There's a moment I notice again and again as I walk through my neighborhood in Lyon. People emerge from their building entrances, lower their gaze to their phones, and walk past one another – and no one says hello. It's not because they're unkind or closed off. It's simply that they are already somewhere else. Mentally, they're in a chat with people they've never met in person, but with whom they discuss ceramics, Japanese poetry, or watercolor techniques. Neighbors remain in the background. The community – it's right there, in their pocket.
This is nothing new. But for a long time, I've wanted to pause and examine what exactly is happening. Because the shift that has occurred in how we belong to one another strikes me as one of the quietest, yet most profound, changes in our social lives.
Historically, community was something that was given to you. You were born in a village, a neighborhood, a parish – and that determined whom you spoke to, whom you borrowed salt from, and whose wedding was your business. A shared space created a shared destiny. It wasn't a choice, but a given, like the weather.
The French sociologist Émile Durkheim called this type of bond mechanical solidarity – it was held together by similarity, by a common rhythm of life, by the fact that everyone around you smelled more or less the same, of bread and fatigue. The neighborhood was the primary social unit not because people chose it, but because they had no other way to survive together.
Then, everything became more complex. Cities grew. Mobility increased. A person living in the 5th arrondissement might work in another city, have friends from three different countries, and feel closer to a stranger from an online Proust reading club than to their neighbor from the fourth floor.
Place became a coincidence. And belonging – a choice.
I know a woman who lives in the suburbs, in a quiet house with a garden. Her closest neighbors are an elderly couple and a young programmer who never opens his blinds. They say hello. That's it. But every Wednesday, she travels to the other side of the city for a meeting of her natural dye enthusiasts' club. There, she knows the names of the members' children, remembers who recently suffered a loss, and who just moved. These people – they are her people.
This is a community of interest. Not based on one's registered address, not by chance, but by a choice of meaning. And there is something incredibly liberating in that. You find your kindred spirits not because you happen to be nearby, but because you are all drawn to the same thing. This is a completely different kind of intimacy.
Psychologists have long said that a sense of belonging is one of the basic human needs. Maslow placed it in the middle of his famous pyramid, and not by chance: without it, a person begins to feel transparent, unnoticed, superfluous. But nowhere is it written that this need must be met by neighbors. It can be fulfilled by a pottery class, a running club, or a community of people who write letters by hand.
But this is where what truly interests me begins. Because this freedom has its shadow.
When a community is built around an interest, it's built around similarity. Everyone in the watercolor club is a person who likes watercolors. Everyone in the running club is a person who wants to run. This creates warmth and understanding, but at the same time, a very homogeneous environment. You stop regularly encountering people who live differently, think differently, and see the world from another angle.
A neighborhood once did exactly that – it brought together people who would never have chosen one another. The baker lived next to the teacher, and the teacher lived next to the mechanic. They were united by space, not by tastes. And in this random mix, there was its own value: a person learned to live alongside those who were not like them. This required patience, compromise, sometimes annoyance – but it broadened their world.
Sociologists call these heterogeneous ties – connections across difference. Studies show that it is precisely these ties that make a society more resilient and a person more empathetic. When we personally know at least one person whose life is very different from our own, we begin to think differently about those we don't know.
Communities of interest, for all their warmth, don't provide this. Or they provide significantly less of it.
There is one more point worth examining in the light of day.
In recent years, the line between «hobby» and «identity» has become very thin. It used to be possible to be passionate about photography without considering yourself a «photographer» in an existential sense. Now, it's more complicated. A community around an interest increasingly turns into a community around a self-image. And then, leaving it becomes almost painful: it's no longer just a change of hobby, it's a break with a part of yourself.
I've watched people experience leaving such communities almost like a divorce. Their people were there. There was understanding. There was a place where they were seen. And when it falls apart – due to a conflict, or because the interest has faded, or simply because life has changed – what's left is something akin to a void.
This shows just how deeply we've invested. A community of interest can be very real. But it is fragile precisely where the neighborhood was strong – in its inertia, in its obligatory nature. No one leaves a neighborhood just because it has ceased to be interesting.
The American sociologist Ray Oldenburg introduced the concept of the «third place» – a space that is neither home (the first place) nor work (the second place), but which regularly brings people together. Cafés, barber shops, the corner bakery, a bench by a fountain. Places where people meet without a reason and without an agenda.
This concept became prophetic. Because it is precisely the third places that began to disappear – or be transformed. The small café closed because the rent went up. The bakery became part of a chain, faceless. The park was redesigned. People moved into spaces occupied only by those they had invited.
And communities moved there as well. Now, the third place is a chat room. Or a meeting scheduled once a week. Or an online space that exists only when you enter it.
This isn't bad. It's just different. But there is a difference: a chance encounter at the bakery counter and a planned club meeting are different types of connection. The first is non-committal and wasn't arranged. It just happened. And in that randomness, there is something very much alive.
It seems to me that behind all of this lies the same question a person asks themselves again and again: «Is there anyone who understands me?»
The neighborhood answered it through presence. You were seen simply because you were nearby. You existed in someone's daily life – not as a chosen one, but as part of the landscape. It's a modest form of recognition, but it was real.
A community of interest answers the same question through resonance. You are understood not because you are nearby, but because you feel the same way they do. It is a more intense experience. But it requires constant validation – you must continue to share the interest, or you are once again alone.
Neither of these formats is perfect. Both meet a human need – but in different ways and with different limitations.
Can They Be Combined?
I think about the people who manage to maintain both types of connections. Those who know their neighbors – not because they have to, but because they've found the time. Who participate in their neighborhood's life and, at the same time, attend a club where they are understood through a shared passion.
This takes effort. Because our brain is wired in such a way that when we have a rich community of interest, we stop feeling the need for anything else. Why get to know a neighbor if, in the evening, you have a meeting with people with whom you have so much in common?
But behind this choice lies a gradual narrowing of the world. When all your connections pass through the «we are alike» filter, the world begins to seem more understandable and safe, but also smaller. You see fewer shades of difference. You are surprised less often. You encounter fewer and fewer of those who might change you.
Psychologists talk about cognitive flexibility – the ability to accept different points of view, to adapt, and to think outside of familiar frameworks. It develops precisely through contact with what is different. And this is exactly what we lose when all our communities are built around similarity.
A Small Experiment
A few months ago, I started doing something very simple. I began to slow down near my mailbox. Not because there's anything interesting in it – there almost never is. Simply because it's a place in the building where neighbors sometimes appear.
I got to know the woman from the third floor. She is twenty years older than me, restores furniture, never uses social media, and sees the world in a completely different way than I do. We have no common interests in the obvious sense. But we talk – briefly, by the mailboxes, sometimes at the door – and each time I walk away with a small shift in my perspective.
She is not my community. She is simply my neighbor. And in that, there is something that I don't get from a club, a chat, or a meeting of like-minded people.
I think we should broaden our idea of what it means to belong to someone or something. Because right now, that word almost always means «to be understood, accepted, to share something common.» This is wonderful. But belonging is also about being noticed where you weren't expected. It's about being part of someone's life not because you fit certain criteria, but simply because you exist.
A neighborhood, in its best form, provided exactly this. Not deep understanding, not shared hobbies – but a quiet acknowledgment of one's existence. A glance in the elevator. A «Good morning» at the building entrance. A cup of sugar borrowed without explanation.
It may not sound like much. But when it's completely gone, its absence feels vast.
I am not calling for us to abandon communities of interest. They are real, they are important, they provide what a neighborhood never could – a deep resonance, the feeling of «I'm not the only one like this.» But perhaps it's worth sometimes looking up from our phones at the mailbox. To notice the person who lives on the other side of the wall. Not because it's an obligation – but because in this random proximity, there is something human, too.
Something that an algorithm cannot match, and a community cannot enroll you in.
