I think it depends a ton on how the neighborhood is setup.
In both Portland and San Francisco my wife and I make an effort to regularly invite people over for BBQs, and introduce ourselves to new faces we meet on the street.
Don't get me wrong though we had someone close the blinds on us and not answer the door while handing out cookies when we moved in to SF. But, it was a 1/10 experience. Most folks were warm and welcoming.
Moving around a lot as a kid I I have experienced this lack of neighborliness in one out of the four houses I lived in. It was a large planned cookie-cutter suburb where there were no parks reachable by a >10m walk, and no stores reachable by >15m walk. The outcome was that you loaded into the car in the garage and drove to your destination rarely running into people.
> In both Portland and San Francisco my wife and I make an effort to regularly invite people over for BBQs, and introduce ourselves to new faces we meet on the street.
It is hard to explain this in a way that is believable.
As an example of how this works, my wife and I have tickets to go to an event with another couple. We need to discuss the logistics of transportation and timing, so 3 weeks in advance I send out a text asking if we can come over to chat about things (we live close by). He says sure, but they are driving home right now, he'll text us when he gets home and we can come over. No text is ever sent.
A few days later, I send another message, asking if it is a good time to come over. "Sure, we're not busy, come on over anytime!"
This couple is not especially flaky, for Seattle this is normal behavior.
It is how Seattle works. Planning the smallest of things is an exercise in frustration. If I am with a group of more than 4 people and a decision needs to be made on food, I just make it by fiat, because otherwise there is a non-trivial chance that restaurants will closed before people ever decide on where to go. (After the second time of not getting to eat, I just started doing the dictator thing.)
This is not just my experience, I have multiple friends (mostly from out of town), who report the same thing. Getting plans here nailed down is impossible.
The pessimistic view is that people become so apathetic that the dictator thing (blindly letting other people lead you) starts happening in government as well, instead of harmless restaurant choices.
In both Portland and San Francisco my wife and I make an effort to regularly invite people over for BBQs, and introduce ourselves to new faces we meet on the street.
Don't get me wrong though we had someone close the blinds on us and not answer the door while handing out cookies when we moved in to SF. But, it was a 1/10 experience. Most folks were warm and welcoming.
Moving around a lot as a kid I I have experienced this lack of neighborliness in one out of the four houses I lived in. It was a large planned cookie-cutter suburb where there were no parks reachable by a >10m walk, and no stores reachable by >15m walk. The outcome was that you loaded into the car in the garage and drove to your destination rarely running into people.