What struck me first reading through the posts was how many people read the essay in such a literal context of their own current or past home situations. Not many commented on it being a metaphor for the disintegration of community in the US starting after WW II. But, upon contemplation, the post did connect to the essay since they are mostly looking back longingly at a way of life that is gone. Gone and likely never to return. We are entering a brave new world.

Really glad I was able to follow a link to your website.

My mom has long had what she calls her “porch time” in the evenings. She will pour herself a glass of wine or sip on a cold beer and sit in her Adirondack chair with our family dog laying near her feet. Sometimes she’ll leaf through a magazine or that day’s mail; other times, she’ll just sit and enjoy the approaching dusk and sunset. That “porch time” is sacred to her, and I sense that it is deeply restorative to her soul at the end of a busy, chaotic day. The subtle but constant activity of the neighborhood streets, combined with the occasional chat with a neighbor who is out for a stroll, is somehow life-affirming. (Perhaps it is easier to make continual use of a porch in Denver, where the weather supports it, as opposed to Memphis where I currently live and suffer through oppressive heat & humidity, even late into summer evenings…)

However, we also do a good deal of grilling and outdoor meals on our deck in the backyard. I have long wished we could do this on our front porch – if only to amplify our use of the space (and who doesn’t long to know where that delicious BBQ odor is coming from when it wafts over the neighborhood? There is no telling when the grilling is confined to a private space!). It is our indoor built environment that hampers our full use of our outdoor built environment; by this I mean simply that our kitchen, where the initial prep work happens, is at the rear of the house, flush to the deck. We can’t mindlessly use our front porch for the transitions between meal prep-grilling-eating because it is simply too far from the kitchen. What if architects and home builders were to invert the layout of most contemporary suburban homes and put the center of indoor life (the kitchen) closer to the potential center for outdoor life and community engagement (the porch)? It would create an axis of liveliness within the first reaches of a property, rather than a unnatural and always slightly unsettling dead-space of an unused living room at the front of most houses.

Once again, thank you for the site. I will be returning!

If I built a front porch and sat on it, all I’d see is cars driving by or joggers trotting by. Nobody walks in suburbia, save to empty the nether organs of his dog; there’s nothing to walk to. The only way to change this, I suspect, would be to triple the post-tax price of gasoline, for which other good reasons also come to mind.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When my family moved into our house, not one neighbor came to say hello. That was twelve years ago, and we still don’t know half the people living within three houses of us. And raising the gasoline price won’t help this; it’s much worse in Manhattan, where nobody drives anywhere. Community simply is now almost entirely on elective; this seems to be the wage of valuing individual freedom above all else.

Ever wonder how the Mormons keep such strong communities? It’s not their doctrines. It’s their restriction of individual choice of congregation. A Mormon is required to attend the LDS church nearest his residence – any other LDS congregation will boot him out if he starts showing up regularly. In order to change congregations, he must move house. There’s a lesson in that somewhere …

Merry Christmas anyhow!

I happened upon this blog today, July 4th, while thinking of my dear, departed grandmother.

We spent hours, upon hours on her front porch. She read me fairy tales as a young child, the milkman would leave his milk, I was spanked with a plastic ukulele, we would eat our hot blueberry pie smothered in homemade vanilla ice cream, and most delightfully of all, listen to my grandmother’s delighted cackle reverberate around the neighborhood, all from this front porch.

Today, we are in our pool/patio area, secluded from our neighbors, and I feel loss not having a front porch in my life.

Thanks for sharing this.

Would that be Mending Wall?
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast….”

“…He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’”

My wife & I live on a very busy street, so we spend very little time out there. Appropriately, our front yard is fairly small with the house set forward on the lot to make the most of the back yard. We do spend a LOT of time out in the backyard and our newly upgraded Veranda is an incredibly comfortable, relaxing place to be. We often have meals out there with just the three of us but we also hold quite a few BBQs, birthday parties, and all sorts of other large social gatherings there. Yet it is, at the same time, an isolating environment too.

but when we’re driving in my malibu,
it’s easy to get right next to you.
i say, “baby, scoot over, please.”
and then she’s right there next to me.
i need you here with me,
not way over in a bucket seat.
i need you to be here with me,
not way over in a bucket seat.

I’m working on something very relevant to front porches in particular – I’m redoing my front yard to make it into a “front yard family room.” The idea is to create a “third place” for my neighborhood.

The idea that a porch is not quite public, not quite private space is very important. Richard Sennett called what we have now “polarized intimacy.” This condition makes getting to know neighbors difficult. To spend time with a neighbor, you need to invite them inside your house, and they have to agree to be sequestered in there for an hour or more. It’s not a casual invitation, and for the neighbor, leaving is difficult. Contrast this with what I envision at our front yard family room. We’d be dining or snacking on our picnic table next to the sidewalk, and a neighbor and kid will walk by. I’d ask the kid if he wants a piece of fruit, and before you know it, the neighbor would be sitting down, talking to us.

I’ll be able to test this hypothesis when the front yard family room is ready within two months.

Finally, I’m also a kindred spirit politically. Thank you so much for articulating this “front porch” point of view. I often feel lost politically when I advocate community because people then assume I’m into all the other lefty stuff. For instance, I shocked some colleagues when I wrote this article recommending that Congress vote “no” on an environmental education bill. I’m also butting heads with my local school because they’re adopting a new math program that’s pro-calculator and anti-mental calculation called “Everyday Math.”