Good fences, worse neighbors
Privacy is fine. Isolation isn't. There's a difference.
The white picket fence didn't just mark a property line. It said hello.
Waist-high, gap-filled, painted every few summers—you could see through it, see over it, see the neighbor on the other side well enough that a wave came naturally. It drew a boundary without building a wall.
That fence is nearly gone. Cedar and vinyl have replaced it—six feet, eight feet, solid and sealed. It's happening everywhere, not just here.
Why it matters: The best things that have happened in this community—the crosswalks, the cleanups, the corridors people actually love—started with neighbors who could find each other. A parish that walls itself off, one fence at a time, makes that harder to pull off.
What we're losing: The neighborhoods people love most here were designed when the porch faced the street on purpose. You didn't have to work to know your neighbors. The space between you did it.
Newer developments—Willow Grove, Rouzan and Pointe-Marie—understood that. Front porches. Sidewalks that connect somewhere. Shared green space. Pointe-Marie even has white picket fences. These are deliberate bets that neighbors who can see each other will actually become neighbors.
It works. Julie Gerdes Becnel stopped at a neighbor's door on Halloween and asked a question. Sixteen months later, Baton Rouge had a funded crosswalk project on Perkins Road. That conversation happened on a front porch. Not behind a privacy fence.
Meanwhile, a Riverbend homeowner recently fought his HOA for the right to go taller than the six-foot standard. He had his reasons. He won.
Nobody's wrong for wanting a private yard. The white picket fence gave you that. You still knew your neighbor's name.
The bottom line: The fence was never naïve. It was an act of faith—a small declaration that the world on the other side of the property line was worth knowing. Some people are still building it that way. That's reason to celebrate.
