know your neighbors

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a social norm and civic value asserting that awareness of and relationship with the people who live immediately around you is a foundation of community safety, wellbeing, and resilience; the erosion of neighbour-knowing in contemporary urban and suburban life — driven by car dependency, digital entertainment, private rather than communal outdoor space, and high residential mobility — is associated with increased loneliness, reduced informal surveillance, weaker emergency response, and diminished local political participation; initiatives to encourage neighbour-knowing range from block parties and street festivals to the Nextdoor social platform, and urban designers increasingly argue that street and building design significantly influences whether strangers become neighbours