One thing I loved when I lived in Lillooet was going to get the mail at the post office. In small towns Canada Post has never offered delivery to your door, you had to get all your mail at the post office from your post office box.
In Lillooet, the Post Office was the heart of the community.
One of the great things about collecting your mail at a central location is that you meet all your neighbours. If I went to get the mail at around the middle of the day I could be certain that the trip in and out of the building would take me at least 30 minutes because of all of the people I had to "quickly" talk to. It was also a great place to put up a notice or just let people know about something. Everyone came to the post office.
Lillooet is only a town of 3,000 people, but because of things like all of us having to get our mail at the post office, I knew more people in Lillooet than I do in Victoria. More importantly, I saw a lot more people in person everyday.
Home delivery has always been a bad idea because it costs a lot of money and takes away from a sense of community in a neighbourhood. Having central mailboxes will get more people walking in the streets and mean they meet each other and notice when something changes. They will allow for a place for hyper local community communication to take place.
Home delivery isolates people in single family home neighbourhoods. It means that housebound people never see anyone, it gives people with declining mobility one less reason to get up and do something. Getting the old and disabled out in their community is one of the best things possible for them and community mail boxes will help with this.
I am not sure what form the community mail boxes will take, but I would like it in my neighbourhood if it was close to the local shopping mall or the elementary school.
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