Getting To Know The Neighbors

August 13, 1988|By J. Linn Allen.

This summer`s drought may be costing billions of dollars in lost crops, bankrupting farmers, sending people fleeing inside to avoid heat prostration and causing electric bills to swell like bread in the oven.

But it`s not all bad.

It has helped Colleen Korinke get to know her neighbors.

``We all have to water at the same time, because of the restrictions,``

said Korinke, a resident of the Crystal in the Park subdivision in Crystal Lake, which opened last January.

``It gives us something to talk about,`` said Korinke. ``We`re all rushing to get our lawns watered. They all got sodded and seeded at the same time.``

Korinke`s sprinkler sessions exemplify two of the classic ways in which people in a neighborhood form a real social community: doing yard work and coping with a general crisis. Both activities draw people out of their homes and give them a bond, a common ground.

A community`s sociability level is generally a secondary consideration for most home buyers. Immediate needs and limitations-such as price, size, amenities, schools and proximity to work and shopping-take priority. In a new subdivision, no neighborhood exists yet, at least in the social sense. There is nothing to consider.

But once people start moving in, wondering about the neighbors becomes a favorite parlor game. As the years go by and a neighborhood develops, the families who live there and their feeling of closeness may become even the primary characteristic that defines a family`s idea of home.

``A sense of community is one of our basic human needs,`` said Kathryn McCamant, a Berkeley, Calif., architect and community design consultant. ``As much as we need privacy, we need community.``

In this country, children are probably the greatest community blenders, according to William Rohe, an associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina, and author of ``Planning with Neighborhoods,`` a book studying the process of involving neighborhood organizations in urban planning.

``Research indicates that when you look at how people get to know each other in neighborhoods, a lot of time it`s through the children,`` he said.

``People tell you the reason they know another person is because their children play with the other person`s children.``

Korinke`s neighborhood also illustrates that point. The 28-year-old nurse and her husband, Greg, 30, a concrete estimator, live with their two small boys in a cul-de-sac of six houses. About 50 of a planned 346 houses have been occupied in the Zale Group-built subdivision.

``We all have little kids,`` Korinke said, ``and they all play with each other, and we take walks with them a lot.``

In a community still under development, the fact that everyone is a new neighbor is also a typical catalyst for socializing. ``Everyone is interested in everyone else,`` Korinke said, ``because it`s all so new for all of us.``

Some say the phenomenon is what makes casual socializing so easy in California, where everybody-at least in the popular conception-is from somewhere else.

Linda Payne, who moved last November with her husband, Gary, into the 47- lot Flint Creek subdivision in Barrington, agreed that neighbors can mix more readily in a new community than in an established neighborhood.

``It`s easier in a new subdivision than when you`re moving into a community where everything is more settled and it`s hard to break in. Everyone wants to know about each other. They have a common ground of curiosity.``

The Paynes, both 43, reached out for community directly with a chili and champagne party for everyone in their immediate area. ``It was something born out of the long winter days, and seeing a lot of people driving in and out that we`d never met because we were never outside,`` said Gary Payne. ``It was the only way for neighbors to meet each other.``

About 45 people came to the party, and they were asked to write down their addresses, phone numbers, children`s names and ages and other information that Linda Payne used to compile a neighborhood directory that she then distributed. It turned out to be particularly handy for families seeking baby-sitters, she said.

``We had a good time,`` said Gary Payne. ``Some people asked if it was risky inviting strangers. But it was easier asking people you don`t know than inviting a group of friends. Sometimes with your friends, since you know all the personalities, you say maybe you ought not to get this group together with that group. Here you don`t care, you all have something in common, you all have new houses. You don`t have to worry about personalities.``

Exploring your social community starts with finding out whether you have dear hearts and gentle people living around you or something more like Captain Vic, the fiendish Dan Aykroyd character who disrupted John Belushi`s tidy suburban life in the 1981 movie ``Neighbors.``