After you settle in, you don’t have to meet your neighbors. You can quietly go to and from work without interacting with anyone in your neighborhood or apartment complex. However, you should go out of your way to meet your neighbors for two major reasons.
You might like them. The person living below you might have many of the same interests as you. It’s as possible as you having similar interests with someone at a party or at the gym. If you don’t take the chance, though, you won’t know.
You can establish each others’ pet peeves and social boundaries. Maybe your neighbor goes to bed at 9:00 pm every night due to work. Maybe you don’t like when people let their dogs onto your yard. If you don’t take the time to clarify your needs and your neighbors’, then you’re asking for a stressful, angry situation where one of you has to approach the other to get them to stop. It’s best to prevent that entirely.
How to meet your neighbors is much like any social situation. Be friendly, smile, introduce yourself, listen and avoid burdening your neighbor with your personal concerns or issues. Save those for a time when you are more familiar with each other, perhaps at a backyard barbeque.