I just got back from a walk around my neighborhood comparing my house with my neighbors. I bought in this neighborhood a few years ago because it was well-planned, clean, and had modest but distinct homes. Plus, it was anchored by a golf course and several lakes. Although most of the home buyers had moved further out into the suburbs, I knew this neighborhood was ripe for a revival, and I wanted to lead the way.

This is the pipe dream of any creative intown hipster, I know. Take an older, maybe misunderstood neighborhood. Give it paint, time, passion, and charm, and before you know it, you live in the hottest neighborhood in town. I lived to see it happen over and over in Atlanta.

My plans to save the neighborhood were postponed by the demands at work. For the first year or so of owning the house, I could barely find the time to keep the front of my house tidy. I’m sure some of my neighbors were surprised to find my routinely trimmed my bushes with a flashlight in between my teeth.

Three years after I moved in, and after a solid month of intense landscaping, the front of my house looks terrific. It’s not finished, but it looks twice as nice as it did before. Everyone who comes by comments on how big and pretty it looks. They usually stammer over their words, first embarrassed that they never noticed before. Then a few moments later, they realize the house HAS changed since their last visit, and that’s when they give me a compliment. This happens every time someone comes over my house. My landscaping is a regular topic of conversation. I love it!

The revitalization has begun! Actually, no, it hasn’t. The only signs that I have sparked “revitalization” is one neighbor around the corner asked me where I got the metal arch that stretches up and over the gate to my backyard. “My wife likes it and wants me to get one.” Cool. My other neighbor, a professional landscape designer, commented that, “It might be time for me to get goin’ on my own house.” I don’t know if they both said that because that’s what you are supposed to say, or if they really meant it.

I understand that revitalization won’t start the day after I finished my own home. But in the time that I’ve been working on the front of the house, several people on my block have started and finished their own projects. And it’s more of the same poorly-planned crap. It might look fresh right now, but in a few months it will look messy and uninviting. And these are the houses that have NEW landscaping. The rest? They just look like the owners inside just don’t care.

This lack of enthusiasm for the neighborhood makes me want to move and find a better neighborhood. I’m not trying to “buy up” into a new social class. I prefer the romantic idea of living amongst simple, hardworking family people. Together, we’ll be unimpressed with the arrogant snobs who live on the streets lined with starter-castles. What, them and polished children and their BMWs, their chariots of debt. We understand what it means to give a hard day’s work and know what really matters.

But I’m beginning to wonder if this ideal neighborhood of hardworking people doesn’t exist, at least not at least not if it working hard includes laboring in your front yard. I’m beginning to believe that the social and economic structure we have in America makes it so that hardworking people end up living in big houses in nice neighborhoods. The untidy neighborhoods are left to people who could care less.