Neighbourhoods

Home improvement: women on housing estates

Yesterday I was at a really cracking event organised by the London Women and Planning Forum, on 'Home improvement: women on housing estates.' There were presentations by Lynsey Hanley, Rebecca Tunstall and Jess Steele - which frankly ought to have been a good enough line-up to attract many more than the 30 or so of us who took part in an informative and absorbing discussion. (Where was everyone?)

Lynsey Hanley offered a presentation on 'estates and women's mental health' based on her book, Estates. She talked in passing about 'the wall in the head' - the idea that once you're there, on an estate such as that where she grew up, you’re not expected to leave. With sensitive reference to family and social history she talked about how, after the war, the class system was reinforced through housing policy.

Lynsey also spoke about how the estate on the edge of Birmingham had no clear identity. It wasn't a town, it was described by planners as a township, but people who live there describe it as an ‘estate', a term which has a lot of negative connotations. She talked about the 'siege mentality,' the negative sense of community, and the lack of available 'talking therapies' for women, describing their experience with the sense of being cast away and cut off.

Becky Tunstall reported on her research into 25 years on twenty estates (which I also covered previously). There's a huge amount of detail in the research to which I can't do justice, but her conclusions seemed to be that improvements in the conditions of our least popular estates were more down to basic housing (allocations) policy than to regeneration policy, and to the national context of an upbeat economy, rather than to estate-based factors.

I was struck by Becky's identification of a 'dilution of decentralisation' on these estates, from estate offices to area offices - ie previously there was a move to provide highly localised services in a selection of estates, whereas now the trend is to provide such services area-wide but more comprehensively.

Jess Steele, now Head of Consultancy at the Development Trusts Association, made some big points about community action and community development on housing estates, stressing how the relationship of poor women with the state is particular, very intense and often fraught.

Her main point was about the need to recognise that estates house concentrations of claimaints, and she called for their needs to be linked to the creation of work in the 'phantom economy' of everyday local tasks ('mini-jobs' like low-level care and support, shopping, cleaning, school crossings, basic warden roles and so on) which are not part of the standard labour market. (Some of this of course is estate management with added social care, as practised very succesfully for example at Pembroke Street in Devonport). Jess wants a system of ‘community allowance’ which would allow people to do these jobs under contract to community organisations without losing their benefit entitlement.

Each of the speakers referred to the importance of community action on estates and women’s dominant role in that. Becky for instance, reviewing the twenty estates covered in her research with Alice Coulter, said that ‘community activity has been extremely important in the way these estates have developed’. While we touched on the question of whether or not practitioners have learned from the mistakes of the past, it was striking that there is a huge gap between the significance of community action and its influence on policy. Will that really change, in our looming age of localism?

Another major theme to emerge was a widely-shared scepticism about planned mixed tenure as a policy. Becky Tunstall, who is currently researching this theme, confirmed that there is no evidence to suggest that it ‘works’. (Hopefully, her research will clarify what we mean when we say it works or doesn’t). (LSE have a lunchtime seminar on this theme coming up, London 6 July 2007, with Susan Popkin from the Urban Institute, Washington DC: for details 020 7955 6562, a.tamas(at)lse.ac.uk).

This is essentially about living with difference, and I note that the theme is touched on, without a great sense of authority, in the recent report of the Integration and Cohesion Commission:

Cohesive and integrated communities are more easily achieved where there is a mix of housing types and tenures, and where people are able to move between tenure types and between sizes of home as they move through life and face different personal demands. (para 8.30)

I keep returning to this question of living with difference because it feels like an iceberg social problem and we’re on a collision course. That doesn't mean I'm into rearranging deckchairs when I say I look forward to future events organised by the forum: I'm told current plans include seminars on art in public places; and gardens.

Flagging up the issues

Forget all those fancy-tech ways of displaying your survey data, why not go for old-fashioned street-level visibility.

Tamsin Fulton has been researching dispersal zones, which are established by the police at sites of persistent anti-social behaviour. 'A dispersal zone can be as small as a phone box or as large as a local authority area.' They have to be reviewed every six months.

Tamsin surveyed residents' views on the renewal of the DZ in her own neighbourhood in London, and this is how the results were displayed.

'Buntings mark the end of the Dispersal Zone and residents' views along Waldegrave Rd, SE19. A white flag for everyone wanting to make a change to the conditions of the dispersal zone. Red flags represent the people that wanted to the zone to end. Black flags are for those that wanted to see the Dispersal Zone continue as is.'

Not sure about the choice of colours, but the use of technology is brilliant.

Remember public space?

The thinking I've done recently on third places got me revisiting issues around the confusion of private and public space, usually illustrated by reference to shopping malls.

I first bumped into this issue when I visited a new central library in Dundee ten or fifteen years ago. Unusually for the time, it was located in a small closed mall, surrounded by the usual big-name stores. I was always used to the prospect of homeless people using libraries and I thought at the time this was a particularly thorough way of severing that relationship.

Of course, in some ways malls have attracted some unfair press. I seem to recall Jennifer Light making the point (and if she didn't I'd like to make it anyway, with apologies if need be) that malls play a significant communal role. It's worth stating that 'commercial' does not necessarily contradict 'public'; and that it's often difficult to disentangle class from arguments about 'authenticity' (of architecture or the built environment generally).

Also, it's hardly unusual to observe young people gathering in malls just to hang out - indeed it's one of the few places where they regularly occupy the same space as other age groups at the same time. (Although that says more about the poverty of other public spaces available to them than it does about the malls, I suspect).

So what are the problems with malls? I'm not writing an essay here, just braindumping, but how's this for starters:

(i) homogenised detachment from the local geography/topography

(ii) promotion of use of cars: going shopping is a habit which justifies driving; and consequent effect on local trading economies

(iii) inability to reconcile commercial culture with recreative culture (most of those attempts one sees to give appearance to some form of cultural experience, even Santa's grotto, are embarassingly doomed: the best ones, like the giant chess sets for example, leave as much as possible to the actions of visitors)

(iv) abuse by the private leaseholders in repackaging the area as an exclusionary space: enter the security guard and his or her often ill-defined understanding of rights...

Oh, and on an emotional level, allow me to add: the wretched bloody antiseptic feel of the places.

I got to pondering all this because half an hour ago I came upon this sweet example of confusion over a shopping street (not a mall) posted by Bill Adler on Now public:

"This past Tuesday I went to downtown Silver Spring, had lunch, and then took out my camera and standing on Ellsworth [Drive], I began taking shots of the buildings with the blue sky and clouds as a backdrop. Almost immediately, a security guard approached and told me 'there was no picture taking allowed in Downtown Silver Spring.' 'What do you mean?' I said, 'I am on a city street, in a public place -- taking pictures is a right that I have protected by the first amendment.' The guard told me to report to the management office.

"There, Stacy Horan informed me that Downtown Silver Spring including Ellsworth [Drive] is private property, not a public place, and subject to the rules of the Peterson Companies.  They have a no photography policy to 'protect them from people who might want to use the photographs as part of a story in which they could write bad things about us.'  And she told me that many of the chain stores in Downtown Silver Spring don't what their 'concepts' to be photographed for security reasons."

So is there really a crisis of public space, or is it just an evolution that we don't yet grasp? It seems to me there really is a crisis, but there are subtleties which we need to explore and understand. Bundled into all this is a discussion to be had about the differences between third places and public space - an issue I've touched on recently in relation to public libraries.

A full analysis (at least of the UK context) would require an understanding of the economics and politics of property development in the public realm (is there really a decline of public funding for the public realm: I suspect so), and the relation of public space to (you knew it was coming) democracy...

All in good time: this post has gone on long enough.

Streets, pavements - 'sidewalks' even

When I was in Australia recently I found myself running through a new housing development and was amazed at the width of the carriageway - in some cases I reckoned about 30 metres - and yet no footway. It's true, I'm used to a crowded country; but why design-out neighbourhood encounters? Needless to say there was no sign of any other pedestrians.

Who designs like that nowadays? What planning authority allows them to get away with it? I was reminded of this when (looking for something else of course) I rediscovered this contrasting image from a small town in the Netherlands: OK, no pedestrians in this image, but trust me, I stayed there a few days - people walk and drivers behave considerately.

Perceptions of anti-social behaviour

I've only just caught up with this Ipsos-MORI report published earlier this month,
Anti-social behaviour and respect: people, place and perceptions.

According to eGov monitor,

Local authorities that keep their residents informed and updated on efforts to reduce anti-social behaviour will have happier and less fearful residents.

The study looks at the ways in which perceptions of ASB differ in different places, finding that our views are strongly influenced by what we believe is being done locally to tackle anti-social behaviour.

There does seem to be significantly better than expected perceptions in local areas that have been the focus for government attention... The findings do highlight the success of the Government’s 40 Respect Areas, showing that these areas are significantly more likely to record lower than predicted anti-social behaviour ratings.

Rural rides

While the Carnegie Commission report on Rural Community Development, just published,
turns up the volume for local rural interests in relation to community assets, governance and empowerment, I've been pottering round parts of rural and coastal Dorset this past week. I took particular delight in a few bus rides, fascinated at the frequency of cheerful semi-routine encounters between people who knew one another, whether or not they were neighbours. Rural isolation leaves many people dependent on, and spending a lot of time on, this transport.

I also picked up some interesting insights into rural community politics - same as everywhere, ie those who have wealth and power will do all they can to keep it to themselves, including co-option of as much of the media as possible and ceaselessly shoring-up the structures that defend what they have - what the law exerts itself to protect.

That may or may not help explain comic oddities like this - a call by the traders of Lyme Regis for CCTV on their streets. I've visited many localities around the UK and beyond, some of them quite difficult places to inhabit or even to visit, and IMHO Lyme Regis is one of the very last places that needs CCTV. And (though it's not the same thing) I suggest that CCTV is one of the last things the town needs - after a modest list which glaringly includes more opportunities for young people, and some concerted economic development that should emerge from the latest community plan.

Meanwhile, I love the quirky anomalies you pick up sometimes in rural craft shops - like this bizarre figure which would possibly have stopped me in my tracks in London or in an airport gift store, let alone a quiet rural settlement.

Integration and Cohesion: the report

The report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion is published today, with a strong emphasis on improving cohesion through local action. If you work in or around community development in the UK, you won't be able to escape the significance of this document and I hope you wouldn't want to. If you are outside the UK but interested in cohesion issues, I think this could still be an important document for you.

'Some of the key influences on poor cohesion are low satisfaction with an area as a place to live, high perceptions of levels of anti-social behaviour and a high level of deprivation – all issues which can be addressed locally, or be tackled by local institutions. Our analysis also found that there was no simple link between poor cohesion and any of these factors; or good cohesion and the reverse. Local history, trends or events are also important... Improving cohesion in the long term is about local action: local areas have the expert knowledge about particular local circumstances; and local actions are what will result in integration and cohesion.'

Here's my first, undeniably positive reaction from a quick skim, as I won't have much time to deal with this in the next few days.

The report is structured around four principles:

• shared futures - this is about 'an emphasis on articulating what binds communities together – rather than the differences that might divide them – and is about prioritising a shared future over divided legacies';
• strengthened rights and responsibilities;
• mutual respect and civility, also referred to as 'an ethics of hospitality';
• visible social justice.

The chapter on respect and civility is of particular interest to me and I may post about it separately in due course. I picked out the following:

There is a call for government to take integration and cohesion seriously in relation to youth services provision, but I get the impression that the role of intergenerational work in promoting community cohesion is not given nearly enough momentum in this report.

The Commission proposes a nationally sponsored Community Week (I suppose continued abuse of the C word is inevitable) 'with a focus on celebrating all communities and inter-community engagement'.

The Commission has also acknowledged the dearth of evidence on the most effective ways of stimulating meaningful interaction and building cross-cultural friendships, and it calls for a programme of research, hurrah, 'to explore more closely what works' (in this respect) 'in different neighbourhoods and why.'

There's a healthy emphasis on education and citizenship and the promised and needed support for ESOL classes (English for Speakers of Other Languages) is there, plus an interesting recommendation that authorities should reduce the amount of language translation they do: 'translation should be reduced except where it builds integration and cohesion.' There also seems to be a sensible detachment from media over-excitement about notions of 'Britishness'.

Annex B looks like a very useful categorisation of what seems to work well and less well in five types of area (unhelpfully called 'family groups'). They are: changing, less affluent rural areas; stable less affluent urban areas with manufacturing decline; stable less affluent urban areas without manufacturing decline; changing, less affluent urban areas; and areas with tensions arising from a single issue.

Article by Madeleine Bunting in yesterday's Guardian. More in today's Guardian including comments by Ed Cox on the point that cohesion needs to be considered everywhere, not just in urban areas with a visible ethnic mix: 'cohesion tensions in the future are more likely to be experienced in unexpected places where 'diversity' is new.'

'As local diversity becomes more complex, we think mutual respect and civility should underpin the way we as communities navigate a shared course through different understandings of what is acceptable or normal.'

Housing associations and neighbourliness

Aha, I see The Young Foundation promise a seminar (13 July in London) on some joint research with the Housing Corporation about neighbourliness and governance.

It's not been easy to find out about this project - I recall two or three phone calls to the Housing Corporation, one of them lasting a good 30 minutes with several uncertain respondents, making enquiries after I picked up rumours about it, and drawing a blank. Still nothing that I can find on the HC site. I really don't understand why people don't want others to know what they're doing with (what I assume is) public money.

Well sorry, guess I'm just feeling nitpicky because of the contrast with the Open Innovation Exchange, whose progress (hopefully unstoppable) at the Cabinet Office today has just been blogged by David Wilcox. Whatever happens, well done to Simon and Jane Berry, Ben Whitnall and David, and the others involved, for putting such effort into being straightforward.

Warm scones

How's this for timing? I was just fixing meself some strong coffee, to persuade my jetlagged brain to work on an overdue report, and struggling to find anything to dunk in it. So there's a voice at the backdoor, it's my next door neighbour, 'Oh Kevin you're back,' with some fresh scones just out of the oven.

Third places, libraries and the public realm

I've uploaded a short summary of the presentation I gave last week at the Third Place Forum in Caloundra.

Following comments I received afterwards, I think the key issue is to explore more deeply the differences and interplay between 'community' places or 'community-based' locations, and the public realm. It seemed to me that in Australia the distinction may be more blurred than it is in the UK, which is probably a good thing. But it's surely still true to say that while they overlap there are differences, and that therefore there are questions about how third places in either case are co-produced and styled. Reflecting on this relationship helps us explore the role of public libraries, and vice versa.

Sorry business at The Dreaming

Last week, courtesy of my generous hosts at Caloundra, I got to spend time at The Dreaming, billed as Australia's international indigenous festival and in its third year. It's the kid brother or sister to the famous Woodford Folk Festival.

Unhappily there was 'sorry business' and I didn't get to see any dancing. Early in Saturday’s programme, a dancer collapsed and died. (Report). He may have travelled far and possibly had been tragically affected by the cold weather we all experienced. Out of consideration for the families affected, the dance area was closed.

I still got a buzz just being in this intensely diverse collection of ethnic groupings and age-groups. The festival offers drama, film, dance, comedy and a few spontaneous acts - like these stilted tree-characters - that you encounter as you wander round.

Sure, it was a hippy tea-party - storyteller Gail Robinson said it's a bit like preaching to the converted - but we shouldn't forget how important it can be to celebrate and reaffirm common values. Australia doesn't have tangled and knotted cohesion problems like the UK but it still has a job to work-through some large-scale and profound issues of ethnic relations. Those who are doing so have to come together from time to time and draw strength, and that's what I think I witnessed.

My thanks to Gail and her partner Charlie who were perfect stewards.

The third place game

Last thursday in Caloundra, Queensland, I helped facilitate a game about third places with storyteller Gail Robinson and city librarian Louise Bauer, as a prelude to their third place forum. We're preparing a write-up: meanwhile here's my short account.

The Third Place Forum was established as a libraries initiative, but we wanted to explore the characteristics of third places generally in order to bring out some tensions we anticipated around 'community'/public, public/commercial, inclusive/cliquey, and so on.

I worked online with Louise and Gail for a week or two before I went out, sharing ideas for what could be done, and we came up with a five-part exercise. About a dozen good folk, enough for three groups, were recruited into the Caloundra art gallery early on thursday evening.

The game started with a plenary flipchart exercise to warm people up and get a set of attributes of 'community life'  -  features like 'inclusive,' 'green,' 'supportive' - which they believed to be important.

Each group was then given a set of cards representing suggested third places, and asked to discuss each one and record some notes about the features of community which it relates to, is there a cost at point of use, what are the key attributes of the third place, who uses it, and who's excluded?

Groups then took the cards to a large-scale aerial map of the city to locate examples of the third places they'd worked on. Anticipating that the cards would be clustered, we'd grandly invested in some toilet roll stands and clothes pegs, only the best will do, in order to show where the places occurred on the map. This classy high-tech solution had the advantage of adding a physical third dimension to the map as it developed.

The third stage of the game required each group to spend a few minutes developing an imaginary character and inventing a set of problems that the character faced. (With this technique in particular we acknowledge the ever-present influence of Drew Mackie and David Wilcox, (see their Useful Games site). One of the 'characters' was in fact a small family, the others were an old man living alone and a young professional woman who is wheelchair-bound.

The character was then 'introduced' to the next group who had to spend time developing 'a week in the life' of their character and recording this on the sheet. Whenever the group made reference to a third place, they noted it on a small colour-coded post-it, which was afterwards removed to the map.

The final phase was to discuss, in plenary the narratives constructed by the groups about their characters, and what lessons might be learned from the card-clustered map.

There are follow-up phases too: first, some insights may be gained from an analysis of the notes made on the cards (when I get round to it) and these can be explored with participants online. Secondly, participants suggested that it might be interesting to explore third place use during a week in their own life, so we're thinking about how best to follow this up: it won't be a representative survey but we could test some methodology.

On the whole it worked very well for a first run, especially the links from one phase of the game to another. We haven't cracked the uncertainties you get when you mix fictional characters or venues with real, mapped places. And we may have needed to be less selective and more comprehensive in our list of third places (which would be a challenge). A final point is that it was noticeable how these Aussie participants, with their unfailingly positive outlook, managed to sort most of the characters' problems and left them living pretty much happily ever after. I'll be surprised if we can get a similar effect running the game in the UK.

Once we've done the write-up and clarified next steps, I'll post again about this.

Managing open spaces

The Neighbourhood Management Network is hosting an event looking at innovative and successful ways of managing and improving open/green spaces. It takes place in east London next Tuesday 19 June 2007.

This event will look at:

• The impact that open spaces have on the physical and mental well-being of individuals, and in building cohesive communities
• The views of central and local government on open space maintenance and development
• Tips on how initiatives are working to keep spaces clean and safe
• Why and how to involve the community in the design and planning of public spaces
• Overcoming practical problems when changing/developing a public space.

Speakers include Matthew Frith from Peabody, Demos's Melissa Mean, Richard Hebditch from Living Streets and Richard Sharp and Philip Morris from Canning Town Regeneration.

Details here. Contact Anita Delaney: londonandse (at) neighbourhoodmanagement.net, 020 8586 9493.

The circular setting

In an appealing echo of the pinfold as an informal meeting space, I came across these two examples on a visit to the new State Library of Queensland in Brisbane yesterday - a comfortable semi-private chatspace in a corner of a large reading room; and an open-air fireplace looking out over the river.

In the pinfold: talking about third places

Third places are much in my mind at the moment as I'm off to Queensland shortly to contribute to a 'third place forum' and work with public library and community development folk on a workshop exercise. If it's not a complete flop, I'll give some account here.

By way of preparation for the workshop I've been trying to capture some of the attributes of different kinds of third place - particularly in terms of who's excluded, if anyone, and whether or not there is a cost at the point of use. And from the micro end of the spectrum here's my current favourite (taken a few days ago when I was with my old friend Martin Dudley in Bishopthorpe village, near York). It's the newly reconstructed 'pinfold': essentially a nicely contained free-access open-air central meeting and resting place.

A pinfold was a kind of pound used to hold stray animals: their owners usually had to pay a fee (a 'pain') to recover them. According to this interesting account,

'Pinfolds were an essential adjunct to mediaeval open fields'

and 'straying animals were a nuisance to the community; they trampled and consumed growing crops causing considerable damage.'

In Bishopthorpe, at one stage more recently, the pinfold served as "a draughty, but recognisable bus stop." It's great credit to those involved to have restored it and converted it into a micro-space that people, as I found, were quick to make use of. It will be interesting to see if and how different groups timetable their use of it.

There's a blog about the development of the project.

Resident involvement

The Housing Corporation has just published a policy document on resident involvement for housing associations. People first: delivering change through involvement includes the requirement for housing associations to work with residents to develop and produce Involvement Statements.

Housing associations are also encouraged to explore the options for providing a 'community call to action' mechanism, such as is required of local authorities, as a response when services fall below an agreed level.

The following 'building blocks' of involvement are suggested:

• Ensure that people have equal opportunities to take part in involvement and take active steps to engage with under-represented and vulnerable groups.
• Associations should develop a profile of residents in their homes and make positive effort to develop ‘market intelligence’ on their needs and aspirations.
• Associations should provide accessible information and feedback and take an open approach to providing information that is requested.
• Develop a range of methods of involvement, with active residents, and/or communities, that allow people to be involved on their terms.
• Negotiate with residents, and/or communities, the terms of reference for involvement activities (e.g. constitutional requirements for funded community groups, timescales for consultation).
• Enable involvement by providing properly resourced capacity building and training for residents, staff, and where appropriate, communities.
• Develop and sustain mechanisms, with residents and/or communities, which enable influence over investment in and the design of affordable homes, and where relevant, wider neighbourhood priorities.
• Consider with residents and/or communities the value for money of involvement activities, including the added value that involvement creates.
• Develop with residents and/or communities appropriate neighbourhood level targets and scrutiny where they want this, and it is relevant.