Nextdoor - the not so perfect neighbors

In recent months, I discovered a new “social network” of sorts, called Nextdoor.com.

Like Facebook, it is also a social network but it is a different way of interaction.

Nextdoor works by connecting you to your local neighborhood, often a block radius or so. Nextdoor’s mission is to connect people who live closer to each other. Is it perfect? In a way, no.

How is it not perfect? Well, Nextdoor, generally speaking, is only as good as the neighborhood that is covered. (In this case for me it would be Cerritos. So this would not be a fault of Nextdoor, but of Cerritos and Lakewood itself and its surrounding cities.)

Over the many months that I’ve had Nextdoor I’ve had a mixed experience.

Positives:

• People get to know each other
• Lost pets have been found and recovered
• Concerns are raised

Negatives:

• Some people try to use Nextdoor as if it was Marketplace on Facebook. It is not perfect, and I kind of feel using Nextdoor as if it was an online garage sale website is not going to work well because no one really uses it as if it was Craigslist.
• Due to the way Nextdoor works, you will never be able to find out what is happening in a neighborhood outside the radius you selected.
• Some people who register on Nextdoor are not going to reveal where they live. Privacy is a very good argument why not many on Nextdoor will be open to where they live.

The ugly:

• Some on Nextdoor have… interesting… social and political views. I have never known how many on my neighborhood simply are Trumpian in their mindsets, until I found Nextdoor. This goes especially to taxes and NIMBYism.

Nextdoor just shows that Cerritos is not a really “nice” city as I have found out. The city is withering on the vine. Population is dropping, and it is not because of taxes. No amount of effort being done by the current and future city councils is going to fix the ultimate elephant in the room: the lack of population growth. The city is aging. Many middle aged families are looking at living at places like the Silicon Beach area or the SGV and leaving Cerritos behind. Cerritos is almost entirely run on Auto Square and mall money. Where are the major businesses besides them?

So far, Cerritos is biding time. I do not see the Auto Square losing any money or business anytime soon because L.A. is just too car centric of a city. The city will always be run on Auto Square revenue. The mall gets a lot of visitors from the surrounding Southeast L.A. cities, and is the only mall with Apple and Microsoft retail storefronts (nearest Apple Store from Cerritos is in Brea and Costa Mesa, and the nearest Microsoft retail store is also in Brea). Many Long Beach shoppers come to Cerritos to shop, because there are not as many nice stores at The Pike compared to Cerritos.

Cerritos does not have a nightlife, obviously. It is like any city far away from a downtown center. In effect, Cerritos is no different than any OC suburb, though it’s technically in LA County. San Gabriel Valley suburbs like Rowland Heights still have some kind of a nightlife and many Asians want to hang out there. Many non-Asians, especially whites, prefer to hangout in Long Beach, especially on 2nd Street. Latinos prefer to go to Whittier or Downey.

Teenagers who grow up eventually move out, and as I have found, not many return to Cerritos to start families IN Cerritos and send their children to schools within the ABC Unified District (the district covers K-12 for Artesia, Cerritos and pieces of Lakewood). Many move out completely.

I have lost my patience with Cerritos, and the moment I find a new full time gig, I will move out of Cerritos for good. Maybe when Cerritos gets a WeWork shared workplace site will I reconsider moving out of Cerritos. With WeWork’s troubles, that will not be anytime soon.

To me, Cerritos has a huge hole in its demographics. There’s a lot of Cerritos residents under 18 and over 60, and there’s a huge hole in between that 18-60. There are not many college aged to middle aged residents. That hole needs to be addressed now, and as long as new businesses set up shop in business centers like downtown L.A., Santa Monica, Culver City, or Irvine, Cerritos will continue to wither on the vine.