Place

My understanding of Sampson and his notion of "place" made most sense of when he stated that a neighborhood is not something as simple as a visible area but a neighborhood is more "kinds of people" which means to me that its more people with similar values and social similarities or similar circumstance. I think of the examples in my own life and where I've lived and who the people that I considered my neighbors. When my wife and I were first married 6 years ago this past summer, we got our first place together in a neighborhood not far from where I grew up. It was a little association housing community with roughly 90 houses. It was a cute little 1300 square Ft. house with a cute little yard, we thought that it was going to be a great place to start our lives together. The first day of moving in we were moving furniture, hanging pictures and everything else that I despise about moving and we heard a knock at the door. I answered it and it was the association president and his hello was something along the lines of "Hi, just so you know, this community is being made into a 55 and older community and we discourage younger families to move in here, so I hope that you don't feel like getting too comfortable for too long." That was not the warm welcome that we had expected, we ended up staying in that house for the next five years and we received multiple notes on cars and complaints about our kids playing in our yard. Out of those 90 homes in that little association I can probably name 4 people that I would have considered neighbors and those were the people that we knew from church. We considered them neighbors because we had a common bond with them and felt like we could rely on them. About a year ago when we moved to a new house on the other side of town on a street where we were surrounded by people in similar situations, young families that were in similar situations and even those that weren't in similar situations valued the things for the most part what we did: children, family, and work. We have lived in this house for a year now and we know our neighbors, we don't all go to the same church or have the same beliefs but we do have similar values ( previously mentioned). My wife and I were having this conversation about a year ago how we felt like we were finally in a real neighborhood and how in only 2 months we knew those around us better than the people that we lived by for the previous 5 years. So when Sampson spoke about Place and how real neighborhoods were "kinds of people" it made sense to me that I was finally part of a neighborhood and a community.