It seems the function of a fence is changing and it does nothing for public amenity or to foster a sense of neighbourliness and community.
Attached garages and an over-reliance on cars just compound the problem. Exit your house via the garage, drive out your driveway, accelerate off down the street - no need to ever encounter your neighbours.
In certain parts of our big cities, people's homes are near fortified, and fence-building can become a form of aggression, with some going to extreme lengths, seemingly primarily to spite their neighbours.
May Whanganui never become like parts of Auckland, where people communicate with neighbours by exchanging lawyers' letters. The only winners in that scenario are lawyers.
It's odd that people can be so obsessed with creating an illusion of privacy on a physical level, even as they blithely hand over important personal data through their online browsing habits and use of social media.
There are huge benefits to creating at least cordial relations with those we live among. It may just be at the level of saying "Hi" as you pass, commenting on the garden or the weather or how the puppy has grown. (Gardens and dogs are a terrific way to start conversations with strangers.)
With mutual goodwill, those exchanges may become warmer. You learn names, interests, discover things you have in common. You might learn useful information about the neighbourhood or your own property from those who have lived there longer.
My neighbours are people I can rely on to feed the cat for a night, whose mail I collect and fish I feed when they go away, whose driveway I sweep, and between whom garden produce is gifted during times of abundance.
All of this creates a sense of safety and comfort that I highly value.
Crucially, such relationships produce a bank of goodwill to draw on when friction might otherwise arise. It could be easy to work yourself into a tizz about revving cars, barking dogs or hedges that don't get pruned if the "fault" lies with strangers.
But you naturally cut people some slack when you know them and something about them and their circumstances. That makes it harder to turn people into objects existing solely as obstacles to your happiness and easier to start a friendly conversation about what might be bothering you, and to come up with a plan together to deal with a shade-throwing tree or overgrown hedges. Or unwanted bees in your yard.
Sometimes what is called for is simply being graceful in the face of inconvenience.
But we're bombarded with corporate advertising's messages about how we "deserve" luxuries; that we can have whatever we want; that we can have it now; that consequences like costs can be postponed.
Such ideas leach into our expectations of the social spheres of our lives, too. Compromise and forbearance recede when people feel entitled and when they vest their identity in material possessions and status.
As the wild weather is so painfully reminding us, we're not actually in control of much that happens to us. We can't fend off the big sufferings of ageing, sickness and death with positive affirmations. But we always have a choice about how we respond to difficulties that arise.
A big danger, like the flood we so narrowly escaped, can help us focus on what is really important, and to lessen our grip on petty complaints.
And Whanganui can feel some collective satisfaction about how we rose to the challenge this month.
I felt deep gratitude and appreciation as I saw how families, friends, neighbours - and complete strangers - rallied to support each other in anticipation of another damaging flood.
I'm even more grateful that it didn't come to pass. Welcome home, low-lying neighbours.
-Mending Walls: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/mending-wall
-Rachel Rose is a writer, gardener, fermenter and fomenter.
