https://annehelen.substack.com/p/one-way-to-live-near-friends
"When Phil Levin and I agreed it was finally time to do a Culture Study Q&A
about his app/website,
Live Near Friends, I told him plainly: we’ve got to
make sure not to make this conversation sound like THIS ONE APP WILL SOLVE ALL
YOUR COMMUNITY PROBLEMS. I am deeply wary (as I know so many of you are!) of
anyone promising friendship “hacks”: there’s simply no shortcut to forging the
sort of strong and loose ties that make us feel cared for.
But I also know that Phil has been doing the live-near-friends work for years.
Years before he started working on this project, he and his wife and a bunch of
friends figured out how to build the communal space they’d been dreaming of,
which now includes five living spaces, a communal meeting space (“The
Blueberry”), a fire pit/hot tub/sauna, a garden, and a sick guest RV.
Altogether, their Oakland space is home to 20 adults and eight kids (with ten
separate “homes” across six buildings).
Stuff like this is often so aspirational that it pisses you off that other
people have it. MUST BE NICE, etc. etc. But the costs of creating these sorts
of spaces are often far, far less than what it costs to live on one’s own with
the same amount of space. And yet: they can feel utterly unimaginable. That’s
where
Live Near Friends comes in. It’s not a hack. It’s a real estate tool
that makes living closer to your friends — and the sort of easy intimacy so
many of us dream of — feel much more within reach.
So take a look at what this tool can do — and acknowledge what it’s can’t. It
can’t change the real estate market. It can’t make all your friends’ jobs be in
the same place as yours. But if you’re one of those people who’s wanted to take
these sorts of conversations from theoretical to actionable — I’d take all the
help I could get."
Via Cass M.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
