In Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 plan of Rome, the outlines of buildings are hatched in order to highlight the planar density of the city. While these hatched boundaries represent spatial adjacencies, they are also a record of social proximity. While the erection of one building next to another necessarily results in a spatial conversation, it also results in the social contract that is being a neighbor. And just as there are good and bad spatial compositions, there are also good and bad neighbors.

By international standards, and as evidenced by its Nolli plan, the inner city Toronto neighborhood of Cabbagetown, where I grew up, is relatively sparse. Existing at an urban edge, next to a winding river valley and interspersed with parks, the houses while in close proximity often maintain spatial independence. This spatial estrangement is reconciled in part by a harsh winter climate, and the legal requirement for homeowners to remove snow and leaves from the sidewalks adjacent to their homes, which in ideal circumstances results in cooperation across boundaries.

This, sadly, is not always the norm. After any large snowfall, our family would don our heaviest winter gear, arm ourselves with shovels, and plow a path connecting the sidewalks in front of our house with those of our neighbors, expecting that the favor would some day be returned. Our neighbor, returning home one evening after a particularly brutal blizzard while we were still in the process of clearing her sidewalk, squeezed past us and paused at the top of her front stoop only long enough to mutter “I owe you an apple pie”, before slamming the door in our faces. Needless to say, we never received the apple pie, nor did she ever express any further words of gratitude, but to this day we continue to clear her walk, making sure to maintain at least our end of the social contract.

E. Sean Bailey

“Here comes the story of a Hurricane…”

-Bob Dylan, “Hurricane”

I have had a lot of neighbors in my time. When I was born, my family lived next door to a kind-hearted, sometimes drag queen, who would visit our place regularly (dressed as a “man”) bringing me gifts. My mother, a sheltered newcomer to the West, would peer into his apartment through the glass panes of the front door, amazed to see sequined dresses strewn across the floor. Subsequently, we lived next to a very friendly, tall lady who scared me one Sunday when after a nice brunch together, she slipped away from the table, re-emerging in the garden dressed like the Easter Bunny. I was forced to to endure a terrifying ride in the backseat of my parents’ car, with said out-scaled rabbit, which delivered us to an egg hunt at my pre-school. With another change of residence, came a lovely elderly couple who, most significantly, debunked a popular South Asian myth which dictates that one must eat rice for dinner. They also quashed the notion that married people slept in the same bed, opting instead for two twin beds separated by a side table à la Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Following an international move, came a long string of suburban neighbors that I would classify as mostly unremarkable. Upon moving to the city, for a time, I lived next door to a well-known concert pianist whom I recognized from his regular appearances on television. His home had a sophisticated modernist-inspired interior that could not contain his music, which was forever spilling out onto the street.

The most famous, however, and not to mention the most uniquely stylish, of all my neighbors was Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. His clothes, his car, the objects in his world, were all so well chosen. His house, a beautiful old dwelling, was an obvious labor of love and an immense source of pride for him. In the summertime, it was in full bloom with impatiens cascading down its exterior walls and carpeting the yard. In the winter months it was caught in a dense net of twinkling lights. The volume of adornment seemed to deliver a mixed message. His house was so substantially overlain, that at times it seemed as though he was applying another layer of defense between his private space and the outside world, but again, these seasonal dressings were all so beautiful and flamboyant that they read equally as a public celebration, one that invited the entire neighborhood to participate.

Erandi de Silva