>To many people, of course, this is disgusting behavior.

Well in my experience when I lived in a neighborhood like this in practice this meant a lot of really bored soccer moms in the local facebook group posting pictures of every new van on the street because they were now convinced their kids were in mortal danger. The million ring doorbells probably didn't help either.

I think P.K. Dick was much more accurate and prescient than Jacobs when it came to the paranoid character of local neighborhoods in particular in an age where that is amplified by technology