Neighbourhoods

Local democratic participation and parking

I sometimes wonder whether, in late medieval cities, there were disputes about where people left their carts. Car parking is a major issue in contemporary neighbourhoods, and inconsiderate parking infuriates people. Maybe some kinds of personality just get sparked by the very idea of public space, and always have done.

I’m not known for defending car drivers, but when you have situations where residents cannot get their own cars out of their driveways because others have left their vehicles in the way for long periods of time, you have to ask whether there’s a problem understanding that others have a right of access to public space.

A week ago I designed and ran a consultative process for a public meeting about car parking, in a large village on the outskirts of Sheffield. The material I had to work with included a lot of written remarks in open questions from an online survey, many of which suggested solutions and many of which consisted of repeated annoyance at inconsiderate drivers.

The process I came up with may have helped move things on. One reason is that most participants apparently were expecting a conventional public meeting in which councillors said something from the front, were shouted at by a few worked-up voices from the rows, and nothing much changed as a consequence. There were no rows (in either pronunciation) – the chairs were set around tables, people had the chance to shape their own agenda (and therefore found it hard to complain if the meeting did not discuss what they wanted discussed); they had the opportunity to augment and comment, in groups, on every live proposition as it was passed round, using pre-formatted sheets which included a street map; and they had the chance to vote, at the end, on preferred options to address the parking problem. There was no disruption. It was local participative democracy in action.

What was striking for me was the genuine sense of novelty among the participants, which I’m still absorbing. The sceptical might argue that just because some southerner comes in with an arty-farty creative approach, it doesn’t mean anything will change as a consequence. That remains to be seen. But I sensed from various comments afterwards that some people were grateful for a completely fresh experience of genuinely participative local democracy, which was, well, revelatory to them. That’s change, in itself.

The car resembles the traditional meeting as symbolic of communication confusion: it helps us to share some information (like status, power or detachment); in a car you can say ‘we’ve been through’ somewhere much as the conventional meeting ‘goes through’ an agenda. And cars really mess up interaction, and all the unseen benefits that go with interaction.

 

A socio-economic indicator for our times?

It's January, I’ve been working on my tax return and the last two bits of data I had to find were (i) bank and building society interest; and (ii) charitable donations. At first I thought, wouldn’t it be symbolic if the latter turned out higher than the former, times being what they are? Then I thought, might we have here an interesting indicator?

As the data are officially collected it should be possible to compute an accurate average ratio (whatever it might be - any guesses?) expecting the interest earned to be higher than the formal recorded giving. And have a debate about what might be the optimum ratio, given other economic conditions.

Our government wants both, I assume, but I don't think they'd want to see a negative ratio. I know claimed tax relief is only a partial indicator of what is given, but the charitable sector could come up with a formula to account for unrecorded giving as well…

(And yes, it turned out that for tax year 2010-11 I had a negative ratio. I guess I'm just a spoiler).

Having to use the state

“The only time that I use the state,” one financier worth an estimated £500 million confided in me recently, “is when my driver drives on public roads from the City to my country estate. I don’t like it, but I can’t help it.”

(From an article on The rise of the overclass by Peter Oborne in the Telegraph this evening).

Yup, we're all sighing commiserations, it must be tough. But it may be worth pointing out that this financier is deluding himself or herself, quite why is not clear.

The country estate or the offices he or she uses for meetings, for instance, are likely to make use of electricity provided by companies that are regulated by the state. The financier possibly occasionally consumes food or drink that has been contaminated by publicly-regulated water. (Or uses a lavatory ditto).

The education of others who the financier has to deal with, will in many cases have been provided by the state, which is usually an advantage, I suggest. Also their health: the financier presumably benefits from dealing with and perhaps employing healthy, educated people. It probably also helps if they have decent housing, whether or not the financier cares about that.

Then there's the existence of a wider managed economy (ah, ok maybe not). Or the existence of a police force maintaining order, which might just have helped the financier indirectly to make his or her millions. Then there's the publicly funded research which invents, develops and refines materials, technologies, substances, goods and services. And a legal system to ensure that he or she can seek justice if wronged (no further questions, your honour). And so on.

This person thinks the state is an irrelevance to them whereas of course they simply can’t move, or make a profit, without it.

The more I see of it, the harder I find it to overlook the persistent connection between wealth, arrogance and rank stupidity.

 

Parkinson’s Neighbours’ Law

Parkinson’s Wife’s Law – work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion, and he still hasn’t done what I wanted.

Parkinson’s Neighbours’ Law – work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion, and then they have an almighty row about it.

 

Christenings and funerals

Striking story from Steph Jennings on Podnosh about Mosies, a resident of Handsworth in Birmingham, who is working with a group to help influence people who are stuck with the perception that joining a gang is their only option.

'The girls have babies and the boys shoot and stab each other. I’ve lost count of the amount of christenings and funerals I’ve been to but I’ve never been to a wedding that’s just not what we do.'

And Steph is right in observing that you're unlikely to get this kind of story or insight from the prescribed training session format. Semi-formal community-based occasions, like the social media surgeries Podnosh are involved in, are more likely to nurture the sense of camaraderie and ownership that stimulates a shared determination to bring about change.

 

 

Occupy London wish list

I just caught up with this pic by Alan Stanton of the Occupy London wish list. Also needed, I suggest, is a web cam focussed on this board, then we could all keep an eye on it.

 

 

Neighbouring, older people and those who live alone: statistically they don’t stand out

Thank you to ICM Research, who have published questions and data from a recent survey of neighbouring and concerns about winter (the Home Alone survey), carried out for AA Home Emergency Response. In spite of attempts in the press release to put an alarmist spin on the findings, I think they’re largely reassuring.

The claim is made that

‘Overall more than one in eight people (13%) say they don't know any of their neighbours.’

Among those who live alone, the figure rises unsurprisingly, but only to 16 per cent. For those who live with friends, it’s a whopping 30 per cent, but this goes unremarked. It may be worth pointing out that quite a lot of people prefer to have nothing to do with their neighbours; and quite a lot of people will have been in their current place of residence for only a short time (length of residence is not included as a variable).

What the data show is a little more nuanced than the quote above, with a decent attempt to get beyond the blurring caused by the word ‘know’. The results include the following questions and overall percentages:

I would recognise my neighbours but I don't know them to speak to: 7%

I wouldn't recognise most of my neighbours: 5%

I wouldn't recognise any of my neighbours: 1%

I think I preferred the question that was used in the 2008 Full of Life survey, which asked people to indicate if they knew their neighbours well enough to say 'hello'. (With the change of government, the Full of Life study has now disappeared from the DWP website, but at the time I noted that 93 per cent said that they did).

The Home Alone survey shows very little variation between social grades. There’s a remarkable consistency in these two sets of responses, for instance:

	All	AB	C1	C2	DE
I know most of my neighbours	38%	38%	39%	38%	37%
I wouldn't recognise any of my neighbours	5%	4%	6%	5%	4%

The 2010 YouGov survey for the Co-Op used two social grade categories (ABC1 and C2DE) and similarly showed negligible difference in responses to the question ‘Approximately how many of your current neighbours would you say you know by name?’

The Home Alone survey was designed to probe for the need for help or support ‘if you had a problem at home’. According to the results, older people are as likely as the rest of us to know someone within range and certainly on their street, who they can call for help. Overall, 51 per cent of respondents said the nearest was within a quarter of a mile (14 per cent said ‘on my street’); 59 per cent of the over-65s claimed this, with 17 per cent saying ‘on my street’. Again, that's reassuring.

The question is slightly spoiled by the wording, which refers to ‘the nearest friend or family member’: it would have helped to be clear as to whether or not neighbours are assumed to be included, since on the whole they are neither friend nor kin.

But it’s still an interesting question with some unexpected results. For instance, among those who say they ‘know all’ their neighbours, almost a quarter (24 per cent) would go beyond a quarter of a mile to get help if they had a problem at home; and 37 per cent of those who say they ‘know most’ of their neighbours would do so. That’s quite a lot of people who we’d expect to be on good terms with their neighbours but who would go beyond the immediate neighbourhood in case of need.

Previously:

Five per cent have no contact with neighbours

Older and young people relate differently to neighbours: shock news

OK, how well do you know your 'immediate' neighbours?

Shock news: neighbourliness might or might not be in decline

Six per cent would prefer no contact with neighbours

 

Pavements, litter and decoration

Pavements (sidewalks to some) are littered more easily than they can be inscribed, but the former can provoke the latter.

Be warned: using chalk to broadcast a message may seem harmless, but previous posts on this blog (see links below) have shown this not to be the case. Some people may more readily take offence at pavement chalking than dog mess or random chewing gum.

The image below is of artist Ben Wilson who paints on pieces of discarded gum. Apparently he was arrested, something British cops like to do if someone seems a bit strange to them. BBC video here.

 

 

 

 

Previously:

Pavement chalking: this time seen in a positive light

'If it can be washed away, it's not graffiti. But'

Pavement chalking epidemic?

Footnote on pavement chalking

Floor targets

Neighbourliness and the natural disaster effect

Here’s an article by Queensland sociologist Lynda Cheshire, reflecting on the contrast between neighbourly behaviour during the floods in that state last year, and a reported ‘rise in neighbourly tensions’ that apparently characterises contemporary Australian life. Why are neighbours still there when needed, she asks, 'even if their noise, smells and habits are cause for complaint the rest of the time?'

Cheshire notes that the contrast might partly be explained by an increased ability to avoid confrontation by referring difficulties to official intermediaries (like this example I blogged not long ago) and points out that this is ‘a costly habit’:

‘There is a possibility that the wave of goodwill exhibited during the floods will minimise neighbourly conflicts, or at least reduce registered complaints. But it may also create new sets of expectations about neighbours and new forms of conflict if these normative codes are breached.’

I’m reminded that some months ago I wrote about the way supportive neighbourly responses in time of large-scale disasters throw up somewhat nostalgic reflections about how our societies have 'lost' the values that are warmly evidenced in time of adversity. Cheshire’s article does not come into that category, although she does appear at least in this case to reproduce uncritically the received narrative of decline. I'd like to know more about whether neighbourliness in Australia really has declined and in what ways, and how that compares with the UK where similar claims are so often made.

 

Foretelling the crash

It’s nearly ten years since the death of Ivan Illich. A few years ago I found his work was out of print, which maybe helps to explain how come we’re in such a mess. We need to make more of his wisdom.

Looking for something else the other day, I found myself re-reading sections of Tools for conviviality. I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out, but this bit strikes me as grimly prophetic:

Almost overnight people will lose confidence not only in the major institutions but also in the miracle of prescriptions of the would-be crisis managers. The ability of the present institutions to define values such as education, health, welfare, transportation, or news will suddenly be extinguished because it will be recognized as an illusion.

This crisis may be triggered by an unforeseen event, as the Great Depression was touched off by the Wall Street Crash. Some fortuitous coincidence will render publicly obvious the structural contradictions between stated purposes and effective results in our major institutions...

People who invoke the spectre of a hopelessly growth-oriented majority seem incapable of envisaging political behaviour in a crash. Business ceases to be as usual when the populace loses confidence in industrial productivity, and not just in paper currency…

Governments think they can deal with the breakdown of utilities, the disruption of the educational system, intolerable transportation, the chaos of the judicial process, the violent disaffection of the young. Each is dealt with as a separate phenomenon, each is explained by a different report…

Tools for conviviality, 1973, chapter 5.

 

The problem of civility: a parking vignette

I thought I was lucky to grab a parking slot on the edge of a row, with a yellow crossed box marked on the passenger side. This kind of thing matters if you’re moving from place to place with a growing bairn who is hard to manoeuvre into his seat at the best of times.

I got back to the car to find a large van snuggled up alongside, leaving me enough room to get the door open about one and a half feet. Aware of the potential havoc to my back I cautiously got the bairn strapped in and closed the door. I then heard the van driver approaching to say ‘You alright there mate?’ I grumphed audibly. ‘Where do you want me to park?’ he says, ‘on the roof?’

Er, well how about legally?

‘Oh what you gonna do?’ says he, ‘call the police?’

Which epitomises the problem of respect and civility in public spaces. It’s impossible for any system of government to oversee all potential disputes, so our society depends on most of us taking other people into consideration in the first instance (citizenship), before questions of legality come into play. Some people seem to see inconsiderate acts first and foremost as either legal, or illegal-but-can-be-got-away-with.

One of the popular questions of our time is whether the proportion of the population in the latter category is increasing. I’m more than ever persuaded that this perception is related to the amount of time we spend cocconed in our cars, a peering position which subtly alters the relationship to the Other. And if it is increasing, I think the next question to ask is: where’s the tipping point?

 

A glance back

Big society belittled, arab spring-summer-autumn and winter, localism, neutered community development, disturbances in English cities... Here's a quick glance back at some sample posts, as it's been such a curious year.

In January - ('thought leaders my arse') - a post about street reps and new forms of governance. Are we 'witnessing the ungainly, messy emergence of the new order'?

In February, in a year when we finally saw the global power of technologies that foster horizontal communication, some thoughts on networks and democracy.

And a slightly caustic post in which I suggest that anyone who can write 'the extent to which communities are willing to seize the opportunities available' without self-parody is manifestly part of the problem.

In March I wrote about the 'request scruple' - for me an essential post on Lilian Linders' insightful research into neighbourliness, after an inspiring study tour in the Netherlands.

And I was asking 'who's next for the Grand Tour for Saviours of Low-Income Neighbourhoods?'

In May a gentle chuckle observing pétanque, seule, and some reflections on the sense of generalised respect in the French public realm, compared with the British.

In June, here's a more serious moment, squaring up to the idea of community development without the politics:

'government would like to see lots of community action where people do not recognise that some of their problems are externally-determined and are the consequence of unequal and unfair policies.'

(I hit the same nerve in November).

And one of my favourite juxtaproses.

Also in June, some thoughts about the assault on the public, asking

'what will it take eventually to spark a serious debate about the nature of 'public' in this country?'

Here are two posts about the disturbances that started in London in August (no, they weren't 'riots') - first, Maybe capitalism didn't quite work:

'If you relentlessly celebrate consumption; unambiguously and unashamedly pursue policies that promote an unequal society; encourage the spectacularisation of culture (a key component in what we're seeing, I think); demolish whatever is public that you can get away with; and then confiscate a lot of state support that gives young people legitimate occasions to test their need to disrupt things - don't suddenly look surprised.'

and 'The suspension of civilisation' in which I referred to young people’s need to disrupt things:

'That is what young people do: get used to it. A responsible society will find ways to help this process take place creatively and without negative consequences – in sporting encounter, in adventure, in semi-formal flexible environments like youth centres, by giving young people space without obsessive surveillance or devious assimilation. What chance is there now that our society’s neurotic control-freakery towards young people can be cured?'

In October I had the chance to report on a remarkable social inclusion project - Helping young people locate themselves.

In November I blogged about the publication of my essay on picnic and community, launched that month.

OK, there have been very few vignettes this year, but this one earlier this month, although dated, I thought you might quite like.

Just trying to be sociable

"Previous research suggests that U.S. residents may use holiday decorations on their home's exterior to communicate friendliness and cohesiveness with neighbors. In the present research, we examine whether strangers (naive raters) can accurately identify the more friendly residents, and what aspects of the homes' exteriors contribute to their impressions. We also examine the possibility that residents who decorate for Christmas but who have few friends on the block may be using the decorations and other cues as a way of communicating their accessibility to neighbors. Participants rated residents based only on photographs of their home and front yard. Stimulus homes had been preselected to represent the four cells of a two by two factorial design crossing the presence/absence of Christmas decorations with the resident's self-rated social contact with neighbors (low/high). As expected, a main effect for the decorated factor indicated that raters used Christmas decorations as a cue that the residents were friendly and cohesive. Decoration interacted with sociability in a complex but interpretable way. In the absence of Christmas decorations, raters accurately distinguished between the homes of sociable and nonsociable residents; in open ended comments, they attributed their impressions to the relatively more 'open' and 'lived in' look of the sociable residents' homes. When Christmas decorations were present, raters actually attributed greater sociability to the nonsociable residents, citing a more open appearance as the basis for their judgments. The results support the idea that residents can use their home's exterior to communicate attachment and possibly to integrate themselves into a neighborhood's social activities."

Werner, C et al (1989), Inferences about homeowners' sociability: impact of Christmas decorations and other cues. Journal of environmental psychology, 9, 279-296.

 

The social life of pop up spaces

More ideas like this please, as described on the Placemaking blog - the New York City Department of Transportation has been partnering with local restaurants to install pop-up cafés in parking spaces. They offer a short time-lapse video of the use of one such space.

It raises a few creative questions. In what sort of locality would this work best? Obviously not town centre, but given the apparent expense and need for sponsorship, it's unlikely to happen in low-income areas or on peripheral estates. Probably it's best suited just off the suburban high street.

But could a sponsoring agency - perhaps a housing association with many suitable sites - have the portable hardware available for rent and delivered to estates at low cost, and the rest done by tenants' associations?

And what other legitimate uses can be squeezed into the idea without distorting it? Could you have a creche for some of the time? Could you have a volunteer bureau occupy a table there for an hour or two? Suggestions please.

 

What is social participation?

‘Social participation comprises three dimensions: neighbouring, trust, and interest in politics.’

This comes from a chapter of early findings from the ESRC’s Understanding society programme (the new household longitudinal study, described as ‘the world’s largest household panel survey’). The sentence is regarded as sufficiently important to be given a large-font margin box all of its own, so they must have meant it.

It’s certainly different. Those who construct these large national surveys have to make a few questions go a long way, which ain’t easy; but it’s quite hard to see how you could get to this 3D reduction from the mix of concepts covered for example in this mindmap which I knocked up a few years ago. And we need the survey makers to get their structures right because they will set in train a whole lot of subsequent research, policy and practice for years to come.

We can compare and contrast the Understanding Society framework with, for instance, the framework offered in the recent Pathways through participation report. Distinguishing social, public and individual participation, the PtP summary report suggests that social participation includes

'being involved in formal voluntary organisations, informal or grassroots community groups, and formal and informal mutual aid and self help.'

The PtP project put a lot of intellectual effort into the topic, and the tag cloud on their site boasts an enticing array of terms; but I don’t see the words ‘neighbouring’ or ‘trust’. There are just two items for ‘politics’.

So here we have two national level initiatives offering quite different frameworks for a concept that affects all of us and has increasing salience in policy. The Pathways approach is more thorough and altogether more convincing, but unfortunately the Understanding Society approach is likely to have influence for some time as the next waves of data build up and get used.

In their effort to explain their framework, the Understanding Society authors trip themselves up quite quickly:

‘Neighbouring captures informal social participation, while general trust and interest in politics capture participation in formal organisations.’

Well no, they don’t, not by a long way. I’m not an academic so I don’t know what the protocol is, but I suspect that if this was an undergraduate essay you’d send them off to start again.

Safe neighbourhoods: the role of design

Anyone who thought agencies like CABE were a waste of public money should look away now. In their current status as part of the Design Council, using material generated in their previous independence, CABE have produced a set of clear, directive briefing papers on Creating safe places to live through design. They are well worth spending time on.

There are six case studies augmented by a summary of lessons learned. The summary hits four main issues:

• Parking and problems associated with parking are 'a major source of neighbour disputes, anti-social behaviour and in some cases criminal damage and assault'. Issues discussed include paying attention to where visitors are likely to park.

• Design quality… Specific elements that need extra design input are:

'Corner properties – they are at greater risk of crime and need careful resolution to ensure they provide overlooking to both streets.
Avoiding situations that expose rear access to dwellings – all dwellings should be the right way around with fronts and backs resolved properly for every dwelling.
Ensure the movement network passes to the front (or if necessary overlooked sides) [of] dwellings rather than to the rear and is logical, fitting in with wider movement routes.'

• Management and maintenance strategies – noting problems resulting from the rise of buy-to-let properties owned by absentee landlords.

• Gating - 'strong perimeter security through gating is not a panacea for good design within a development. The highest crime scheme in the research was the only one that was gated.'

The image below comes from the case study of the gated estate. Never mind the fencing and gating, the door appears to have been designed so that we can all keep prison life firmly in mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(And what is that slit at the bottom of the door? Designed to make anyone delivering post bend down unnecessarily? Or is it a squat cat flap? Time to leave I think).

 

 

Lifetime neighbourhoods

Four years ago I posted a note about an excellent CLG discussion paper on lifetime neighbourhoods prepared by the International Longevity Centre. CLG have now published a new report by Mark Bevan and Karen Croucher from the Centre for Housing Policy in York. It’s an important document which brings together a wide range of material to give this theme some welcome momentum.

The main components of lifetime neighbourhoods are given as

• supporting residents to develop lifetime neighbourhoods – especially resident empowerment
• access
• services and amenities
• built and natural environments
• social networks/well-being
• housing.

There are several valuable strengths in this report. I would highlight the appropriate breadth of research and practice material, the significant number of practice examples, and the emphasis on resident empowerment. It’s also very readable.

Against that, there are two weaknesses that struck me very quickly. The main one is that there is no recognition of the damaging over-emphasis on cars in our local environments, of the way design has too often privileged the driver, and the knock on effect on local social quality of life.

A few years ago the designer Wayne Hemingway told me a story about trying to get residents in a new tower building to accept an underground car park in the design. They wouldn’t, because they wanted to be able to see their cars from their windows – hence using up vastly more land to accommodate them, than was necessary. People treat cars as extensions of their homes, and as a way of marking territory, probing out into the world. It’s hard to see how we can develop lifetime neighbourhoods without confronting this peculiar obsession, but it doesn't help to overlook it. As a society we seem to be in denial.

The other unexpected weakness is a lack of insight into the potential of digital media to strengthen social networks. We can anticipate a future in which residents will expect to be connected and to enjoy and exploit the benefits of their networks, online and face-to-face. And as the Online Neighbourhood Networks study suggested, there are benefits to service providers.

 

Network ennui

Today the Guardian community action hub published an article by Rosie Niven on ‘social media in community building and development’, and I added two or three comments explaining some aspects of the Online Neighbourhood Networks research which I carried out with Hugh Flouch.

I thought I’d mention here that in passing I refer to the notion of ‘network ennui’, which I have decided will become contagious - a period not too far in the future when swathes of the world’s population just get pissed off with the dreary effort of maintaining our social networks and do other stuff like looking where we’re going on the street, experiencing silence and playing solitaire WITH REAL CARDS… the age of social media will just quietly die with an untweeted whimper.

I can’t tell you more cos it’s already started, must go.

 

Neighbour relations can reinforce boundaries - or break them down

We have builders working on the house, this time it’s Dave from just five doors away, and his mate. Yesterday was pretty cold up on the scaffolding, so I heated up some of the apple crumble that my next door neighbour had brought round a little earlier, and took two portions up the ladder for them. They had the chance subsequently to thank her from above as she popped out.

A slightly unusual triangle of service and support then - perhaps an exception to theories of standard neighbour behaviour. Theory tends to inspect some wider social problems - class tensions, ethnic relations - in neighbour relations and then to generalise back out from there. There are symbolic boundaries that we use to differentiate ourselves, and according to this recent paper in Sociological research online, neighbouring reinforces those boundaries rather than breaking them down.

It seems to me that people do both in the neighbouring setting. I can learn a bit about Nigerian culture from a family a few doors along, crossing cultural boundaries with ease for example just by asking for a recipe; or I could shut out all contact from the Irish Catholics next door if I was minded to, just by limiting interaction to a grunt.

 

 

Taxes and governmental powers: what are they for?

When I dropped out of school and went into ‘the world of work’, as it used to be called, I remember being disturbed by the fact that the education system left me utterly ignorant of what government and local government do, and what taxation is for. It looks like things have got little better, in spite of the introduction of citizenship to the curriculum.

Yup, it’s time for a bit of seasonal gloom, with the British Social Attitudes report published today and plenty of publicity given to this statistic:

The proportion who think we should pay (more) taxes to improve health and education and social benefits is only 30% in England, 40% in Scotland. A decade ago it was 60% in both nations. (BBC)

Like a separating galaxy, it looks like we are moving at speed away from the traditional civilising notion of the ‘common weal’. (In case you missed it, here’s the link to requirements for people who don’t want to pay taxes).

Do people who think like this imagine, for instance, that business could function without publicly maintained roads and systematically tested vehicles, or a managed wider economy? Or that the police could maintain order without some sort of funding; or that the food and water they consume could be guaranteed to be hygienic without public agencies? Perhaps it does not occur to them?

Ah wait, perhaps what really bugs them is that poverty is self-imposed, not structural:

63% believed parents who don't want to work were to blame for children living in poverty.

I suggest you blink hard, and re-read that figure: almost two thirds.

According to Mark Easton on the BBC site today, the UK ‘has long been the most judgmental of the needy in Europe.’ In a way, that’s a relief; but yes we do seem determined, disastrously, to become more and more like the US. Income inequality is increasing, with a government apparently comfortable with polarisation. And we seem to be a bit angry too.

Dark age ahead, as Jane Jacobs warned. Jane listed five pillars of culture including ‘taxes and governmental powers that are directly in touch with needs and possibilities’. But civilisation will pay a heavy price if too few citizens really appreciate what they’re for.