Online social networks like Facebook need not be the last word in community spirit. Kieran Nash discovers how Kiwis are rebuilding old-fashioned neighbourhoods - everywhere from the office to the beach.
"Neighbours - everybody needs good neighbours."
That theme song - and the fresh young faces of Kylie and Jason - sold the world's television viewers a fleeting memory of another, dreamlike age where kids on the street played together, and mums would duck next door to borrow a cup of sugar.
Where the tan was not from a plasma screen. Where a friend was someone who you had actually met.
It was a dream that already seemed distant when the Australian show first screened in 1985, and the all the more so to the millions who still watch the soap in Britain, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.
Now, 25 years on, Neighbours has been branded "too white" by critics in Britain. The show's stars have castigated increasingly outlandish storylines. Even Jason Donovan is "too busy" to return for the silver anniversary show.
So, like Neighbours, is the dream of the suburban neighbourhood all but over?
Certainly in most of our cities, the days of hanging over the back fence and nattering with the neighbours are long gone, with people instead choosing to lock themselves indoors and chat with virtual strangers thousands of kilometres away over the internet.
Neighbourhood Support national manager Roger Eynon says his organisation has maintained its membership of 400,000 Kiwis, but people are relying more and more on isolated ways of communicating.
"We can freely communicate with people on another continent but not, it seems, next door," Eynon says.
The New Zealand experience is reflected across the Tasman, where a recent survey found nearly half the population never or rarely spoke to their neighbours.
A third of people said they were too busy to get to know the people over the fence and just one in five knew all of their neighbours' names.
In the United States, researchers discovered that a healthy sense of community can make for healthy residents. In the early 1920s, the Pennsylvanian town of Roseto had a strikingly low rate of fatal heart attacks, compared to the neighbouring towns of Bangor and Nazareth.
They concluded that the cohesive neighbourhood relationships - Roseto was founded by immigrants from the same town in southern Italy - was contributing to better support and health.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Roseto became less cohesive and more socially isolated, mortality rates rose to the same level as the neighbouring towns.
Other studies have shown that living in neighbourhoods with a strong sense of connection and community can reduce the risk of premature death by two to five times - so, how do we rediscover this seemingly lost dream?
Well, the news is not all bad. According to KPMG demographer Bernard Salt, many people are now chatting over the office partition rather than chatting over the back fence.
"People say that it's a bad thing, that there has been a sense of community lost, but really it's just shifted from suburbia to the office," Salt told the Courier-Mail.
And according to New Zealand's Quality of Life Survey 2008, more than two-thirds of us agree on the importance of feeling a sense of community with the people in the local neighbourhood.
Almost three-fifths say they already do feel a sense of community with others in their local neighbourhood.
It is true that older generations place greater weight on community (75.1 per cent say it is important) than do those aged 15 to 24 years (56.9 per cent).
But the widespread belief in the importance of community gives cause for optimism; we just need to take the initiative and knock on the neighbour's door with a plate of biscuits.
Psychology lecturer Dr Ronald Fischer, at Wellington's Victoria University, says people work longer hours so have less chance to socialise outside of work.
But there is a trend towards people going back to their neighbourhoods with an increase in local activities like community gardens and volunteer organisations.
And online networks like Facebook and MySpace can help people connect locally - many local organisations, communities and apartment blocks have now set up Facebook groups.
Surprisingly, says Fischer, people engage more in communities than they did a few years ago. "We might not know our neighbours directly but there's an interest in local neighbourhood activities that is still strong."
Annual barbie cements small-town feel of suburban street
Once a year, the families of Rugby Rd in Birkenhead wheel their gas barbecues down the street and gather in one of the driveways for a neighbourhood barbie.
Says Debbie Mew: "It's nice. It's small town living in a big city."
Debbie, husband Peter and their two children have lived in the North Shore neighbourhood for 11 years.
Many of the neighbours, ranging from retired couples to young families, have become friends over the years, and the annual barbie helps cement that.
"It's very casual. Very informal," Debbie says.
A lot of the friendships have come from the local school, where most of the street's children attend. The children met in primary school, played on the street, and now some are off to high school together.
Residents are not averse to neighbours stopping in for "a cup of tea and more".
When the family is away, Debbie arranges for neighbourhood children to collect their mail and feed the pets.
One reason she gives for the strong community feeling is families stay put rather than being transient. "This is a neighbourhood where people stay and raise their children."
Happy campers establish their own home away from home
Every morning, the espresso cart rolls up to Ohiwa Family Holiday Park and families gather by the hissing machine for a jolt of the hard stuff.
Each summer Cliff Inskeep, from Opotiki's Beyond the Bean mobile coffee, sees families from years past as well as new faces. "There's a very tight-knit community at the camp. It's what camping should be in New Zealand," he says.
It's a bit like the old butcher van, doing its deliveries around New Zealand's suburban streets.
Once or twice a week in the evenings, the pizza truck turns up at the campground. The book man puts out his dog-eared holiday fiction on a trestle trable, where holiday-makers browse. Many families trade their traditional neighbourhoods for surrogate communities every summer.
For the Longs, of Rotorua, the Bay of Plenty campground has been a neighbourhood away from home for the past 10 summers.
This week half the camp went fishing together on one day, says Kristine Long,
Their children are all around the same age - her own children were around 7 or 8 years old when they first started camping. "The kids seem to go off and do their own thing together. We look out for each other's kids."
And if families have extras stay and run out of room, someone will usually have a spare tent or space to accommodate them.
"The spirit here at the motor camp is a family place, a fun place," Kristine says.
"The card games go up and down into the night."
And when it is time for the families to head back to reality, they work out the next years' holiday leave - so they can all camp together again.
The office party that never ends
The basketball hoop in the office says it all. Commercial radio types like to play up the bubbly, outgoing image, and at Big FM they're keen to show the big fun they all have together.
Yet at the radio station's office on Auckland's North Shore, they really do seem to have established a sense of community that goes beyond joshing, back-slapping and post-5pm drinks in the office.
The office is an example of the "new neighbourhood" - the demographic trend for us to find our friends and relationships around the watercooler at work, not around the dairy on the corner of the street.
Radio schedules manager Liz Thompson says there is a much more active community at work than in her neighbourhood.
"I don't know my neighbours at all," she says.
The Big FM workplace is dominated by a large kitchen, the hub of social interaction.
Once a month there is a shared lunch for the whole staff, and families are invited to come along, says breakfast presenter Brent Harbour.
"Everyone sits in the kitchen and talks, rather than eating their lunch at their desks.
"Sometimes it's like a creche," he adds. Some staff have young children who they bring into the office from time to time; if the parents are tied up recording or in meetings, other staff members will look after their kids.
Says Liz: "It's not your average office. We're all like a family really.
"Because we are friends it makes it a lot easier to work together."
Friendships are not just confined to the office: three of the workmates went to the Big Day Out together, and the young people from the office often go out together after work. Liz and Jannah Robinson, a newsreader, spent their New Year's holidays together in Gisborne, swimming with Moko the dolphin.
The office community extends to cyberspace: most of the staff are Facebook friends.
"You spend so much time at work you may as well enjoy it," says Liz.
High-rise hard work
For many city-dwellers, their quarter-acre paradise is little more than a shoebox in an urban high-rise.
But apartment living doesn't have to be isolated, says Aaron Brownlee.
The 28-year-old owns an apartment in the 39-storey Metropolis Building in central Auckland, where he has lived alone for three years.
Previously, he lived in Mt Eden, and said it was easier to get to know people when living in adjacent houses.
In an apartment, "people get home, close the door and you never see them again".
Yet, slowly, over his three years in Metropolis, he has got to know people in the building. There's a little-used outdoor area. There used to be a bar in the basement. "There are certain people I always bump into. I know one guy because he always works out at the gym at the same time as me."
Aaron has got to know one woman through chance meetings in the lift. And his balcony is partitioned from the adjacent one by a glass wall - a transparent opportunity to meet.
"There was a girl who rented the apartment who had people round for drinks," Aaron says.
"After a while we got a bit chatty and we'd go from one apartment to another."
Much like Neighbours' Ramsay St, really - but 155m above street level.
