Neighbourhoods

Neighbourliness book launch

Thanks to the efforts of Ben Lee and Claire Grant at Shared Intelligence, we launched the Respect in the neighbourhood book at NCVO yesterday, with a few words from myself and Liz Richardson chaired by Carol Hudson, followed by plenty of discussion. Most of the folk there were neighbourhood management practitioners and it was great to get their take on the importance of neighbourliness. I think people really valued Liz's thorough and highly pertinent research findings about residents' views on promoting informal social control.

And for me it was a buzz to have all the authors there: from left, Jacqueline Barnes, meself, Aydin Mehmet Ali, Philip Connolly, Liz Richardson, and Jan Steyaert. Thanks to Martin Dudley for the pic. Thanks also to Russell House Publishing for their contribution to the event and ongoing support.

I used the opportunity to blurt out some thoughts on what I may yet call 'thin neighbouring' - the need to assert an understanding of neighbourliness which stresses low-level, very informal, non-committal repeated interactions; emphasising recognition and uncomplicated acknowledgement rather than knowing other residents; identifying the nod, the wave, grunt or half-smile without there necessarily having to be meaningful conversation or visiting in people's houses. Not that the latter aren't important; but if we're looking to understand the connections between the quality of local social relations and the quality of civil relations in the wider society, we have to get closer and look at the basic ingredients.

Celebrating community centres and their workers

I'm a community-centre junkie, and today I've been back to my all-time favourite. Except it wasn't there.

The old community centre at Windhill in Shipley, West Yorkshire, was genuinely ramshackle. It was a fairly large set of pre-fab units which originated, I believe, at Heathrow Airport (a poignantly non-local locale) and, as a charitable donation, was flat-packed up the motorway decades ago to be reconstructed for the benefit of local people. On a wet day it felt like you could poke a finger through the walls.

I've run and participated in a few workshops there over the years, but mostly just been privileged to listen in admiration to accounts of what went on. Serious energies put into funding bids have resulted in a classy new building. This is a low-income area with some grim deprivation around, and it's reassuring for residents to see something of quality emerge in their midst, something on which a bit of money has been spent.

And I understood today a very clear message: that the buzzy sense of welcome and engagement, of valuing everyone, of ownership and commitment which characterised the old building, is just as unmistakable in the new one. The community workers - Alison Swisczowski and Kath Quinn (pictured above eight years ago) and their colleagues - just make it like that, cos that's what they do. I'd like to live in a society which recognises and values that.

Not defining community engagement

The Home Office has published a guidance document on community engagement, based on a pilot project with community safety groups (CSGs) in the east midlands, 2004-2005.

To be honest it's a bit disappointing with very few practice lessons that aren't scarily obvious. What's most scary of all is the classic civil service insistence on definition, and a crumpling failure to do so:

A clear definition is essential to assess the degree of community engagement that is to be achieved... Performance measures need to relate directly to the original definition.

In this project it was left to the consultants to explore with the CSGs the definition of ‘community engagement’. This resulted, however, in a lack of clarity among both the consultants and the individual CSGs about their guiding principles and remit.

Maybe we should leave the definition of community engagement for a bit and get on with stuff. FWIW, I think the key lesson should be this: in the same way that consultation is problematic without community engagement, so community engagement is problematic without an ongoing basic level of community activity. It's very unlikely that there isn't some community activity going on, in any neighbourhood, so that's where you start. If it's not sufficient, you might need some community development to generate more. Maybe we should just try and get that message across, loud and clear, for starters.

Decent housing, decent estates

The wholesale demolition and rebuilding of the country's worst council estates will be a priority for Communities England, according to regen.net.

Housing Corporation chief executive Jon Rouse said in a speech that large-scale rebuilding was the only way to improve some estates. If ministers back the strategy, he said, it would mean significantly higher spending on "mixed communities" schemes.

If you go down to the woods today

I was out for a gentle off-road run today and came across this well-ventilated but secluded property in a rural setting.

In view of all the attention (much of it desirable and overdue) suddenly being paid to young people, their relationships, gun crime, negative effects of television, and so forth, I was faintly heartened to see it. Not exactly a work of craftsmanship, and I'm not sure about the tree's long-term future, but I liked the hint of wit and the evidence that some kids are out there messing about, some of the time.

Social networks in neighbourhoods

Here's good news. Folk at the Young Foundation have been tinkering with their website, and out pops something I wasn't aware of - a new programme of work using (at last) social network analysis at local level:

"The Young Foundation is working with the Centre for Collaborative Excellence...

(I know, stop sniggering, someone tell them if they want to celebrate excellence, to start with a name that doesn't provoke thigh-slapping derision)

"...to develop innovative social network mapping projects in neighbourhoods. The projects aim to improve community engagement and empowerment and improve local service delivery, by mapping networks of relationships between residents, service providers, public agencies and local authorities."

It's probably not fair to assume we'll see the customary over-emphasis on service delivery, let's wait and see in hungry anticipation. More here (but nothing specific yet).

Manual for Streets

The Manual for Streets will be launched at the following events:

• London, Thursday 29 March 2007
• Newcastle, Wednesday 9 May 2007
• Taunton, Wednesday 20 June 2007
• Cardiff, Thursday 21 June 2007
• Coventry, Thursday 5 July 2007
• Bolton, Wednesday 18 July 2007

Blurb. But it will cost you over £200 to get in, how's that for inclusion.

The draft MfS can still be seen here.

The image is from the CABE/IHT/English Heritage Designing streets for people report.

Localism, governance and the public realm

The Museums Libraries and Archives Council has just published a think-piece I wrote for them on localism, governance and the public realm.

Originally the idea was to explore how neighbourhood governance could impact on, and be influenced by, the local cultural sector; but as the broad scope of the local government white paper became apparent, including its coverage of community cohesion and engagement, so did the scope of the essay. I think the new localism presents an oustanding opportunity for local libraries, archives and museums to re-assert the public realm - not as it used to be, but updated to reflect 'engaged democracy' as it is emerging.

The moment is there for the sector to take a lead in developing a vision of the public realm in which people recognise the civic, contribute to it and value it; in which residents organise and participate in local events and associate around such events; where they have places over which they feel a sense of ownership and to which they can go. The case must be made for a public realm in which people feel informed, respected, able to influence the local processes that affect their lives, and supported in celebrating their sense of community.

Kids these days

Last night, not late, in a restaurant I observed a boy of about three or four sat at a dinner table with his parents. The moment the child was sat down, a laptop was placed in front of him with some animated feature for instant distraction. Next time I looked round, the scene that I had anticipated was being enacted: dad was on the mobile phone, a call that lasted at least ten minutes, the toddler had a dummy stuck in his mouth, just in case he was so rash as to want to try and communicate, and mum studied the wallpaper.

Oh look, here's Libby Brooks in today's Guardian:

New Labour has pandered to popular prejudice with its antisocial behaviour agenda, as well as legitimising adult avoidance of collective involvement in the socialisation of children. Additionally, over recent decades this country has become infected with a culture of individualism and materialism that has proved disastrous for children and parents. The values of parenting are in direct opposition to those that currently dominate society - the modern absolutes of autonomy, freedom and selfhood. [Emphasis added]

This is à propos of that Unicef report - which apparently demonstrates how cruddy British people are at relating to and looking after their children.

What strikes me is that, while we've had commentators who have challenged the report's methodology and currency of  data, there are few voices if any to deny the overall message for the UK, which seems to be this: the way we regard, refer to, treat and support children in this country is a disgrace and has been for a long time.

I too might find minor fault with the report (indeed the authors make various caveats as they go along). I'm not sure for instance about the way the index for children's relationships has been constructed to include such a strong emphasis on percentage of children living in single-parent families and stepfamilies. But the study uses children’s own answers to survey questions and the findings on 11, 13 and 15 year-olds who report finding their peers ‘kind and helpful’ are, in the case of the UK (less than 45%), devastating.

This is not to say that there are not many super young people growing up who are a pleasure to meet and talk to, with strong supportive networks and a confident outlook: they're the fortunate ones who've escaped the relentless, systematised dumbing and drubbing and confidence erosion, through policy, media, education system and culture.

This is an issue of exclusion. Too many young people in this country are excluded from any kind of sustained supportive context - which is not just the responsibility of parents (the key target of the JKG, the Jerked Knee of Government) but of what I call the 'four sources' of support: family, friends, neighbours, and formal services. For any individual in our society of whatever age, where one of those four sources is insufficient, it ought to be relatively easy for the vacuum to be filled by one of the others: but what happens too often now I suspect, with young people and older people especially, is that there are serious shortfalls in the first three sources, and formal services are over-stretched (and not always appropriate anyway).

So, to return to my vignette and to suggest that it is not entirely an isolated instance - what contribution can social policy really make here? The way parents behave towards their children is largely out of the direct reach of government, but not at all out of the reach of its influence. Government can and should contribute to the shaping of the culture of everyday life. I think respect for others (obviously including children, it shouldn't be necessary to say that) is a fundamental issue, and it's ironic that the government has identified it as such, but gone about addressing it in such a perverse way. After their initial flapping away of this report as methodologically flawed, it will be interesting to see what kind of sincere governmental response, after ten years in power, is forthcoming.

In-adequate: things lacking in life

Will Davies has a delightful handwritten fragment, of words and their meanings, here. (The poignant power of that technology - the alphabet, the script - which enables us to communicate beyond the immediate and the local, but keeps us pinioned to the human).

'Alleygater Swansea'

Among the phenomena that can affect quality of life at local level, anti-social behaviour around people's houses, and rights of pedestrian access, are often in tension.

Now, under new "alleygating" regulations in Wales, local authorities, after consultation with police and local communities, will have the discretion to gate certain paths without having to close them permanently as rights of way.

The new regulations mean rights of way would be suspended, but would allow for gating orders to be revoked when circumstances change or improve.

Last June we had the Ramblers Association contesting rights of way: presumably such cases have given rise to this response. It will be interesting to hear views on the likelihood of 'suspended' paths being reinstated.

Via Planning Resource.

Why invest in community arts?

Comparing JRF's limited funding of community arts to the huge sums given to New Deal for Communities' projects and physical regeneration schemes, Lord Best says that in his experience arts projects give quicker and more powerful outcomes.

This comes from an article on the value of community arts projects by Holly Sutton in Regen and renewal.

Thoughts about working from home

Heavy snow here this morning, people don't realise how hard it is. It took me ages to scrape the sleep from my eyes, then I skidded at the foot of the stairs but managed to get to my desk without damage. There was a collision in the kitchen and horrendous congestion around the toaster. And you wouldn't believe how long it took me to get the brain started. Then the nightmare of digging a pathway to some papers I needed. One of my ideas was left standing on a platform for three-quarters of an hour without any information. It never used to be like this.

Public space guide for community groups

CABE are about to publish It's our space: a guide for community groups working to improve public space

This guide is to help anyone involved in a public space project for the first time. It gives examples of great outdoor spaces led by community groups and highlights lessons from their experiences. It seeks to inspire people to demand better places and in doing so challenges users of this guide to think carefully about leaving a legacy of excellence in the projects that emerge.

You can order in advance.

Social capital madam? What kind would you like?

Western societies face a crisis of difference, of learning to live with the Other. Do we need one-size-fits-all social capital, or culturally-flexible social capital?

If like me you read Putnam's Bowling alone some years ago and were never quite happy about it's patriotic chummy motherhood all-things-wise-and-wonderful tone, but never got round to analysing why - here's what we need to clarify our thinking: Diverse communities: the problem with social capital, by Barbara Arneil, published last year.

There are so many important points in this book that I would encourage even those who will find its bone-dry style and slight repetitiveness a bit off-putting, to stick with it.

Essentially Arneil challenges the concept of a homogeneous civic culture which suffuses Putnam's thesis, and she does so in a scholarly and systematic manner. As she says at the outset:

Putnam uses many different kinds of data to prove, empirically, that social capital is in decline while simultaneously making the normative argument that this pattern of decline is a bad thing.

She clarifies what you would expect, which is that from the point of view of certain social groups, over the past several generations, the weakening of the normative centre has been accompanied by a strengthening of rights and an invaluable broad raising of awareness of diversity. Which is a good thing. (I recall a conversation with Steve Downs in Washington DC some years ago when he lamented the fact that the 'European' concept of social exclusion had no currency in the USA: if only, I thought as I read this book).

The golden age of social capital in the USA was of course a period of cruel and sometimes devastating exclusion for many: as with the close-knit communities of pre-war England, it arose under dubious social conditions which we should be relieved to have overcome. Social capital within marginalised groups (Arneil tracks the development of minority ethnic groupings and women) has undoubtedly flourished since then and been exploited. If the model of a cohesive society which Putnam calls for is for a moment thought to be desirable, we must recognise that, as Arneil puts it, a robust civic culture ‘can also represent a powerfully constraining, disciplining or exclusionary force for those groups of people who deviate from the given norms, along religious, ethnic, cultural or gendered lines.’

In the end, Arneil's message (albeit transmitted in a somewhat subdued style, which partly explains why it took me so long to blog this) is more positive than Putnam's because she places genuine social value on the recognition and strengthening of minorities; and she refuses to accept that a white masculine christian capitalist definition of the good society is necessarily what we should all be striving for. Her prose won't have you purring with delight but the thoroughness of her approach will stand us all in good stead for a long time, I think.

Reciprocity in neighbourliness

I'm trying to write a paper about neighbourliness and have been thinking about the reciprocity of acts of neighbouring. Viewing acts of instrumental support in terms of direct reciprocity between two neighbours (rather than as part of a generalised model of exchange with less recognisable returns), research has found that unbalanced (or non-reciprocal) exchange does not necessarily lead to discontinuation of the exchange.* In other words, sometimes one neighbour helps out another without getting much in return, and keeps doing so.

(Before I go on, I ought to just admit that in the interests of a little rebalancing, yesterday I baked a wholemeal loaf and took it into my next door neighbour: from previous experience I know that her husband is very fond of it, and I wanted to check out how he's doing).

However, the researchers only included instrumental support (or ‘favours’) in their study, and it seems to me that other, intangible forms of interpersonal behaviour which are in some way supportive – for instance a sympathetic chat on the doorstep to provide comfort in the face of bad news, or the sharing of information about local services – are likely to be viewed by neighbours as valid contributions to the same exchange relationship. (So don't we need a piece of work that maps and describes the subtle variety of acts of neighbourliness?)

Many years ago I recall rushing out of my house shouting when I saw from my window a neighbour’s toddler stepping into the road, as the mother was getting the shopping from her car. For this simple act I was rewarded almost immediately with a bottle of wine from the shopping bag. It was clear that I had to accept it, not least because there was probably a confused swelling wave of guilt as well as gratitude in her expression of thanks. But it was also, of course, a recognition of the non-obligatory, but potentially vital, role of neighbour.

*F Thomése et al, Continuation of exchange with neighbors in later life, Personal relationships, 10 (2003), 535-550.

Rural councillors

The Commission for Rural Communities has launched a national inquiry to explore the opportunities and challenges for rural councillors and what stands in the way of them doing more to help rural people have greater influence over local decisions.

Among the issues they're interested in:

• Examples where rural councillors are helping their community influence local decisions
• The barriers and constraints that stand in the way of rural councillors doing more
• Why people sometimes chose other routes, such as local charities or community groups, to influence local decisions
• What the role of councillors should be in the future and what is needed to unlock that potential.

Press release. Deadline is 18 May 2007.

Keep flawed consultation in the community!

An urban regeneration company is facing protests about inadequate consultation. I know what you're thinking - 'dog bites man, that's not news.'

The 1st East URC has set out regeneration proposals for Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft which include new parks, marinas, homes and offices, and they even propose moving Lowestoft railway station to create a new town centre. But not everyone's happy with the consultation process. Community groups? Nah, it's those rowdy left-wing agitators in the private sector trying to disrupt the rightful natural process of profitable development.

One chamber of commerce rep said: "Existing business in both towns is supportive of regeneration, but is becoming suspicious and alienated from it by the way it is being treated."

Tsk. Maybe bring in the community activists to mediate?

From Planning resource.

Refugees and public libraries

I've long been a fan of the Welcome to Your Library project run by Helen Carpenter, and the news digest compiled by Helen with John Vincent. WTYL is a project connecting public libraries with refugees and asylum seekers. By extension, it aims to improve access to and quality of public library services for everyone. The project is working locally in Hillingdon, Leicester, Liverpool, Southwark and Tyne and Wear.

They've just launched the WTYL website which includes an events page, several case studies, and a link to the news digest.

Banner pic

It's been pointed out to me that my banner pics are a little obscure. ('Good', I heard a voice say, but it wasn't mine). The one on the left shows a dog lying peacefully in the street on a fairly relaxed estate; the one on the right shows a door leading to a courtyard. I took this down a London side street. Here's another shot. I never went to the door and looked through, I preferred the view just as you see it.

Panto postscript

I've been passed this much better picture from our recent panto, of the ugly sisters backstage, which shows, ah, their dedication to detail.