How Neighbors Make a Neighborhood

When I moved to Mueller in 2008, there weren't very many of us. I shared more about those early days in Mueller Life in the Beginning.

We had a handful of completed residential streets, some parks beginning to take shape and a whole lot of construction.

What we had from the very beginning was a sense of community.

I've always compared those early years to freshman year in a college dorm. Everybody was new, everybody was meeting everybody else, and we were all figuring out this new place together.

Nearly 18 years later, Mueller is a very different neighborhood. There are thousands of homes, restaurants, businesses, schools and parks. Some people have lived here since the beginning. Others moved in last week.

One of the most important things about Mueller hasn't changed, though. The neighborhood was designed to bring people together, and I've written before about What Living in Mueller Taught Me About Neighborhood Design. Design can only open the door. The neighbors are the ones who walk through it.

A Neighborhood Doesn't Come With Traditions

When we first moved in, there wasn't a long list of annual neighborhood traditions to look forward to. We had to create them.

People organized block parties and holiday celebrations. We gathered at the parks and spent evenings sitting outside with neighbors, getting to know one another and finding any excuse to get together.

Families with young children started trading homemade babysitting vouchers. My husband, Mike, became Uncle Mike to a lot of those kids. As more people moved in, those relationships grew into something bigger.

The Mueller Neighborhood Association was founded in 2008, the same year I moved here. Over time, the association and its volunteers helped establish and sustain many of the events that are now part of Mueller's identity.

Today, you might take your kids to Eggstravaganza, watch the Fourth of July Parade, celebrate Juneteenth or browse the Neighborhood Yard Sale without thinking too much about how those events came to be.

None of them happens automatically. Somebody has to have the idea, and then somebody has to organize it and keep it going year after year.

Sometimes You Have to Ask for What You Want

One of my favorite things about early Mueller was how invested residents were in what the neighborhood would become.

We weren't just waiting for businesses and gathering spaces to appear. We were paying attention to the plans, asking questions and making our opinions known.

For example, there was a time when residents couldn't freely use the historic airport hangar. People saw the potential for that space to become a gathering place for the community, and they advocated for greater access.

Residents were also vocal about the businesses they wanted to see in Mueller. We organized a group outing to the original Kerbey Lane Cafe to show just how many of us would love to have one in our neighborhood.

I wouldn't claim we single-handedly convinced them to open a Mueller location. We certainly made our enthusiasm known.

That attitude mattered. We cared about what was happening beyond our own front doors.

Community Takes Work, Even When the Neighborhood Is Finished

These days, Mueller has most of the physical ingredients of a great neighborhood.

Sidewalks and trails connect different parts of the community. Our parks and public spaces were designed for gathering, and our businesses and restaurants give people places to spend time together.

Having those spaces doesn't guarantee that people will use them to build relationships. That still takes effort.

I've been involved with the Mueller Neighborhood Association over the years, including serving as chair, and I've seen how much work goes into creating opportunities for neighbors to connect.

The events themselves might last a few hours. The planning can take months.

There are volunteers to recruit, permits and logistics to coordinate, sponsors to find and a hundred little details that most people attending will never have to think about, which I would argue is exactly how it should be.

You should be able to bring your family to a neighborhood celebration, have a great time and go home without worrying about who arranged the tables or made sure there were enough volunteers.

Our neighbors did all of that.

Making 16,000 Feel Like 200

I recently read a story on eventsinmueller about Lynn Berry, the Mueller Neighborhood Association's volunteer Events Chair.

One of Lynn's goals really stuck with me. She wants Mueller's events to feel homegrown and personal, almost like we're still a community of 200 people instead of roughly 16,000. I love that idea.

In the beginning, Mueller really did feel like a tiny neighborhood where everybody knew everybody. We're never going to know every person living here today, but we can still create opportunities for people to feel connected.

Lynn and the MNA's volunteers are doing that through longtime traditions like Eggstravaganza and the Fourth of July Parade, along with newer events like Juneteenth @ Mueller.

She's also thinking about how those events can continue long after her time as Events Chair, building plans and processes that future volunteers can use. People don't always see that part of community building, and it matters more than most of us realize.

A great tradition shouldn't depend on one person doing all the work forever. It should be something neighbors can keep improving and eventually hand to the next group.

You Don't Have to Organize a Parade

Not everybody has the time or interest to serve on a committee or organize a neighborhood festival. And that's okay.

There are plenty of smaller ways to contribute to the kind of community you want to live in. You can attend a neighborhood association meeting or volunteer for a couple of hours at an event. You can support a neighborhood fundraiser. You can get to know the people who live on your street, or just invite a few neighbors over. Sometimes “because it’s Tuesday” is a perfectly valid reason to spark up a conversation.

Some of my favorite memories from early Mueller weren't big organized events. They were ordinary evenings sitting outside with people who happened to live nearby.

Somebody made the effort to bring people together, and somebody else said yes.

The Neighborhood Is Never Really Finished

When I moved to Mueller, we were all watching the construction. Every new street, park, restaurant and building was another sign that the neighborhood was getting closer to what we'd been promised. Today, most of that construction is behind us.

Building a neighborhood never really ends, though. The physical development might be complete, but the community keeps changing.

New neighbors arrive. Kids grow up. Some people move away, and others simply move to a different home here in Mueller as their lives change, something I wrote about in One Neighborhood for Every Chapter of Life. Traditions evolve, and new ones begin.

The people who started Mueller's earliest gatherings aren't necessarily the ones organizing today's events. That's a good thing. It means the community has taken on a life of its own.

I love the neighborhood Mueller has become. I love the parks, the trails, the restaurants and all the conveniences that weren't here when I first moved in.

But when I think about what has made this place special to me for nearly 18 years, the buildings aren't what come to mind first, the people are. You can design a neighborhood and build every home on every street. It still takes neighbors to make it a community.