Throughout Root Shock, Dr. Fullilove keeps pointing out that after all the communities she mentions are forced apart almost no one finds that sense of community anywhere else. However, I don’t think that the new neighborhoods were as bad as one would think from the testimonies, but that the negative opinions stem from a comparison of the new place to the old one. I know that this example can’t really compare to the ones in Root Shock because these people all moved willingly, but I’m thinking back to a few years ago when we got two new neighbors at around the same time on my parent’s block. One neighbor was outgoing and made an effort to get to know the people on her block. The other one kept to herself and barely said hello to us. Today it feels like the friendly neighbor has been here forever, but we still refer to the other neighbor as “new”, because we know almost nothing about them. These two people live across the street from each other, but one managed to make herself a community, and the other lives on the same street as virtual strangers.