Should More of Us Be Moving to Live Near Friends?
我们是否应该更多地搬到朋友附近生活？

25 years ago, Toby Rush and his friend group at Kansas State University received some valuable advice from elder mentors that would shape their entire adult lives. “They gave us this thought that resonated so profoundly: Go ask any 80-year-old who’s lived a good life to reflect on what really mattered, and almost every single one of them will say it’s not the car, it’s not the house, not where I live, the job title, or the amount of money I made,” he recalls. “It’s people, the relationships. Their challenge to us was to invest often and deeply over a long period of time in the treasure we’re going to care the most about, and we’d be the wealthiest people in the world.” Today, he and his friends are all neighbors. In their enclave of the Kansas City metro area, they share a lawnmower, a pool, casual babysitting duties, a text thread for grocery borrowing dubbed “Who’s Got an Egg?,” and effortless swaths of their lives together that would likely have been impossible if not for an intentional effort to keep in close contact by remaining close by.
25 年前，Toby Rush 和他在堪萨斯州立大学的朋友们从年长的导师那里获得了一些宝贵的建议，这些建议塑造了他们整个成年生活。“他们给了我们一个深刻共鸣的想法：去问任何一个过得不错的 80 岁老人，反思什么是真正重要的，几乎每一个人都会说不是汽车，不是房子，不是我住在哪里，不是职位头衔，也不是我赚了多少钱，”他回忆道。“而是人，是关系。他们对我们的挑战是，长时间内经常而深入地投资于我们最关心的宝藏，这样我们就会成为世界上最富有的人。”今天，他和他的朋友们都是邻居。在他们位于堪萨斯城大都会区的社区里，他们共享割草机、游泳池、随意的保姆职责，一个名为“谁有鸡蛋？”的杂货借用短信群组，以及他们生活中轻松的片段，如果没有有意保持紧密联系的努力，这些可能都是不可能的。

The world has a way of pulling at friendships forged in youth. We form easy ties with kindergarten confidants, neighborhood playmates, and college pals, but relocating for jobs, love, whatever it may be (even when it’s just a short distance away) can sever the strongest of bonds, over years of increasingly dry text chains and overnight with cross-country moves that shake up the world you built together. It’s true that there’s a normalized-to-the-point-of-somewhat-inevitable distancing that happens in friendships with regular life changes, like in the case of the stereotypical buddy who drops out of their social circle the second they marry or have a kid. But studies suggest we’re in more perilous times than previous generations when it comes to sustaining friendships.
世界总是会影响年轻时建立的友谊。我们与幼儿园的知己、邻里的玩伴和大学的朋友建立了轻松的联系，但为了工作、爱情或其他原因（即使只是短距离的搬迁）而迁移，可能会割断最强的纽带，随着时间的推移，越来越干燥的短信链和跨国搬迁会动摇你们共同建立的世界。确实，随着生活的常规变化，友谊中会出现一种被正常化到有些不可避免的疏远，就像典型的朋友在结婚或生孩子的那一刻就脱离社交圈一样。但研究表明，在维持友谊方面，我们正处于比以往任何一代人都更危险的时期。

The loneliness epidemic  孤独症流行

For the unfamiliar, the “loneliness epidemic” is not simply a term thrown around on blogs and internet forums but a broader societal issue on which even the US Surgeon General has sounded off. The phenomenon seems to have descended slowly like a fog throughout the late 2010s as our lives became increasingly digital and siloed. It’s also being called a friendship recession. As one might expect, the COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse. Nearly 1 in 10 Americans reported having lost touch with most of their friends throughout COVID, per a 2021 study.
对于不熟悉的人来说，“孤独流行病”不仅仅是一个在博客和互联网论坛上随意提及的术语，而是一个更广泛的社会问题，甚至美国外科医生总监对此也发出了警告。这个现象似乎在 2010 年代末期缓慢降临，就像一层雾霭，随着我们的生活变得越来越数字化和孤立。它也被称为友谊衰退。正如人们所预料的那样，COVID-19 大流行使情况变得更糟。根据 2021 年的一项研究，近 10%的美国人报告称在 COVID 期间与大多数朋友失去了联系。

Rush and his friend group felt that routine deterioration at work in the time after college when everyone starts to scatter; he moved to Houston for a few years, one friend went to Wichita, and another decamped to DC. It was the late ’90s, long before Zooms and group chats, and the friends reconvened a few times a year before concluding it simply wasn’t enough. “We were having these conversations, like: ‘Guys, this is just not sustainable. We’ll always be friends, but if we really want to invest and know each other deeply, we got to be in the same city,’” he remembers. “So within probably a nine-month period, three or four of us moved back to Kansas City. And it was awesome.”
拉什和他的朋友们感到，在大学毕业后，大家开始四散时，工作中的常规关系开始恶化；他在休斯顿住了几年，一个朋友去了威奇托，另一个则搬到了华盛顿特区。那是 90 年代末，早于 Zoom 和群聊的时代，朋友们每年聚会几次，但最终得出结论，这根本不够。“我们在进行这样的对话，比如：‘伙计们，这样下去是不可持续的。我们会永远是朋友，但如果我们真的想投入并深入了解彼此，我们必须在同一个城市，’”他回忆道。“所以在大约九个月的时间里，我们三四个又搬回了堪萨斯城。这太棒了。”

The tight proximity fortified their ties over a couple of years. And then came the children. When their individual lives were overtaken by little humans with big demands on their time, Rush and his friends sensed that familiar erosion on the horizon. “We could see the trajectory that not even in the too distant future, we were going to have to schedule our friendships, and that didn’t feel right,” he says. At first, the concept of stepping up their commitment by moving even closer—within walking distance of each other—sounded too dreamy to be a real possibility. But it would make theirs as uncomplicated as college campus friendships are, when you can bump into your besties as you leave the dorms and catch up on the way to class. So, 18 years ago, he and his buddy bought homes on either side of their other friend. “When you literally see each other as you’re pulling in your driveway, or mowing your lawn, or playing with your kids in the front yard, to walk across the street is a very achievable friction point,” Rush says of the arrangement.
紧密的邻近关系在几年内巩固了他们的联系。然后孩子们来了。当他们的个人生活被对时间有巨大需求的小人类所占据时，Rush 和他的朋友们感受到了一种熟悉的侵蚀在地平线上。“我们可以看到，甚至在不远的将来，我们将不得不安排我们的友谊，这感觉不对，”他说。起初，搬得更近——在彼此步行距离内——以增强他们的承诺的概念听起来太梦幻，似乎不可能实现。但这会让他们的友谊变得像大学校园的友谊一样简单，当你可以在离开宿舍时偶遇你的好友，并在去上课的路上聊聊。因此，18 年前，他和他的朋友在他们另一个朋友的两侧买了房子。“当你在开车进车道、割草或在前院和孩子们玩耍时，真的能看到彼此，走过街道是一个非常可实现的摩擦点，”Rush 谈到这种安排时说。

In terms of the real estate, the acquisition of properties has been smooth. “It’s gotten to the point now where a neighbor will come and say, ‘Hey, we’re looking at moving and would rather not get a realtor. We know you like to buy the houses, would you guys want to buy our house?’ And we’re like, ‘Sure!’ We’ll do what a realtor would do and find a bunch of comps and settle on [a price], but no one pays realtor fees and it’s very amicable.” 14 houses are now in the fold, filled with friends, friends of friends, and their families. Rush’s children and their neighborhood peers have essentially been raised together—he estimates that number at 34 or 35 kids, many of whom are all grown up now. The deep investment in friendship modeled by their parents is a value that is not lost on the generations that have followed.
在房地产方面，物业的收购进展顺利。“现在的情况是，邻居会过来问，‘嘿，我们在考虑搬家，不想找房地产经纪人。我们知道你们喜欢买房子，你们想买我们的房子吗？’我们会说，‘当然！’我们会做房地产经纪人会做的事情，找一些比较房源并确定一个价格，但没有人支付房地产经纪人的费用，而且这非常友好。” 现在已经有 14 栋房子在这个圈子里，里面住着朋友、朋友的朋友和他们的家人。拉什的孩子和他们的邻居基本上是一起长大的——他估计这个数字在 34 或 35 个孩子之间，其中许多人现在都已经长大。父母所展现出的对友谊的深度投资是后代所珍视的价值。

“All they’ve ever known is families that have open doors,” Rush explains. “My son was one of the oldest. There are three his age in the neighborhood and they’ve all come back and said, ‘This isn’t normal, is it?’ My son was recently hanging out with another one of my friends—one of the cool things is when you get to mentor your friends’ kids—and my friend Scott asked him about his fears at this point in his life. He responded really authentically, ‘I’m afraid I won’t have as good of friends as my dad, you, and the others.’ Your kids are going to value what you value, so it was very rewarding for me to hear my kid, unprompted, say, ‘I see that Dad and Mom value these relationships and these friends. And I want that.’”
“他们所知道的就是有开放门的家庭，”Rush 解释道。“我儿子是年纪最大的之一。邻里里有三个和他同龄的人，他们都回来问，‘这不正常，对吧？’我儿子最近和我另一个朋友在一起——其中一个很酷的事情就是当你能指导你朋友的孩子——我朋友 Scott 问他在这个阶段生活中的恐惧。他非常真实地回答说，‘我害怕我不会像我爸爸、你和其他人那样有好朋友。’你的孩子会重视你重视的东西，所以听到我的孩子自发地说，‘我看到爸爸和妈妈重视这些关系和这些朋友。我也想要那样。’’”

Build your own “MiniHood”
建立你自己的“MiniHood”

Oakland-based founder Phil Levin placed the value of friendship pretty high on his own list. About four years into intentionally residing in community with his friends on a compound they named Radish, he launched Live Near Friends in 2023 to spread the gospel. The online platform is geared toward helping interested parties arrange to live within a five or 10 minute walk of each other, which Levin notes is “a very common fantasy” nowadays. He hopes to be the catalyst that coaxes those fantasies out of the group chat into the real world of real estate.
位于奥克兰的创始人 Phil Levin 将友谊的价值放在了自己清单的很高位置。在与朋友们有意居住在他们命名为 Radish 的社区大约四年后，他于 2023 年推出了 Live Near Friends，以传播这一理念。这个在线平台旨在帮助有兴趣的人安排在彼此五到十分钟步行距离内居住，Levin 指出，这在如今是“一个非常普遍的幻想”。他希望成为催化剂，将这些幻想从群聊中引导到现实的房地产世界中。

An illustrated layout of the spread at Levin’s Radish compound.
Levin 的 Radish 综合体的插图布局。

Courtesy of Phil Levin
由 Phil Levin 提供

The first offering of Live Near Friends is called MiniHood, which Levin likens to a multiplayer version of Zillow. “You set a radius inside of which you’re trying to get everyone to move, so you’re able to coordinate with them, view homes—some people want to rent, some people want to buy, it allows you to [factor in] both,” he says. The other option is Hot Friend Compounds, which helps friends seeking real estate set up for multiple occupants on a single plot. “This is targeted to people that actually want to co-buy and own a property together,” Levin explains. “This might look like duplexes, triplexes, homes with granny flats, ADUs. There’s real estate out there in the wild for multiple occupants. You have your apartment, I have my apartment, but they’re right next to each other and maybe we share a yard.”
Live Near Friends 的第一个产品叫做 MiniHood，Levin 将其比作 Zillow 的多人版本。“你设定一个半径，试图让每个人都搬到这个范围内，这样你就可以与他们协调，查看房屋——有些人想租，有些人想买，这让你可以同时考虑这两者，”他说。另一个选项是 Hot Friend Compounds，它帮助寻求房地产的朋友在一个地块上为多个居住者设置。“这针对的是那些实际上想共同购买和拥有财产的人，”Levin 解释道。“这可能看起来像是双拼房、三拼房、带有祖母公寓的房屋、ADU。市场上有适合多个居住者的房地产。你有你的公寓，我有我的公寓，但它们就在彼此旁边，也许我们共享一个院子。”

Levin’s 20 closest friends are, because of Radish, his closest friends by physical proximity. Most of them have dinner together six days a week. They put in a big Instacart order every few days and split the cost of food. Levin basically doesn’t cook anymore, finding that his talents are better suited to the cleanup aspect of things. It’s not been hard for others to see the appeal of such a setup. “I think why we’re seeing a lot of interest in [Live Near Friends], partly, is the loneliness epidemic,” Levin explains. “I’ve heard it called the National Deficit of Hanging Out—people just not spending time together. The amount of coordination and logistics to actually spend time with people these days is a lot. But I think, on the other side of it, people are looking for better ways to start families and raise kids. Traditionally, this has been done with the support of a community. I think it’s a really hard thing to do alone.”
Levin 的 20 个最亲密的朋友，因为 Radish，他们在物理上是他最亲近的朋友。他们大多数人每周六天一起吃晚餐。他们每隔几天就会下一个大 Instacart 订单，并分摊食物费用。Levin 基本上不再做饭，发现自己更适合做清理工作。其他人看到这种安排的吸引力并不困难。“我认为我们看到很多人对[Live Near Friends]感兴趣，部分原因是孤独的流行，”Levin 解释道。“我听说过它被称为国家聚会赤字——人们就是不花时间在一起。如今，实际上花时间与人相处所需的协调和后勤工作非常多。但我认为，从另一方面来看，人们正在寻找更好的方式来组建家庭和养育孩子。传统上，这都是在社区的支持下进行的。我认为独自完成这件事真的很困难。”

The alfresco dining setup at Radish.
Radish 的户外用餐设置。

Photo: Courtesy of Phil Levin
照片：由 Phil Levin 提供

Kids (or no kids) in community
社区中的孩子（或没有孩子）

One of the initial motivators that pushed Levin to convince his friends to live nearby has been the abundant access to childcare. “My wife and I were trying to create the best home for ourselves, the home that we want to have kids [in], and we were thinking, ‘What’s the most important thing? That we’re around people that will support us,’” he insists. “We can—without planning—hand someone a baby monitor and go out every single night without a babysitter, which is a radically different lifestyle than that of most new parents. It’s not something that cost us a lot of money, just coordination.”
推动莱文说服他的朋友们住得近一些的初衷之一是能够获得丰富的育儿支持。“我和我的妻子试图为自己创造一个最好的家，一个我们想要在其中养育孩子的家，我们在想，‘最重要的是什么？就是我们身边有能够支持我们的人，’”他坚持说。“我们可以——不需要计划——把婴儿监视器递给某人，每晚都出去，而不需要保姆，这与大多数新父母的生活方式截然不同。这并不是花费我们很多钱，只是协调而已。”

Relying only on our standard social unit, the nuclear family, can feel isolating for many people. Levin co-writes a blog with Gillian Morris called Supernuclear, which explores an expansion of that classic lens on domestic life via profiles on co-living houses and communities. Morris, who has resided in a number of co-living arrangements in the Bay Area and NYC, and currently runs a co-living space in Puerto Rico, is no stranger to discussions about the loneliness epidemic. She worries that an emphasis on an individualistic, independent ideal is pulling snags in a social fabric that benefits all parties mutually. In fact, she’s seen this resistance firsthand when folks in her co-living spaces express hesitance about accepting babysitting help pro-bono. “There’s this sense that we must do everything ourselves, and I actually think it’s a beautiful thing to open yourself up to help and to not turn it down when it’s offered,” Morris says. “But people just need to get over that hump.”
仅依靠我们标准的社会单位——核心家庭，对许多人来说可能会感到孤立。Levin 与 Gillian Morris 共同撰写了一篇名为 Supernuclear 的博客，探讨通过对共同生活房屋和社区的介绍，扩展这一经典的家庭生活视角。Morris 曾在旧金山湾区和纽约市的多个共同生活安排中居住，目前在波多黎各经营一个共同生活空间，她对孤独症流行的讨论并不陌生。她担心，强调个人主义和独立理想正在撕裂一种对所有人都有益的社会结构。事实上，当她的共同生活空间中的人们对接受无偿的保姆帮助表示犹豫时，她亲眼目睹了这种抵触。“人们有一种必须自己做所有事情的感觉，而我实际上认为，敞开心扉接受帮助，并在提供帮助时不拒绝，这是件美好的事情，”Morris 说。“但人们只需要克服这个障碍。”

For UK-based journalist Rose Stokes, doing motherhood alongside her longtime best friend Maddie was a huge influence on the decision to trade in the hustle and bustle of London for slower-paced Bath, England. “Your friendships are just as important, if not more so, than your romantic relationships. So why wouldn’t I invest in a relationship that’s sustained me my entire life?” she says. “Why wouldn’t I want to move to support that relationship?”
对于英国记者罗斯·斯托克斯来说，与她的老朋友玛迪一起做母亲对她决定放弃伦敦的喧嚣，选择节奏较慢的英格兰巴斯产生了巨大影响。她说：“你的友谊同样重要，甚至比你的浪漫关系更重要。那么我为什么不投资于一段支撑我一生的关系呢？我为什么不想搬去支持这段关系呢？”

Even a three hours’ drive or so away, Stokes and her best friend never grew apart. They stayed in touch via check-ins and goodnight texts, cheering each other from the sidelines as they celebrated major events and life updates. But now, as they each raise two children in the countryside, she echoes Rush’s point about the total lack of friction in coming together. “It’s just so effortless,” she says of the Bath era of her friendship with Maddie. “When you are texting someone who’s not [living] in your orbit, you have to explain loads of context. Now, I hear much more about the kind of banal details and the day-to-day. It creates a stronger sense of intimacy because it enables me to see the fullness of her life rather than just the things that she felt made the headlines.”
即使相距大约三个小时的车程，Stokes 和她最好的朋友也从未疏远。她们通过签到和晚安短信保持联系，在庆祝重大事件和生活更新时相互加油。但现在，当她们各自在乡村抚养两个孩子时，她呼应了 Rush 关于聚会时完全没有摩擦的观点。“这真是太轻松了，”她谈到与 Maddie 的友谊在 Bath 时期时说。“当你在给一个不在你生活圈子里的人发短信时，你必须解释很多背景信息。现在，我听到的更多是那些平凡的细节和日常生活。这创造了一种更强的亲密感，因为它让我能够看到她生活的全貌，而不仅仅是她觉得值得报道的事情。”

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Having a network to lean on while raising children is an obvious selling point of living near friends. But the community that grows out of raising a kid—a circle of parents and guardians that you befriend by virtue of having a common daycare, school, and playdates or sports to coordinate—can also form through being neighbors with your best buddies. During the pandemic, Paris Smith and her partner left Brooklyn for Twin Cities, Minnesota, where a number of their pals had recently relocated, in large part “because of the fact that we are child-free adults,” she says. Her partner’s family lives about an hour away from the area, which was another incentive, but the friendship component was “critical.”
在养育孩子的过程中，有一个可以依靠的网络显然是与朋友住得近的一个重要卖点。但是，养育孩子所形成的社区——一群因共同的日托、学校以及协调的游戏约会或运动而结交的父母和监护人——也可以通过与最好的朋友做邻居而形成。在疫情期间，巴黎·史密斯和她的伴侣离开了布鲁克林，前往明尼苏达州的双子城，许多他们的朋友最近也搬到了那里，主要是“因为我们是没有孩子的成年人，”她说。她伴侣的家人住在离该地区大约一个小时的地方，这也是另一个激励因素，但友谊的成分是“至关重要的。”

“My family is based in New Orleans. I don’t know anybody else in New Orleans, and so as much as I love my family and as much as my partner and I love his family, the family wasn’t enough for us,” Smith explains. “We’re very independent and social, and so I think we would be lonely in an environment where we didn’t have a lot of friends. It isn’t enough to sustain my personal social battery and fulfillment; I gain a lot of joy out of being with my friends and spending time with them and their families and being spontaneous about how we hang out. I don’t think there would’ve been a reason for us to leave New York without having all of those factors come together.”
“我的家人住在新奥尔良。我在新奥尔良不认识其他人，所以尽管我爱我的家人，尽管我和我的伴侣也爱他的家人，但仅仅有家人对我们来说是不够的，”史密斯解释道。“我们非常独立和社交，所以我认为如果我们身处一个没有很多朋友的环境中，我们会感到孤独。这不足以维持我个人的社交能量和满足感；我从与朋友在一起、与他们及其家人共度时光以及随意安排我们的聚会中获得了很多快乐。我认为如果没有这些因素的结合，我们就没有理由离开纽约。”

Smith and her partner’s Brooklyn-based buddies flocked to Minneapolis and St. Paul over the course of about seven years, either for work, grad school, jobs, or simply to return to their Midwestern roots. “We suddenly had this group of six or seven people that we had known for many years that were all in this bubble,” she says. “Here was this little oasis where a lot of folks are within walking distance to each other and have yards and can all gather and hang out. We were able to find a house that is literally two blocks down the same street as one of our really good friends. We’re a five-minute walk to another couple that we’re friends with, and then a seven-minute walk to another couple we’re friends with. We all live along the same three streets. And in this time, we’ve recruited friends from Colorado to come join us.
史密斯和她伴侣在布鲁克林的朋友们在大约七年的时间里涌向明尼阿波利斯和圣保罗，或是为了工作、研究生院、找工作，或者只是为了回归他们的中西部根源。“我们突然有了这个六七个人的团体，我们认识了很多年，大家都在这个小圈子里，”她说。“这里是一个小绿洲，很多人都在步行距离之内，有院子，可以聚在一起闲逛。我们找到了一栋房子，实际上就在我们一个非常好的朋友的街上，距离仅有两个街区。我们距离另一个朋友的家步行五分钟，距离另一个朋友的家步行七分钟。我们都住在同三条街上。在这段时间里，我们还招募了来自科罗拉多的朋友来加入我们。”

Illustration: Lizzie Soufleris
插图：Lizzie Soufleris

Recruiting your besties  招募你的好友

This type of residential recruitment is a full-time job for Priya Rose. “Fractal is my main hustle,” she says of her Brooklyn-based network, which she launched shortly after the pandemic. “It’s a social scene with many nodes. It started as a bunch of apartments, all in the same building, of friends who just hung out all the time, did projects all the time, worked out together, et cetera. Now, it’s a lot of things. We have something called Fractal University, which is basically us teaching each other classes from our living rooms. And then there’s all these different co-living houses that are all around New York now. Each of those is their own social center, in some ways.” Rose recently moved from her spot at the original Fractal building to Fractal 2, which has a slightly more family-friendly bent to it—an even more ideal setting for her after having a baby this year.
这种住宅招募对 Priya Rose 来说是一份全职工作。“Fractal 是我的主要工作，”她谈到她在布鲁克林建立的网络时说，这个网络是在疫情后不久启动的。“这是一个有许多节点的社交场景。它最初是一些朋友们住在同一栋楼里的公寓，大家总是聚在一起，做项目，一起锻炼等等。现在，它变成了很多东西。我们有一个叫 Fractal University 的项目，基本上是我们在自己的客厅里互相授课。然后现在纽约周围还有许多不同的共同生活房屋。每一个都在某种程度上是自己的社交中心。”Rose 最近从原来的 Fractal 大楼搬到了 Fractal 2，这里对家庭更友好——在她今年生了孩子后，这里是一个更理想的环境。

Similar to Morris, Rose previously lived in the Bay Area, where the co-living scene is abuzz. In 2021, after moving into a three-bedroom New York apartment with friends, a vacancy in the unit across the hall presented an opportunity. “We happened to have another friend who was trying to move from San Francisco to New York at the time, so we helped her sign that lease. It was a four-bedroom, so we helped her fill those rooms. At that point, it was like Friends. We would just leave our doors unlocked and go between them.” So, Rose dug deeper and deeper into organizing the community over the next few years. She’s gone semi-viral singing the praises of living near friends and has sold numerous pals on the lifestyle. Like Rush, Stokes, and Smith, she points out the natural ease of linking up to hang out when the need to “make plans” is replaced by casually bumping into each other.
与莫里斯类似，罗斯之前住在湾区，那里的共享生活场景非常活跃。2021 年，在与朋友们搬进一间三卧室的纽约公寓后，隔壁单元的空缺提供了一个机会。“我们恰好有另一个朋友当时正试图从旧金山搬到纽约，所以我们帮她签了那份租约。那是一个四卧室的公寓，我们帮她填满了那些房间。那时，就像《老友记》。我们会把门留 unlocked，随意走动。”因此，罗斯在接下来的几年里更加深入地组织社区。她因赞美与朋友们住得近而半走红，并说服了许多朋友接受这种生活方式。像拉什、斯托克斯和史密斯一样，她指出，当“制定计划”的需要被随意碰面所取代时，聚会的自然轻松感。

“The sense of serendipity [is a major benefit],” Rose says. “Before I was in this situation, it was a lot of, ‘Let’s get coffee next Tuesday at 7:00.’ Now that’s just way less common. It feels a lot more like being in school. You just can spontaneously hang out with people… As an adult, there’s a lot of drudgery—you go to the grocery store, you do your laundry. But for the last multiple years, I always go to the grocery store with a friend.”
“‘意外的惊喜感[是一个主要好处]，’罗斯说。‘在我处于这种情况之前，很多时候都是，‘我们下周二 7 点去喝咖啡。’现在这种情况就少得多了。感觉更像是在上学。你可以和人们自发地聚在一起……作为成年人，生活中有很多繁琐的事情——你去杂货店，你洗衣服。但在过去的几年里，我总是和朋友一起去杂货店。’”

Shop Open Door  商店开放门

Love celebrity homes? Shop some of our favorites from Sofía Vergara, Sienna Miller and more.
喜欢名人住宅吗？来看看我们最喜欢的来自 Sofía Vergara、Sienna Miller 等的作品。

SHOP THE EDIT  购买精选商品

According to Rose, the Fractal organization has no religious or ideological binding agent beyond simply a desire to maximize time spent around pals. Levin, too, laughs off comparisons to a commune tinged with the darkness of every negative commune stereotype—though by definition, he admits that Radish kind of fits. “They are [communes], so part of that’s true,” he says of such co-living arrangements. “But it’s an urban commune. Most of us have great jobs and we all have private space. We have our own homes, which are just homes near each other rather than homes near strangers.”
根据罗斯的说法，Fractal 组织没有宗教或意识形态的约束，仅仅是希望最大化与朋友相处的时间。莱文也对与每个负面公社刻板印象相关的公社比较嗤之以鼻——尽管他承认，从定义上讲，Radish 确实有点符合。“它们是[公社]，所以部分是正确的，”他谈到这种共同生活安排时说。“但这是一个城市公社。我们大多数人都有很好的工作，我们都有私人空间。我们有自己的家，这些家只是彼此靠近的家，而不是靠近陌生人的家。”

Levin isn’t promising a perfect world through Live Near Friends. “No one’s trying to create utopia here,” he insists. “What this is going to achieve is just making your life feel 30% easier and 30% more supported. It doesn’t solve the world’s problems, that’s not the claim. It’s a better way to live, alongside a bunch of people that [you] think really matter, especially in busy, hard, or lonely periods.”
Levin 并没有通过 Live Near Friends 承诺一个完美的世界。“没有人试图在这里创造乌托邦，”他坚持说。“这将实现的只是让你的生活感觉轻松 30%和得到 30%的支持。它并不能解决世界的问题，这不是我们的主张。这是一种更好的生活方式，和一群你认为真的重要的人一起生活，尤其是在忙碌、艰难或孤独的时期。”

The good and bad times of life will happen anywhere, but the prospect of living in walking distance of your best friends certainly seems…well, maybe just a little bit utopian? “It’s like you have your own trusted network of folks that can assist and provide support to one another—whether that’s a folding table or our friends that live seven minutes away watching our dog this weekend,” Smith adds. “It is a real extended family in a way that is beautiful to see. I kind of wish it for everyone.”
生活中的好时光和坏时光会在任何地方发生，但住在离你最好的朋友步行距离内的前景确实看起来……嗯，也许只是有一点乌托邦？“就像你拥有自己的可信网络，可以相互帮助和提供支持——无论是折叠桌，还是我们住在七分钟路程的朋友这个周末帮我们看狗，”史密斯补充道。“这在某种程度上是真正的大家庭，看到这一点是美好的。我有点希望每个人都能拥有这种生活。”