know your neighborhood. Getting to know your neighborhood (and neighbors) can add so much to your personal life and the community life of everyone in your area. Bendiner-Viani puts it this way.
Beyond satisfying our curiosity, getting to know a neighbourhood is a way to build capacity for compassion, to avoid that all-too-human inclination to see others as less real than ourselves. Really being with the people who live around you is an essential part of recognising our shared humanity, even our shared fate, recognising that we each belong to something larger than ourselves. In this time of loneliness and division, getting to know your neighbourhood and neighbours might be something close to an existential necessity. Overcoming collective crises requires negotiation and collaboration across differences, and it isn’t easy work. The muscles for it need to be built. So, think of getting to know your neighbourhood – through small talk, listening, learning history, contributing – as a low-stakes way to build those muscles, to be ready when the stakes are much higher.
Many of Bendiner-Viani’s suggestions are about getting to know the “place” of a neighborhood first. Good advice, but I fear most people won’t expend as much effort as required to implement all of Bendiner-Viani’s tips. She talks about reading signs, listening to the sounds around you, finding the “traces” where people have been, examining local architecture, determining the real and functional boundaries of an area, and perhaps reading books about a neighborhood.
All of those are great ideas, but a lot of work. Work well worth it I’m sure, but a lot. Then Bendiner-Viani suggests we explore a neighborhood at different times of day and other strategies and for me this is where the advice becomes more readily actionable.
My own Castro neighborhood in San Francisco has a people and atmosphere landscape that changes with day and time. The experience of walking to a coffee shop on a weekday at 8:00 a.m. is quite different than walking to dinner at 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday night. We often create habitual ruts that have us avoiding our neighborhood at certain times of day. Understanding a neighborhood fully is to experience it at varying times.
One thing I do when I walk in my neighborhood and city is not use earbuds. I know. That’s tough for many people who like to listen to their favorite music or podcast while walking. But blocking out the sounds of a place lessens one’s appreciation for it. It becomes more difficult to say hello to someone or hear a flock of birds vocalizing in a park if you’re plugged in. It’s also safer.
Before you ask someone to tell you what your neighbourhood is about, see what its physical space has to tell you in its own language. The first step is paying attention – looking up from your phone, unplugging your earbuds, listening and looking around.
Being an integral part of a neighborhood in some way is another useful suggestion. I’m a big believer in volunteerism as a great way to give back to a neighborhood while getting to know those around you better. One way to become a part of the functioning of a neighborhood is figuring out what you can contribute. Everyone has something to contribute. Find that thing and be generous with it when interacting with your neighbors and neighborhood groups and organizations.
Bendiner-Viani concludes with something I really like, ad hoc guided tours from fellow neighbors. What a great idea and something I hadn’t thought about before.
I ask locals (sometimes my own neighbours) to give me tours of whatever they consider to be their neighbourhoods. When I literally put myself in someone else’s place – walking at their speed, moving through the world in the way they do – I understand new things and it deepens my care for the place.
Among all of the advice I think much of it boils down to simply getting to know your neighbors and not just living among others. Say hello to people. Maybe ask them how their day is going. Share information about a neighborhood happening of which they might not be aware. Maybe pet their dog (ask first). For me, getting to know the “people” of a neighborhood is always the top priority. Connected people are what bring cohesion and a sense of community to a neighborhood.
Getting to know a neighbourhood is about taking the time to listen, notice and ask questions, to take part, to risk something of yourself. It’s about recognising that you exist in a particular place and time, shaped by other places and other times.
Here’s the Meet Your Neighbor Day proposal I mentioned earlier as written for my city of San Francisco.
Elevator Pitch
To strengthen the bonds of city San Francisco residents, promote through collateral, press releases, and social media a day and time at which the public is encouraged to leave their home and go onto the sidewalks to meet their neighbors.
Longer Pitch
San Francisco is a remarkable city, and we can make it even better by fostering cohesion between neighbors. Most people probably do not know all the people who live near them. This is an opportunity to create awareness, friendships, and collaborations in a fun, organic manner.
This benefits every resident and the city. People may develop new social networks. Because of better connections, in emergencies such as an earthquake a neighborhood will be better prepared to respond since important connections have already been made. We know the better one’s social bonds, the healthier one is physically and mentally. There is simply no downside and many upsides to putting effort behind getting neighbors to know each other.
A mental framework similar to this effort is what happened during the pandemic when each week on a certain day at a certain time people banged pots and pans to make noise to celebrate the people who worked through the pandemic for our benefit.
Hopefully, the city would get behind this effort and dedicate money and resources to promoting the day. It fosters community safety and awareness and that’s ultimately a net benefit for every neighborhood throughout the entire city.
I cannot imagine this would take a lot of money to implement and promote. Graphics. Social media effort. Press release. Website or city page. Maybe video promotion by the Mayor or other elected officials.
That said, this effort would not require the direct involvement of city leaders although that would make it much easier and far more effective.
Various community organizations, labor unions, churches, nonprofits, business hubs, and so on, could be sent a concise explanation of the day and time and why it benefits everyone, and they could promote to their own networks.
Social media accounts could be leveraged to promote the day.
Flyers could be handed out and posted throughout the city to promote the day. Such flyers could contain a simple and direct message:
San Francisco Meet Your Neighbors Day
Date
On ____ at ____ p.m. go outside to your sidewalk and talk with your neighbors.
Let’s makes the great city of San Francisco even greater with neighbors and neighborhoods who know and respect each other.
Or something like that. Simple. Big type. Easily readable. In multiple languages.
Simple, streamlined marketing is the key. No extensive explanations outside of press releases and articles.
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