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The Strange Power of Weak Ties [CityLab.com]

 

My wife and I are blessed to live in our neighborhood, a part of Seattle called Madrona that calls itself “The Peaceable Kingdom.” We live on a block with neighbors we love. We have potluck dinner parties every month. We share rides and tools. We exchange home repair know-how, pie crust recipes, general advice. We give and get the tomatoes from our gardens and the plums from our trees. We walk across the street just to visit.

It’s a little idyll of neighborliness. And if I’m honest about it, it’s also a little cocoon of homogeneity and privilege.

I’m the only non-white person in our neighbor circle. We are educated, affluent, middle-aged, liberal. We live in expensive single-family homes. We are all literate in civic power, and we all know, for instance, how to get the city government to pay attention when the contractor at the new house down the street breaks noise and safety rules.



[For more of this story, written by Eric Liu, go to https://www.citylab.com/life/2...of-weak-ties/532131/]

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