I just came across this post at Centrality about the lack of social capital in the deep mid-South. This will go a long way towards explaining why New Orleans doesn't come back like people expect it to.
I couldn't agree more. I lived for 2 years in Tuscaloosa, and for 9 in New Orleans. I liked Tuscaloosa and I loved New Orleans. And yet not only did we make few long-lasting connections, we also made few short-term connections.
Both are places where neighbors simply don't know each other very often. Where people don't leave the house as often as other places. Where people aren't involved in as many activities outside the home, or of that matter at work. To this day the vXspouse and I wonder precisely what so many people we knew in those places actually did with their time.
We did not move to Utah for the people or the culture. But in our sample of one, we found that we were invited to people's homes more in the first month of living here than in our total time in either Alabama or Louisiana. Just counting off the top of my head, I have 25 neighbors I know well enough to converse with within the 40 homes closest to me. I'd be hard pressed to for the first names of 25 people in Louisiana I ever met outside of work.
Via Chicago Boyz.
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