Overview

The Neighboring Playbook: Becoming America's Most Neighborly State is a hopeful and practical guide for rebuilding connection, trust, and belonging in an age of growing loneliness and social isolation. Drawing from real stories, research, and the nationally recognized success of Missouri Good Neighbor Week, David L. Burton shows how simple acts of neighboring can strengthen neighborhoods, improve civic life, and create healthier communities. In this inspiring book, Burton explores the ""relational crisis"" facing modern America, where many people live next to one another but rarely know each other. He explains how neighboring is more than being polite or friendly. It is a form of civic infrastructure that helps communities become safer, more resilient, and more connected. Through engaging stories and practical examples, readers will discover how learning names, sharing conversations, and practicing everyday acts of care can transform both neighborhoods and entire communities. The book tells the remarkable story of how a small local effort tied to National Good Neighbor Day grew into Missouri Good Neighbor Week, the first statewide neighboring initiative of its kind in America. Burton shares the lessons learned from organizing thousands of acts of neighboring across Missouri and introduces ""The Neighboring Flywheel,"" a practical framework built around invitation, participation, storytelling, recognition, leadership, and culture change. Designed as both inspiration and a hands-on playbook, this book offers tools and strategies for neighbors, community leaders, churches, nonprofits, schools, and local governments looking to strengthen connection where they live. Whether you want to host a block gathering, reduce loneliness, encourage civic engagement, or build a more neighborly city, this book provides a roadmap for turning small acts of kindness into lasting cultural change. At its heart, The Neighboring Playbook is a reminder that strong communities are not built only through programs or policies. They are built through relationships. And those relationships begin right outside our front doors.

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