Get to know all your neighbors

We host a free cookout at the end of our block every week. Nothing fancy, hotdogs and smores, chips, beers, water, soda... Every time someone walks by we ask them, hey, want a hotdog? All kinds of folks show up -- white middle class, punks, fellow queerios, Black and Latinx neighbors, kids, teenagers, sr citizens...

Sometimes we block off a section of the roundabout and play four-square

Absolutely the best thing I've seen for building relationships -- community --within the few blocks radius.

No permits, zero affiliation with "open streets" (cop funded) or any other municipal grant.

The highlight of my week

How tf is this question controversial?

Weird to frame it that way.

Build community through mutual interests, hobbies and passions. Identify and define, communicate and collaborate.

Supporting shared ideas, stories, concepts and strategies.

Define the interest, see who’s onboard, communicate the intention and call to action.

Disseminate, discuss and determine how to do it better, what was missing, who else can be involved and do it again.

Make a point to engage the people you interact with. Be a good neighbor. See where and when you can help or support those around you.

What are u asking op?

Volunteering is a good place to start. Most places have community centers and food pantries and such that are always looking for volunteers. This puts you directly in line for helping your community members.

Introduce yourself to your neighbors. Do the neighborly things like bring their bins in for them, check in with them when there's a storm, etc. Learn their names. Strike up conversation when you see them outside.

Join local sports or running club or something similar. Getting yourself physically in places with others and being open to befriending people is the quickest way to immerse yourself in community building.

Friend of mine started a womens' friend group in a small town. She posted the first meet up on Facebook, made it for a wine bar at a time not too many people would be there. She used an agenda, having us write and doodle answers to questions like "how did you make friends as a child?" "What has been difficult about making friends now?" "What kind of activities would you be interested in?"

Some of the hopes for the group included things like having a place to ask for help if you needed a ride or help moving a couch, or inviting someone to just hang out for moral support while you fold laundry.

The group set up a signal chat to make regular plans, ask for advice from people who had different experience levels, discuss current events, etc.

I would recommend doing this with some kind of narrow focus, like a particular gender or age group, or life stage commonality.

Getting to know your neighbors and joining or creating mutual aid groups is a good way to build community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.

Check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area.

There's also some projects you can do that help build community (and can be fun in themselves!). My instance put together a list of ideas, just scroll down to the "Fun Projects to Build Community" section

The core of a community is consistent interaction with community members. The easiest way to develop this is to have some kind of regular meeting that people have a reason to attend. A bar can be a community, a church can be a community, a library can be a community, a park can be a community, an online game can be a community, a web forum can be a community. You can also have a community without a specific regular meeting place, as long as the members are willing to make the effort to meet in different places (this is more difficult, and works best for small groups of friends). What matters is that people keep showing up and spending time together.

It becomes a real community when the members begin to care about each other, so much so that they will go out of their way to ensure the well-being of other members. This takes time to develop, and benefits greatly from community leaders who set an example of care, which can be as simple as asking how someone is doing and genuinely listening to the answer. It's easier to do in person because you can often look at someone and know that something is wrong, and they can't just run away embarrassed without making a scene. It's harder to do through the Internet, people will simply disappear. Bluntly, the less people have invested personally the more likely they are to just leave.

Churches are actually an instructive example - religious worship has been the center of communities for much of humanity's past. Small churches tend to build communities very easily because they have:

1. Weekly meetings in a dedicated space - no one has to guess when or where to be, or if anyone else is going to show up
2. Mutual support - the religious aspects of the group encourage members to care for each other
3. Guilt tripping - there's a lot of peer pressure to show up every week, and social consequences for not doing so

If you want to build a community, try to be that example of a community leader who checks in with others and cares about their well-being. It's tricky though, trying too hard too fast with this is not socially acceptable and will push people away. Starting out the most important thing is communication and coordination (e.g. making sure people have transportation to and from the meeting). Start small, start simple, and this might seem counterintuitive, try to be the invisible glue that holds it all together. For the community to form, the members must develop relationships with each other that are not dependent on the leader, which means you can't insert yourself into every relationship within the community - you can't be everyone's best friend, you might not even know everyone directly, and that's okay. You need to facilitate the growth of relationships (by introducing people to each other) but not be the center of all of them (single point of failure). If you're successful, the community will grow beyond yourself and take on its own form, which may be different from what you visualized at the start.

Also keep in mind that there's a degree of getting lucky required to make this happen. You can set a table and invite people to sit down at it, but you can't force them. People have to choose to join you, and choose to come back, and that means you have to find people who are in the right place in their lives, the right mindset, and have the time to be involved. Getting lucky typically involves casting a wide net, repeatedly over time, being patient, and accepting failure. Starting from scratch is hard.

I remember reading an article years ago, where a young couple had moved into a newly built community. As they settled in, they realized they had projects around the house that weren't overly skilled but would benefit from additional hands. They got together with several of their neighbors who had similar issues.

Once a month, they descended on one house. The owner had a list of projects - empty the attic, clean out the shed, paint the living room, whatever they needed help with. Everyone would divvy up the work; the owner provided food and drink throughout the day, and at the end, everyone relaxed together. Then the next month, they'd descend on the next person's house.

The group ended up really bonding together. As they grew older, they helped each other get through illnesses, celebrate graduations and weddings, cope with grief, and stay in their houses. I'm sure it helped that it was a new neighborhood with a bunch of people likely seeking connections, but I'd love to see that kind of bond elsewhere.

Most important question I've come across so far! Great job, thanks! Saving this post for later!

One thing I want to do is set up a disaster response station. My area is situated near a fault line and some neighbourhoods in my city have a sea-can full of supplies (water, food, solar panels, lights, first-aid, etc.) and they recently hosted a workshop to teach people what to do in the event of a major earthquake/natural disaster, what supplies were there, and how to use the tech stored in the can.

There were a lot of people there and many of them stuck around after wards to talk with each other. Likely they were neighbours, but that's part of community building I think.

*https://dunbaremergency.ca/services/map-your-neighbourhood/ <- Info if you want to create a similar meeting point for your community

1. Make plans with other people.
2. Don't bail. Rinse and repeat.

But for real, finding ways to volunteer for your personal interests - whether online or in person - is the best way. It will connect you with other similarly interested people, give you a bit of responsibility so they see you're trustworthy and how you think, and once you are "work-friends" you can invite them to personal things also like going on a hike, watch/discuss a movie, go to an event, co-work, play a game, etc. The most important part is, of you say you'll do something that they're relying on you for, you gotta do it or communicate before hand why you can't. Community is just a group of people with similar interests that trust each other and communicate.

I don't have an answer, but want you to know I've been wondering about the same thing.

I think for me it's going to be about music--finding other musicians to hang with and make music with.

But I absolutely agree, society is collapsing to a collection of disconnected individuals (easier to control and manipulate).

If you want the science on it, the ur-text is Bowling Alone.