Neighbourhoods

Treat please

Here's a curious little piece by Robert Vandervelde in the Globe and Mail raking over changes in the social experience of Hallowe'en.

It's called 'The neighbourhood or the mall?' with the writer reflecting a bit glumly on the decline in the number of kids in his neighbourhood who come to the door to scrounge, sorry, earn candy.

Last year he claims that Hallowe'en "gave me a chance to feel a part of my new neighbourhood. After going months without introducing myself to some of my neighbours, I could instead demonstrate my generous spirit through liberal distribution of candy to their children."

The turnout was poor. Apparently the kids took the soft option, missing out on the notion of scariness in the dark and getting their pickings at the mall.

I, however, lament that our kids are off the streets. Will they still skirt the dark recesses of their minds by taking candy from a Gap cashier? Will they experience the same community experience when Halloween treats are given to attract consumers instead of out of a sense of neighbourly generosity?

It can't be the same - the fear and magic you feel when the wind blows through the trees on a dark night can't be recreated in a mall. The wild excitement of Halloween night seems tamed when you walk down a mall looking for corporate handouts.

Thanks to David Sillito for the link.

Hospitality in the neighbourhood (2)

As a short sequel to my recent note about hospitality in the neighbourhood - it happens that there's a bloke from the next street along, laying some kitchen flooring in my house right now. (Does it seem like I'm always having jobs done and can't do stuff meself? On the first point, it's just coincidence, OK? And on the second, I'm old. Plus I got a truly awkward report to write, OK? And I'm rubbish at DIY).

This is not a coffee-with-three-sugars workman, oh no. But he was sufficiently appreciative of the bowl of warming winter stew to accept a second serving. He judiciously declined the wine, for the time being anyway.

Young people and anti-social behaviour again: against structure

Suddenly it's yoof crime and violence again. The youth justice system, as if we didn't know it, is 'in crisis.' Elsewhere in government there is a creative and positive approach to issues to do with arson and young people.

Never thought about it much? Nor me, in spite of a clear recollection of the power of Peter Shaffer's Equus which I saw back in the seventies... According to this press release, children and young people on the lowest incomes are sixteen times more likely to die in a house fire and 31 times more likely to suffer from an arson attack. So one hopes the DCLG's proactive initiative, acknowledging the link between youth crime and arson, has a chance of making a difference.

And while I'm writing this, having been unable to get there, ippr are having a gig at the House of Commons to pump some momentum into youth policy, launching their report Freedom’s orphans: raising youth in a changing world. The press release unpromisingly introduces the word ‘paedophobia’ in its title (which helps explain why I missed it first time round) but we learn that 'British adults are less likely than those in other European countries to intervene to stop teenagers committing anti social behaviour.'

Right, we're on familiar territory. The inclination to intervene and the fear of retaliation were the key themes of the seminar I organised back in January which sparked the chapters by Jacqueline Barnes and Liz Richardson in Respect in the neighbourhood, which will be published next month. The book is really about informal social control at local level.

There have been a few surveys (including I recall this one by a certain security company, with slightly unconvincing methodology) but we can expect the ippr work to be authoritative. The press release offers enticing sample statistics about readiness to intervene. I hope when I see the report I'll find some exploration of the possibility that what young people themselves tend to fear most on the streets is not adults, it's other young people.

It seems important, and overdue, for someone influential to at last come out and show clearly that there are social shifts to explain changes in the relationships between young people and those around them, for which young people are not necessarily to blame. But had I been there, I might have raised a point, which was put to me most clearly by our publisher Geoffrey Mann (who's been working in this field far longer than I and long enough to remember Equus I'm sure), to ask who is challenging the policy insistence on structured activities?

Not ippr: their report claims 'that participation in structured youth activities is better for young people than unstructured youth clubs,' and recommends 'that every secondary school pupil (from 11-16 years old) should participate in at least two hours a week of structured and purposeful extracurricular activities.'

Most youth workers and others providing various types of informal education are not against structured activities, far from it. It's a question of balance. As I understand it, there's plenty of evidence and anecdote, from youth work and the youth justice field, that unstructured time with young people is absolutely crucial, as a precursor to structured activity such as sport, drama, or volunteering; as a precursor to the provision of advice, information and counselling; and as something very important in its own right, largely because of the value young people attach to the relationships that they build up with trusted non-judgmental adults who let them be themselves and who listen.

The theme of informality, and the resistance to the formalisers and managerialists, is a familiar one on this blog, so I'll take up this cause without hesitation. After all, much the same point can be made about community involvement and participation: in particular, people who experience exclusion often won't feel comfortable being thrust into a formal participatory role, and will need less formal, escapable fringe involvement before they are willing to commit. I can remember trying to make precisely this point, fruitlessly, on a cross-departmental government task force on citizen participation a couple of years ago, sigh. Unfortunately those who govern us have a strong instinctive resistance to informality.

The C word has a companion

The Housing Corporation has just published its Neighbourhoods and communities strategy, which sets out various principles for housing associations in areas such as creating mixed communities, and supporting the Neighbourhoods and Respect agendas.

In scanning through it, it occurred to me that the abuse of the C word - roundly condemned by Will Davies in a recent Prospect article - may be blurring into combined abuse of the C&N words. OK, it's hard to make the word 'neighbourhood' seem quite as nebulous as 'community' but that won't stop people trying if they seem to sound good.

The real problem for me though in this unreflective mushing of language, is the relentless implication that 'community' somehow equals consensus. I suggest that residents in many localities seldom have any reason to be united and will often have diverse views which might cause conflict: important social progress is more likely to be made by working at ways of acknowledging and reconciling those tensions, rather than insisting that everyone's singing jolly songs together.

Classifying incivilities (I hardly know you - sod off)

Earlier this year Urban studies published the results of an Australian survey into 'everyday life incivility.' The authors, Timothy Phillips and Philip Smith, observed that

'No longer trivial, incivility has been inserted into a discourse of crisis and is taken to be an index of catastrophic civic decline.'

Among their more interesting conclusions was that 'respectable' people were the most likely perpetrators of an everyday incivility.* Also this summer we had the 'New Urban Politeness Index', a Reader's Digest survey of cities, blogged here by Matthew Kahn. I've even tinkered with the topic meself.

And today the Home Office has published figures on anti-social behaviour which include the following unspectacular statistic:

'Between 2003-04 and 2004-05 there was also a small but significant increase in the proportion of people who perceived people being insulted, pestered or intimidated to be a problem (from 11% in 2003-04 to 12% in 2004-05).'

Of course, fascination with rudeness is not new and I'm sure it wasn't in Shakespeare's day. But what may be new is the sharpness of the media-policy focus on it, which as Phillips and Smith imply, suggests a new kind of widespread concern verging on preoccupation.

Is there really a common cultural trend here? Jan Steyaert, in his chapter in the forthcoming Respect in the neighbourhood which I commend to you politely, argues that it is not so much that we are experiencing an increase in incivility, but that our societies are less tolerant of diversity of behaviour. (I should add that with characteristic insight he anticipates the current issues to do with ethnic and religious costume and social cohesion). A key thrust of the book (published next month, blurb link to follow soon) is that social relations at the neighbourhood level are a crucial and unacknowledged component in the perception and practice of respect.

It's interesting to ask what there is in common between disrespect by a stranger in a public place, and incivility from an acquaintance. Personally I find it much easier to deal with an instance of rudeness or disrespect from a stranger than from someone I know - indeed the latter can be emotionally scalding, presumably because we've invested more emotional energy in friendships. For people who suffer from temperamental indecisiveness in relationships, the forcefulness that others may feel they need to use to make a point can be disturbing.

If we take this a little further, noting that the Home Office survey asks about instances of anti-social behaviour within a 15 minute walk of the home (which would be a generous interpretation of neighbourhood) there are subtleties of acquaintanceship and we have to take into account the crucial difference between friendship and neighbourliness.

Friendliness, a key component of positive neighbouring, is by no means the same thing as friendship. There may be good psychological reasons why we seldom mix friendship with neighbouring. As our knowledge of other people increases - until an association reaches a degree of closeness - the greater the likelihood that we will discover a significant and potentially divisive difference of opinion, perhaps a political or ethical difference. And serious differences of opinion among people living in proximity are best avoided; which is what we tend to do. Hence (in the UK tradition anyway) friendship and neighbourliness are quite distinct, as evidenced by the fact that we tend not to visit in each others' houses.

Where that leaves us with the differences in incivilites between neighbours, friends, and strangers, I'm not sure. More research needed, I guess. Be my guest.

* Phillips, T. and P. Smith (2006). “Rethinking urban incivility research: strangers, bodies and circulations.” Urban studies 43(5-6): 879-901.

Neighbourhood L!fe conference: details

The Neighbourhood L!fe conference is taking shape. It's scheduled for 22-23 November 2006 at the Southville Centre, Bristol, organised by myself in association with Chris Gittins from Streets Alive. You can download the leaflet  including programme, a note about the fees, and the booking form.

Among the highlights, I'm particularly looking forward to hearing Liz Richardson talk about accountability in neighbourhood governance, with a response from local activist Martha Parry; a neighbourhood version of the community engagement game with Drew Mackie and David Wilcox; David Sillito's presentation of his BBC news material about neighbouring in England; a workshop from conflict transformation group Community Resolve; Izzy Mohammed and Adisa Folarin from Connecting Histories talking about using archives to work with community groups; Keith Hampton skyping in from Pennsylvania to tell us about his e-neighbors and i-neighbors projects; all building up to a debate about whether neighbourliness is a thing of the past. Well, is it? What do you think?

Join us - download the form and deal with it now, and help obscure community development consultants feel they have a role in life.

Compassion and anger: that'll be the community workers then

Early life experiences help community regeneration professionals develop the commitment and resilience to balance complex ethical and emotional work challenges, according to a recent ESRC study, Negotiating ethical dilemmas in contested communities.

The study explores how community development professionals negotiate the conflicting interests and attitudes of local residents and institutional actors such as management and local politicians, whilst dealing with problems raised by the short-term targets, competition for funding and the bureaucratic burdens of managerialism.

Findings confirmed the challenging nature of such work in multiply disadvantaged communities, but found that workers' extraordinary levels of commitment and resilience - often deeply rooted in early life experiences and identifications - informed a strong sense of personal authority and a capacity for emotional and ethical complexity.

One of the authors, Paul Hoggett, explained:

"The fact that many of the sample group were themselves 'survivors' meant that they were able to cope with levels of conflict, tension and distress that others might find daunting."

Researchers were also struck by the mixture of compassion and anger that underlay the respondents' belief in democracy, community and social justice.  These values were consistent and strong in the group, and contributed to significant overlap between people's 'personal' and 'professional' selves.

Press release. Report.

Choreography of neighbouring

Thursday is bin day, today it was also paper recycling collection day. I happened to be on hand just after the latter so I reunited a few boxes with their lids, and slotted them away off the path. A little later I heard the dustbin collection, followed by the sound of a neighbour wheeling various bins into place.

Then presently a knock at the back, here's the lady from next door with a small cake she's baked - one for me to go with me coffee. Thanks me dear, you alright? Oh fine. Mind the step. Off she goes.

Hospitality in the neighbourhood

I've just had a couple of workmen fitting a new front door. This has been a six-coffee job (so far, not yet finished) for the guy who's done most of the work. So I asked him if he measured jobs by the number of coffees they take to get done.

No, says he: two days ago was the worst, they worked at five different properties and didn't once get offered anything.

Well, there's a longitudinal and comparative study to be done of neighbourhoods' hospitality measured by the simple courtesy of offering visiting workmen and women a drink. Not sure the research funders will be happy with the sugar and biscuit budget though, that might need commercial sponsorship.

Neighbourhood Life conference

             

             

I've been working with Chris Gittins of Streets Alive to organise the Neighbourhood Life conference, which will take place in Bristol 22-23 November 2006.

This is a networking event for neighbourhood activists, community development workers, professionals working in neighbourhoods, local councillors, policy officials and researchers.

Highlights:

• Screening of BBC News material on neighbourliness
• Home Zone ‘walkshop’
• Play the Community Engagement game
• Launch of a new resource on neighbourhood action
• Debate: ‘neighbourliness is a thing of the past’
• Free copy of new book Respect in the neighbourhood, edited by Kevin Harris and published by Russell House, for every delegate
• Exhibition space available and networking time guaranteed.

Confirmed presenters and facilitators include:

• David Sillito, BBC News
• Saffron James, The Young Foundation
• Izzy Mohammed and Adisa Folarin, Connecting Histories
• David Wilcox, Partnerships Online
• Chris Gittins, Streets Alive
• Liz Richardson, University of Manchester
• (and more to come).

Organised by Local Level and Streets Alive. Advance information is here, this will be updated as the programme develops. Please email me if you'd like to receive further information and a booking form.

Mass blog of everyday life: 17 October

I've sometimes thought that future historians will look back at our age as compulsively informative. The publicity for the 'One Day in History' mass blogging day (October 17) fits the bill and manages to leave a few words out as it does so.

Don't let that put you off. It's an adventurous stunt and I think we should all go for it - no reason why there shouldn't be some neighbourhood or community group contributions, from the minutes of a tenants' group meeting to a record of a conversation at the school gates.

A mass blog for the national record. The History Matters campaign has designated a day for the public to make historic. We want as many people as possible ... to record a 'blog' diary of this one day to be by the British Library (sic) and others as a record of our national life.

October 17 has been chosen deliberately as 'an ordinary' weekday of no particular significance. We want to record the mundane and ordinary lives of citizens and by doing something contributing valuable to the historic record (sic). Material that could be used by historians and researchers for time to come.

More.

Walkability checklist

To my shame, I haven't been back to WalkingInfo for some time, and I'm pleased to see their Walkability Checklist available.

But I wonder about the predominance of negative options in the questions. How about some space to describe what was pleasant, on the offchance that if someone experienced something pleasant while walking it might just be worth recording, to give it validity and value? Or are expectations just unremittingly negative?

There's an online version of the checklist here.

The wrench and the ooze: informality again

Years ago I used to give some lectures on information systems and on occasion would take in the largest mechanic's wrench I could find, and wave it in front of students.

I was trying to make a point about the importance and role of imprecision. If you pick up a wrench and rattle it, you get that slack movement and if you didn't know what to expect you might think 'that's not a precision tool.' In fact it's very precisely made to be imprecise; which is the message I was trying to put across for the design of some kinds of information system in which you don't want too much precision because you might lose breadth of 'recall' and the possible wealth of serendipity. Just because we can build things precisely, and measure things and thereby control people's behaviour, doesn't mean we should.

I've long been fascinated by the notion of clear fuzziness, for example in relation to organisational missions - I think it's legitimate to have a fuzzy mission statement if you express it perfectly clearly. Now Johnnie Moore (via David Wilcox, who neatly links it to schmoozing) has shown what I think is a similar interest through the notion of 'ooze':

Ooze is a bit chaotic, it can't be completely controlled, it has a life of its own. I think it makes a good metaphor for what ... organisations in general, are really like. They don't really conform to the idealised diagrams, spreadsheets and flowcharts. Managing ooze is managing complexity, requires flexibility and give and take.

Why's this on the neighbourhoods blog? Because I mutter from time to time about the importance of informality (here for instance), of networking, of conversations and serendipitous encounters and resistance to regulation in our daily lives. (I'm not the only one).

And because I think this is perhaps one more example of a general cultural response to the over-domination of governance by accountancy, and of self-perpetuating manegerialism which I regard as the scientism of the obvious and the unnecessary. In the network society, the days of the linear formal thinkers are surely numbered. Yes thanks, I feel better now.

Keith Hampton on e-Neighors

Keith Hampton has a version of a recent presentation to a conference in Australia, about the e-Neighbors study, available from his blog - not just the powerpoint but also his delivery via Skype since he was several thousand miles away from the conference hall at the time.

And I made a curious discovery: having studiously got to the end (honest Keith!) I absent-mindedly clicked on the previous page, and then the previous one before that had finished, to find that the voice-over doesn't stop. So you can get the sound of multiple Hamptons in mysterious and pacifying harmony.

It might be unremarkable, but for the fact that I had some Steve Reich music playing from the other room. Reich would have loved it.

Yaodong cave dwellings

A finalist in this year’s World Habitat Awards for innovative and sustainable housing solutions, will you welcome please the Yaodong Cave Dwellings of the Loess Plateau in China.

'Three-quarters of regional population of 40 million in the Loess Plateau live in rural areas. Ninety per cent of these people live in various types of yaodong, or cave dwelling. The new model yaodong dwellings maintain connection with local and traditional roots whilst meeting the rapidly changing social and economic circumstances and expectations in China.

'The pioneering design has been developed in cooperation with the local community, and their participation in the design process is particularly valuable. This delivers an important sense of cultural continuity. Residents feel that the new yaodong has not been imposed on them from outside, but it has been borne out of their lives and traditions.

'The desirability of these dwellings has seen young people remaining in the area and even returning from the towns and cities, reversing the trend for rural depopulation and boosting the local economy and community infrastructure.'

Source: British Social Housing Foundation newsletter.