Neighborhoods have a symbiotic relationship

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Good fences make good neighbors is one of the best-known lines from a poem written by Robert Frost, sometimes discussed as if it literally means real fences promote good relationships between neighbors, but more often used as a discussion of boundaries beyond the physical ones.

Certainly, Frost intended his message to be broader than just neighbors and people have used that quote even in discussions of borders between countries. But, as we drive around neighborhoods in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque, we are reminded that the boundaries between people in urban America matter also.

Good fences and good neighbors suggest boundary lines between properties. Most people want to believe their home consists of property that is their individual refuge. They believe that owning the property affords them a right to privacy, with an inherent right to determine what they can do with the property and whom they allow on the property. After all, it is their home and their sanctuary.

Property lines become the fences and good neighbors respect those boundaries.

But in todays urban neighborhoods, in todays world of zoning restrictions and code enforcement officers, private property has taken on new meaning. We may own the property, but we dont have the right to do anything we want on the property.

Thats a price we pay when we elect to live in a city. Sometimes its good we have police and fire protection, roads, water, schools other times we may feel our rights are being denied because we cant do whatever we want on our own property. The reality is we choose to make those compromises when we buy property in a city.

So, if we accept that good fences mean neighbors respect what others do on their own property (abiding by the urban laws, of course), we should be OK. However, that doesnt quite work either.

Neighborhoods and the people who live in them have a symbiotic relationship with each other whether they want it or not.

Yes, we individually own the property and, yes, we respect our neighbors rights to do what they want on their own property, but its not quite that simple or separate. Like it or not, the combination of individual properties make up neighborhoods.

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Neighborhoods have a symbiotic relationship