Indians in Gated Communities Meet Their Neighbors Online

Indians in Gated Communities Meet Their Neighbors Online

June 12th, 2012

So it goes…

Via: Washington Post:

Sumit Jain has fond memories of his childhood in a small town where everybody knew everybody. But as a young man, he moved to a big city for work and began living in an apartment building. Jain said he soon missed feeling connected to a community.

That sense of loss led him to create Commonfloor.com, a “neighborhood portal� for Indians whose lifestyles have changed with this nation’s economic transformation but who still crave neighborhood life. A sort of hyper-local version of Facebook, Commonfloor creates online communities for the half a million users in 30,000 apartment buildings across 100 cities it has attracted so far.

“Something fundamental is changing among urban Indians today,� said Jain, 27, a software engineer and co-founder of the start-up in the southern city of Bangalore. “We no longer know who our next-door neighbor is, we don’t speak to each other in the elevators and we cannot knock on the neighbor’s door just to say hello without making them wary.�

As India’s economy modernizes, millions of young people are leaving their parents’ homes to find work, and many of them are moving into apartment complexes in the city. These fortress-like gated communities — with uniformed security guards and surveillance cameras — are designed to keep strangers out. But neighborly ties are rare as residents adjust to fast-paced lives, long commutes and access to an abundance of technology.

One Response to “Indians in Gated Communities Meet Their Neighbors Online”

  1. apethought Says:

    June 12th, 2012 at 6:42 pm

    Burbclaves. Right on schedule.

<!– AD CAN GO HERE

Buy gold online - quickly, safely and at low prices

END: AD CAN GO HERE –>

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Views: 0

You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Premium WordPress Themes | Thanks to Themes Gallery, Bromoney and Wordpress Themes