Are you part of Nextdoor?

I know my neighbors here in Historic +Avondale. Do you know yours if you live in the historic neighborhoods of +Riverside, +San Marco, +Ortega or +Springfield? Granted, I have many friends who live in these other neighborhoods, but they are not in my particular neighborhood. The Nextdoor site is a great website that attempts to connect residents within neighborhoods to other residents in the same and neighboring neighborhoods.

RAP is comprised of Riverside and Avondale and both neighborhoods share a lot of similarities and they both grow and contract together. Being close to each other, it tends to happen. So when you hear about growth in Avondale, you can almost be sure that growth is occurring in Riverside or even Ortega, since they are all so close to one another, like steps across a stream.

Within my Nextdoor - Avondale there are 48 confirmed neighbors who are connected to this service and then there are 305 "nearby" neighbors who are located in other neighborhoods, like Murray Hill, Ortega, Riverside. Nextdoor sees neighborhoods as 3000 households. So they will split, rightfully or wrong, a neighborhood if they feel that there are too many households. They have a "formula" for how neighbors should interact and more than 3000 does not work, to them, yet Avondale has 3,380 households, so go figure!

Still, it is a great way to stay in touch with others and learn what is going on in your community. In a way, it is like a community page on Facebook, but it has other neat features, like "Are you planning to give out candy for Halloween?", so people can plan on going to your house, maybe skipping others who are not. There are sections of the site that allow for posting of "For Sale" items as well as a blog for asking and allowing others to answer questions. It really is like a neighborhood paper or community pages we used to have with the Jacksonville Journal (this was a newspaper that stopped operations in the late 1980s).

So try out Nextdoor, it is free to join and post a picture and then start interacting with your fellow neighbors. After all a strong community starts with neighbors looking out for each other, and what better time to organize a street party than now, in the fall, when nature allows us to all get out and enjoy the cooler nights and days.

#LizBobeck