Neighbourhoods

Old Campaigner at the gates

Community activism isn’t new and campaigning against misuse of cars ain’t new either. Sunday afternoon I had a chat with a woman who did her share of community campaigning back in the nineteen sixties. Here’s the short version – the infant/junior school, at the time, had no pavement alongside the gates “it was just bare soil,” and some parents parked cars right up to those gates so their little darlings didn’t have to walk, but to the danger of other children. Our old campaigner got together with a couple of other mothers and handed out letters about parking away from the gates. Some of the other parents didn’t like that of course.

“I started to campaign for a crossing patrol. I went to the police two or three times but they weren’t interested. Wrote to the local paper. I got the MP to go down and have a look. Eventually, it must have been the council, we got the pavement, we got the no-parking space, and a crossing patrol.”

It’s not much but it’s not trivial. We went down to see the school this afternoon and there’s a sign on the gates that’s a kind of testimony: it says “Why should a child get hurt because you don’t care.”

That’s my old mum, that is.

I said, "It's about noise!"

Today I've been reviewing survey questions about neighbourhoods, using the CNR's question bank, and was struck by how frequently noise appears in questions asked in standard surveys. Unsurprisingly, it's a major feature in neighbourhood dissatisfaction and crops up frequently as an issue on the Neighbours from Hell site. So it's good to see Living Streets have published a short, characteristically clear policy briefing on noise.

Neighbours from Hell in Britain have a whole section on noise here.

From brownfield to green

Here's a drum roll for the Land Restoration Trust, newly established following publicity over the last couple of years about the amount of derelict land accumulating around England. Groundwork, English Partnerships, the Forestry Commission and the Environment Agency are currently finalising details of the remit and constitution of the new organisation.

The Land Restoration Trust will acquire derelict land that is not suitable for redevelopment and work with local organisations to create new ‘green amenities’ that are community assets. Their task apparently is to find new ways of funding community involvement and long-term management of such sites.

And from their website, I thought this was interesting -

"Research by MORI has shown that over 70% of people asked believe that derelict land directly reduces their quality of life. When asked what should be done with derelict land in urban areas the majority of people identified new green areas as their top priorities: parks and recreation areas (28%), play areas (27%) and new open landscapes (18%)."

Also, there's a New Start magazine article about the Trust here.

Dog mess is down, gum is up

According to the environmental campaigning organisation Encams, two thirds of the population of England live in substandard environments. What does that mean? Well, here’s a press release about the latest Local Environmental Quality Survey of England (LEQSE) report and it talks about measures of cleanliness and disorder in neighbourhoods, especially dog fouling (improved), chewing gum (worse), and fast food take-away trash (worse).

Encams has a broad swipe at local councils to put more effort and resources into street cleaning, and I see it as a significant issue about the quality of the public sphere. They note for example that the grim state of many bus and railway stations is hardly an incentive for people to switch from private to public transport; and that unkempt alleyways add to the fear of crime and discourage people from walking or cycling. At first one thinks that a little more recognition might be given to the role of citizens in all this, but I was reminded of the argument that social capital is a function of social organisation more than individual behaviours.

This is not trivial stuff – it’s about the diminution of what Jane Jacobs called “the casual public sidewalk life of cities” and it’s fundamental to a culture of participative democracy. If people are discouraged from walking in their neighbourhoods because of the state of the environment, it contributes significantly to the erosion of what we think of as ‘local social capital’ and that erodes the quality of life in all sorts of other ways. I missed the media launch of the report the other day (attended I believe by three ministers), but I’m intrigued by the question of how we articulate the policy message so as to gain recognition for the importance of neighbourhood relations in social policy.

A conversation with Alice

With regard to our understanding of neighbourliness, I’m conscious that a few first hand accounts wouldn’t go amiss. So in an effort to kick things off, I’ve dusted off some notes I made in a conversation about neighbouring a few months back. If you happen to find this stuff interesting and make use of it, please let me know.

Responding To Anti-Social Behaviour - event

Responding To Anti-Social Behaviour, Centre for Crime and Justice studies conference
Date: 10/3/04
Location: Britannia Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool
£99.00
Booking form.

Green spaces and the view from the tower: research question

I've just dug out and been re-skimming an article on the effects of green common space on social contact among neighbours. The study, carried out in Chicago and reported by Frances Kuo and her colleagues, found that:

“the more vegetation in a common space, the stronger the neighbourhood social ties near that space – compared to residents living adjacent to relatively barren spaces, individuals living adjacent to greener common spaces had more social activities and more visitors, knew more of their neighbors, reported their neighbors were more concerned with helping and supporting one another, and had stronger feelings of belonging.”

It made me wonder whether residents of higher floors in tower blocks feel they gain particular benefits from the view that they have. Well, who in tower blocks uses the gardens - do we know if it tends to be those on the lower floors or those on higher floors, or some other pattern...? Is anyone aware of any research...?
Here's the reference: Frances E Kuo et al, 'Fertile ground for community,' American journal of community psychology, 26(6), 1998, 823-851.

Better together?

My excellent friend Jan Steyaert, a Belgian with no waffle, drew my attention to the new book by Robert Putnam, Better together.

Jan reminded me that after Ray Oldenburg had written The great good place, his pioneering and variously sub-titled analysis of third places, he went on to publish a book of examples, Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories About the "Great Good Places" at the Heart of Our Communities. Now Putnam, with Lewis Feldstein, has done something similar, offering a set of case studies, 'stories about people who are building communities to solve specific problems.' Having catalogued the decline of social capital in America in the last century, in Bowling alone, we are offered the detail about 'hardworking, committed people reweaving the social fabric all across America...' Well, the notion of a prodigal nation being profligate with its social capital, and subsequently gaining redemption...

...smacks uncomfortably of a Christian Nationalism already too familiar in modern history. But as so often when motherhood and applie pie get celebrated, I find myself wondering if my cynicism is not too weary... If I find myself being negative, I have to examine that. So what is it about this book that makes me uncomfortable?

Is it no more than that intellectually I want a little more than Harry Potter-type stories of the goodies always winning through against the baddies because they have god or magic? Well here are some thoughts towards an answer. First, I've witnessed enough community development, and worked close to the literature of the field over the past 17 years or so, to value genuine success stories. And those told in Better together are not trivial, the ones I have read so far are rich in insight, nicely varied, and clearly written. But the relentless upbeat optimism about civic renewal begins to feel like a hard disk full of government press releases. Naming no governments of course.

I recognise this problem. When I was researching successful community-based online centres I realised there were many instances at the micro level of individual lives or families being transformed using the technologies, but no significant examples at the macro level, of the realities of social exclusion being completely seen off from an area. And partly maybe it's a question of scale. When an activist says, for instance, "my community" I start to wonder and when a local authority officer says "the community" and politicians follow suit, I feel the focus going quickly. I want to know if all the people who aren't participating much in anything, in that locality, are included in these uses of the term, or not? When it suits, I think is the answer. And here are Putnam and Feldstein writing in perhaps the most interesting chapter, which is about organisational social capital in the package handling company UPS: "no dispersed organization of nearly four hundred thousand people can be all one thing." Indeed, I thought, as I flicked back to the cover to check the sub-title, which reads "Restoring the American Community."

I have no difficulty with Dickens-Christmas tales of social capital at local level - far from it - but the notion of something called The American Community is for me problematic if it exists and problematic if people think it does.

It's £17.99 hardback. Better together looks like being a thought-provoking read and I'll maybe add some more thoughts here in due course.

‘Pedestrians have priority’ – Northmoor Home Zone again

Discussing the effects of the spatial redesign of the streets around Northmoor in Manchester, with community development worker Kathy McGowan the other day, I was struck by her comment that ‘pedestrians have priority.’

Is this an official, legal change, or just a perceptual change (albeit a significant one)? In other words, does the law applying to pedestrian crossings in the UK – which if I remember rightly, means that if a person steps onto the crossing, a car has to stop and give way - now apply for the length of the street? Just curious, as at one point I found myself obstructing a car and didn't want to be recorded as the first traffic victim in a Home Zone. If I'd been killed I'd never live it down.
The image above, like the previous one, comes from the excellent Northmoor Home Zone website.

Community consultation in Northmoor

I spent a little time at Northmoor Community Centre in Manchester today, and learned much in a short space of time. Northmoor has achieved a little fame as a consequence of the development of its impressive Home Zone scheme.

I have a couple of further thoughts to post here in due course, but one lesson that struck me reflects on how much we hear about ‘consultation fatigue’ in many regeneration contexts...

I understood from community development worker Kathy McGowan that, yes, people in Northmoor have experienced a great deal of consultation, but they have been able to see the benefits of that in their everyday environment – so they would not necessarily respond negatively or defensively to any further appropriate relationship with outside agencies. This contrasts strongly with other localities where, so often, little seems to have been accomplished to reassure people or to justify interventions; so that, as a consequence, people may be at best suspicious and at worst aggressive towards outsiders invited in through the backalleys of politics and bureaucracy. So (the sceptic in me wants to ask) is this ‘consultation receptivity’ mostly a characteristic of physical regeneration – given that many visible changes like safer streets can be brought about more quickly than profound social changes – or is it more to do with the degree of genuine participation in the decision-making processes? (Someone tell me it’s both please).

Openshaw Village

Thursday, I was at a meeting about neighbourliness in Openshaw Village, Manchester, with community activists Claire and Roy Staniforth, Ward Councillor John Longsden and others. This is part of an initiative set up by Manchester Community Pride to try to develop an understanding of neighbourhood relations as a basis for community regeneration and civic renewal.

Openshaw Village clearly has a fascinating history but seems to have suffered from labelling and from high levels of transience. In such circumstances, the calibre of people like Claire and Roy is always inspirational – ‘ordinary people doing extraordinary things’ – and should be celebrated. With their help, we expect to gain some insights into neighbouring and I’ll post more on that here in due course.

Walking and walkability

What I like about Living Streets, and the work of Philip Connolly in particular, is their thorough, to-the-point use of research. Here's a nice example - the Living Streets recommendations to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which has been scoping its forthcoming study of the urban environment.

In their contribution, Living Streets call for precedence to be given to walking and walkability; and for an investigation into how the new housing under the sustainable communities programme enables people to meet as many of their needs as possible on foot. They add: "This should also consider the quality of the public realm within these schemes."

These recommendations are supported by straightforward use of a range of research findings, including some of the work of Frances Kuo and her colleagues on the relationship between green space and sense of community. A few reflections...

1. It's good to see that last phrase, about the public realm, stapled on the end there. I'm increasingly persuaded that the lack of attention paid to the public realm could prove problematic. It's time to pick this thread up and get some robust points made about semi-public and semi-private space, familiar faces in neighourhoods, the use of cornershops etc all in relation to the public realm, because without them, civil renewal will falter.
2. As far as the sustainable communities programme is concerned, it's interesting to note that the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has just issued a paper and press release highly critical of the programme's sustainability criteria.
3. And mention of walkability reminds me about the Cities for People conference taking place in Copenhagen this June, billed as the fifth international conference on walking in the 21st century. (If I'm expected to walk there, I better set off about now...)

'Building inclusive communities' - IFS conference

IFS is the International Federation of Settlements and Neighbourhood Centres. The 20th International IFS Conference is on the theme of 'building inclusive communities' and takes place in Toronto, 18-24 June 2004.

Neighbourhoods: building inclusive communities will focus on the practice and principles of promoting inclusion in our neighbourhoods through a sharing of practical community-based strategies for building bridges across differences of age, gender, ethnicity, ability, class and sexual orientation.

The conference will explore the following approaches needed to make this goal possible:

Promoting diversity and inclusion

Inclusion through community arts

Engaging our youth

Building inclusive communities in challenging urban spaces.

Details in a pdf here.

"One of the most important books on community development..."

Alison Gilchrist, author of The well-connected community, which was described today as 'one of the most important books on community development that we've ever had.'
The claim was made by Danny Burns, Professor of Social & Organisational Learning at the University of the West of England, at the book's launch. Find out why.