ABSTRACT A large proportion of neighborhood social life occurs in communal places and takes the form of brief encounters with fellow residents who are personally unknown but visually recognizable and familiar. Public familiarity is effortless to maintain but is not socially benign. In this study, we draw on a survey of 1,000 Australian residents to assess the benefits of familiarity and examine the mediating role of public familiarity in the association between neighborhood use and sense of belonging and attachment. Our results demonstrate that public familiarity partially mediates the association between neighborhood use and sense of belonging. Public familiarity is associated with stronger feelings of comfort and a higher likelihood of helping others in an emergency. We suggest that designing neighborhood places to facilitate public familiarity, by installing features that encourage lingering, is a low-cost approach to enhancing community connection and belonging which may help to prevent loneliness.