My husband and I have been reading Peter Lovenheim’s “In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time.” We moved to Rochester a year and a half ago and one of our major goals when we made the decision to move here was to become part of a community. In our minds, that begins with our own neighborhood. Although we’ve been getting to know our neighbors and trying to include some of them when we have activities, we haven’t been as aggressive in helping to build those relationships as we would like to be. Part of that is due to the fact that we have been putting a lot of our spare time and energy into fixing up our old city house, simply getting settled into new routines and we have young children. That is in addition to being busy with our regular day jobs. But the truth is, we want to make more of an effort to build relationships with our neighbors.

We started RocVille while we were still living in Washington DC. We had already purchased our house in Rochester and had about 5 months before we would officially move. Knowing that we wanted to be a part of helping to revitalize Rochester in whatever capacity we could, we wanted to provide a resource and discussion place for people who also care about the city and want to be a part of helping it become something of what it was when my husband grew up here. But, much like our “getting to know our neighbors” goal, we haven’t been able to put much time and effort into the site. Reading “In the Neighborhood,” we realize that the time to build Rocville and our own neighborhood is now. We are going to do it slowly in our spare time, so bear with us. You may not agree with our opinions, but we hope you will join us and share your ideas and information about initiatives to help our city become what we know it can.