Starting the Story - Borrowing Sugar from a Neighbor
We don’t go next door to borrow a cup of sugar very often. Does this lead to community isolation?
Here’s a great illustrated story from YES magazine.
The story starts here…..
Here’s the full story.
Sarah Lazarovic created this comic for The Dirt Issue, the Spring 2019 issue of YES! Magazine. Sarah is an artist and creative director. As a journalist, she’s worked for almost every publication in Canada, covering news and cultural events in comic form. In 2015, her live sketching of a Rob Ford speech won gold at the Online News Association awards. As a Massey Fellow at the University of Toronto in 2014, she studied behavioral economics and environmental sustainability. Her book, A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy (Penguin 2014), is available at fine libraries everywhere.
This article was originally published by YES! Media and is reprinted here with permission.
What do you think? Here are some potential reactions:
- The story smacks of too much “forced neighborliness.” Even in our modern and busy days, I feel I have decent neighborliness without having to borrow sugar.
- The story makes good points. We try to do too much on our own, rather than ask for small favors. The favors build good community relationships.
I think maybe it’s both ways – but the isolation is real. I’ve noticed this moving back to my small town from the city; the entire culture is different, in small ways like this. It is both stifling and comforting to know that everyone knows your name and feels free to ask you for what is needed, and I think it’s the primary difference in rural and urban spaces. The way we choose to communicate between government and citizen is affected by this, too.
And, in other ways, this plays itself out in the physical spaces we build: more roads for more delivery cars and more people driving short trips; more retail spaces closer to people’s homes; more sidewalks; more of all the physical spaces we need to make these moments happen. I’d love to see a simulation of what our traffic loads would look like if these short trips weren’t a thing, and everyone borrowed their sugar.