I wish I would be able to do it in NY but I do not even know my next door neighbor. So sad.
In my home country, when some one would buy a house, they would say "Do not get a house, get a neighboor". I gues I bought the house but not the neighbor. Shame shame.

i'm working on this arrangement in my own building. i am newly single and it's terribly difficult to get motivated to make a nice meal for one.

i have some friends (married couple) that moved in upstairs about a year ago, and it's pretty fantastic to have dinner/game nights. i normally make the meal and she normally brings the dessert.

i'm also starting to have more friends over (that don't live in the complex) and slowly but surely, they're all starting to ask...how much rent is, how do i like the building, etc etc. i think i will be able to convert a few more friends to move in and then we'll be on our way to a weekly dinner night like this.

Communal dinners are great. A bunch of my girlfriends and I get together and try to have bi-weekly potluck dinners. It's a lot of fun because it makes us get creative with our dishes. A few of them are vegetarian, another a vegan, and I'm a complete meatarian. It gets noisy, and messy, but we're together and it's a great way to decompress after a long work week and catch up with people that's not via email/text.

When living in San Francisco, I often cooked for neighbors in the building and in the neighborhood. With four other roommates, plus a guest or two on any given night, big dinners were common, fun, and much cheaper than enjoying a meal out together. We celebrated "Friendsgiving" before everyone went home for the holidays, "Eastover" in the spring, and all birthdays and other holidays together. Now, living in Los Angeles, I don't live in such close proximity to friends and don't have the same kind of congenial neighbors. Everytime I do have close-by friends over for dinner or a potluck, though, I am reminded how much I miss it!

I live in a four-plex and while I have done zero socializing with the less-than-friendly neighbors in two of the apartments, the neighbors we share a wall with are my friends from high school, so dining together is a real treat!

I live in a dog friendly courtyard building in Chicago that has allowed me to socialize with my neighbors more often than not. A few of us have started a "movie night" in which we alternate hosting the movie night at one of our apartments. The movie is usually a foreign movie and we usually make something to munch on and bring our drinks to share. I have a projector that I bring over and we just find a blank wall to project it onto (we're not allowed to paint so finding a white wall in one of our apartments isn't hard). I love my courtyard building and my neighbors.

I like that thought, 'get a neighbor'. Thank you for sharing that thought!

Ok, so they're not my neighbors, but my string quartet does this every week before our rehearsal! We have a cooking rotation, so no one feels like they're being put upon. It lets us catch up on the personal stuff AND the business stuff (we play a fair number of gigs), and since everyone is coming from work, it makes it so we all get a good meal before we have to spend the next two hours rehearsing. The only thing that isn't rotated (though I still get help with this since we are always at my house)? Dish duty....

I had a similar arrangement with two friends for a couple of years. We were three young women living within a couple of blocks of each other. We wanted to keep everything as simple as possible so we decided we would eat dinner together every Tuesday and Thursday, rotating among our three apartments. Our approach was a bit different in that we did NOT want to cook together, feel pressured to make elaborate meals or bring wine, get caught in a logistics trap trying to accommodate everyone's schedule, or even commit to socializing for the evening. Every Tuesday and Thursday we simply showed up at 6 o'clock at the designated apartment, ate whatever the host would have been making if the other two weren't there. (I recall that once the meal was pork chops and popcorn because that's what the host always ate when she was depressed.) Sometimes we hung out afterwards, sometimes we didn't, and even the host was perfectly free to get up from the table, say "gotta go" and walk out the door. We never discussed menus, who could or couldn't make it, asked to bring a guest etc.; we simply sat down and ate a family meal together twice a week. It was a wonderful arrangement and decades later I still have fond memories of those shared meals.

When I lived in what was then the largely rent-controlled neighborhood of Glover Park in NW DC, I had friends of assorted ethnic backgrounds. Most of us were newly out of school or soon to be and pinching pennies, but we liked adventurous eating. We decided to hold rotating international dinner nights featuring family recipes every couple of months. I remember informal meals on the floor by candelight and huddled around my apartment's only a/c unit on one of the city's sweltering August nights. Good food, good company, good times, and fond memories of building community as a single person.

Maybe if my friends moved into my building I'd be into more communal things. My husband and I are loners generally. But I already know waaaaay to much about my neighbours to invite them over for dinner. Awkward eye contact, anyone? But I think it's a great idea, making things more family-like when you're not with your family.

Family Dinner! My (all displaced, mostly late 20s) friends and I do this every Sunday night, going on three years. Some of us are housemates, most of us live in the same neighborhood. There is a core group of singles and non-singles; dinners are usually between 6 and 10 people. We take turns and each do the whole shebang - cooking and cleaning - so that every other week you show up and relax. You can be as fancy or non-fancy as you want (we've had 4 courses some nights, cereal others). We've always called it Family Dinner. And it's a good way to make sure that we displaced individuals have a community to check in with once a week.

*jealous*

What a great idea. It's a nice way to make a big city seem smaller.

Forgot to add that in India, this was commonplace. My mom described growing up and spending many nights eating dinner at a neighbor's flat or having a neighbor's child eat at her family's flat.

It's a shame we don't know our current neighbors, but it seems that life with a young child and 2 careers makes it too busy to arrange a regular event like this.

My friends and I do this once a month and call it Supper Club. We don't live in the same neighborhood, but on Sunday night a month we all bring a side dish and wine, and the host/hostess makes the main dish. We've had everything from grilled pizza served on folding tables in the front yard (my house) to empanadas in a proper dining room. It's a really good time, we'll invite the host's roomies if there are any, and it's a great way to get ready for the workweek with friends.

When I lived in a "dog friendly courtyard condo" building in Denver, we were quite social - BBQ;s in the courtyard. Of my friends, I was the one who was more likely to cook, and I had a full house often. Good times. We called ourselves an "Urban Tribe".

Best. Idea. Ever. Why do my friends all live 40 minutes in some other direction? Last time I had a community was in Austin, mid-90's. Wah.

When my not-great neighbors finally moved out from downstairs I persuaded my landlord to let a friend of mine move in. It's fantastic! We don't do communal dinners (though we really should) but we both have dogs and foster-dogs so we have each other's keys and can call on each other to help out when we get stuck running around. We also run errands and leave little surprise gifts on the stairs (fresh-baked cookies are a favorite)! We've got a good-sized shared yard and can't wait to throw shared parties and just hang out there all summer.

I love this idea, but my friends nearly all live in detached houses (as do I).

I've been to countries where a lot more communal eating is done, and I think it's fantastic.

I'd be really keen to do a bi-weekly potluck, as someone mentioned upthread, but honestly? Everyone I know is kind of commitment-phobic about social arrangements. I can't ever see a day being picked and people sticking to it. :(

By accident I had my first communal dinner this week-end. My landlord, who lives in the same house was fixing my window. He mentioned he had made some quiche. He later dropped of one of the quiche. I called a few friends, one brought wine, I made salad, the landlord came back and we all had a great meal together.
I'm a 50 something who has raised my three daughters and is now on her own. I plan on putting a permanent invite out there for whom ever wants to show up.
Be the neighbor you want to world to be,,,, almost like my favorite Gandhi quote.

My husband, our 2 year old, and I live in an attached townhouse. We moved in next to our already friends, and my brother now moved in just two doors down. All of our neighbors are super friendly and social so anytime someone grills out it turns into a party! We also have neighbors (and brother) over for dinner often.

I love doing this too...often spontaneously with two of my neighbors if one of us was making something good. Even if you think you're too busy; you are always happier afterwards.

I live in a housing co-op, so we share dinner 5 nights a week! When I move out in a few months, I plan on trying to host weekly dinners for my friends within bike riding distance. I love to cook and my friends love to eat... so voila!

This brings back memories *sniff*. When we rented in a duplex community we quickly befriended our single neighbor who shared a wall & the couple next door. A spur of the moment weekend cookout led to planned monthly dinners which eventually led to a casual shout out every Saturday... Got plans for tonight? It was nothing for 2 or 3 of us to make a quick run to the store at the last minute for an impromtu gathering. Ahhh...how I miss those days!

*impromptu* (heaven forbid the grammar police get after me)

Awww. I miss having improptu dinners with friends. I need to move back home. Thanks for sharing your story. Sounds like so much fun.

I live right next to two women who are in the same age range (20s-30s) and we usually get together for a potluck or a glass of wine once a week. It's so nice to get together and catch up so easily, and it helps pass the week if we get together on a Tuesday/Wednesday. I love it!

My senior year of college was probably the last time I had a truly organized living situation. I had two roommates, and we had three main living spaces. So each week, we'd be in charge of keeping one area of the apartment clean. Since the living room was the easiest, the person on living room duty was also in charge of planning our little family dinner - that meant working with the schedules of three college seniors AND cooking something we'd all like! It was nice to be able to get together every week and have kind of a meeting of the minds as well as gorge on a huge meal.
I'm definitely going to try and start this up again with my housemates.

This does bring back wonderful memories.

After I graduated from college, we used to have communal brunches with an open door policy - we could have anywhere from five to fifteen people. It was a great way to catch up on news and hang out.

Now we still have periodic dinners but they are more once a month affairs rather than a weekly event. But this is definitely a great idea to think about starting up again more regularly.