Neighbourhoods

Attaching values to neighbouring

Lloyds TSB published some pop survey results the other day, of interest because of the categorisation. People were asked to score their neighbours from zero to 10 in the following categories:

• 'Friendliness' – refers to how friendly they are when you meet
• 'Consideration' – is a respect for your home in not being overly noisy or damaging your property
• 'Vigilance' – watching over the neighbourhood and offering to monitor your home when you're away'
• 'Tidiness' – how tidy the property and surrounding area is
• 'Tolerance' – how patient and tolerant they are to your behaviour

Apparently Bradford leads the national rankings with the most considerate and tolerant neighbours. Glasgow has the friendliest, Swansea hosts the tidiest and Manchester is home to the most vigilant locals.

The survey is oriented towards property prices and insurance of course, a theme which keeps recurring these days not just as a preoccupation of the conservative mentality, but as a measure of or justification for co-production. Expect more of this in the coming months.

Various sources, eg GMTV, Channel4, Telegraph.

What makes a neighbourhood network?

How do local connections between residents get fused into an effective communicative network that comes in time to underpin everything else that happens?

I got into an interesting discussion yesterday at Balsall Heath in Birmingham, where I was lucky enough to be picking up wisdom from people like Paul Slatter and Hannah Worth from Chamberlain Forum, Ben Lee from NANM, Elke Loeffler from Governance International, plus Dick Atkinson and the folk from the famous Balsall Heath Forum.

I'd heard and read plenty about Dick and about what had been achieved at Balsall Heath, and this was my first visit. It's a hugely reasuring place, unpretensiously displaying the commonsense of ordinary people getting stuff done locally.

But I wanted to know, how come? There are active street 'stewards' (with or without the title) in 15 sets of 3-4 streets. I liked Dick's remark that

'With a bit of support and encouragement people do more than they think they can.'

This gives the forum a firm foundation of local people who are continually ferreting away at issues. OK let's be clear: we're talking about unpaid, unelected active local citizens, who 'have emerged out of street life' (Dick's words) in numbers that are sufficient to cover an area with a population of 14,000, loosely linked through neighbourhood management and an elected forum. According to the website

There are 22 residents groups, and 70 Street Stewards. So the whole neighbourhood is covered. Everyone knows someone and the sense of mutual self-help is fostered.

So I'm slightly enviously think about why this hasn't quite happened in Shipley, where I've tried to help out every so often over the years. Having a resident-employed resident, Abdullah, who supports the street stewards and takes some of the pressure off them, must make a difference. He tells us about the advantages of living in the neighbourhood where you work - you get a better response, people don't think you have a hidden agenda: 'they don't see me as a threat'.

And this can be very proactive work. We heard a story of two residents doorknocking because of an eyesore front garden, to discover a man on his own who badly needed, and was given, support.

But none of this, nor the recorded history of Balsall Heath Forum, quite explains how local networks grow and strengthen in some places and not in others. Informality is obviously crucial. But how come the initial connections, presumably between a few willing, motivated, slightly uncertain folk, have ramified and come to underpin a significant amount of what can be done now without the clumsy machinery of the city's formal services?

We didn't come up with an explanation, but I certainly came away with a clearer sense of the fundamental significance of an informal communication network in driving social change at neighbourhood level. For sure, if I'd been shown a unique ingredient I wouldn't have trusted it anyway.

DIY streets: study tour, Coventry, 11 May

Sustrans have announced a free study tour of one of the ten streets in their pilot project on DIY streets.

The project has helped residents to re-design their own streets affordably, making them safer and more attractive places to live. The idea is 'to replicate the positive successes of home zones, creating more peaceful spaces where kids can play and neighbours can chat, at a lower cost and with communities driving the process.'

Iden Road, Coventry Tuesday 11 May 2010

Start 10:30am, finish 1pm, meet at Coventry rail station

Contact Lisa Brook for more info. More on DIY Streets.

The pic was taken from the Sustrans site: don'tcha wanna know if it was before or after?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

The amount of emotional or instrumental support that you receive from your social network, and the amount that you give, can be calculated and represented on a reciprocity scale.

So you might give a lot of practical help to others and not need much yourself at the moment, scoring positively for instrumental reciprocity. You could have been going through a hard time and be needing more emotional support than you've been able to offer others, scoring negatively for emotional reciprocity.

Back in 1992, as I've been reading, some Dutch researchers plotted these scales for a large sample of older people. As we'd expect, instrumental support given decreases sharply with age. The researchers found that instrumental reciprocity began to decrease at the age of 64, echoing that rather crummy Beatles song.

More interestingly, they identified a turning point, where a relative surplus of instrumental support given changes into a relative deficit, at approximately the age of 66. Of course, you can expect your social network to decrease in size as you get older, and your reciprocity scale will also be affected by living in a care home where most of your instrumental needs are going to be catered for. The research seems to suggest that a sizeable minority of older people do deliberately seek to increase the amount of emotional support they give as their ability to provide instrumental support declines.

Unfortunately, as a society we're not very good at providing contexts for emotional support, so that too many older people experience a sense of dependence rather than interdependence, submerged below the hoizontal line in the graph.

I'm hoping there has been some follow up to this research: I've not found it yet, but would be keen to learn of it.

van Tilburg et al. Flow of support. In: Living arrangements and social networks of older adults, VU University Press, 1995.

If you need a plumber

Last night Hugh Flouch and I were talking with group of residents about their local blog. Some discussion about who participates and who doesn't, including the observation that young people prefer to use Facebook and don't appear on the site. Someone suggested:

'They'll follow the blog when they're old enough to need a plumber.'

Not unrelated - and linking back to the question I raised a few days ago about low-income and mixed-income areas - was an observation that when conversation has built up and there are well over 100 comments on a post, "there's usually the word 'property' in there somewhere".

Nutrition and community meals

Recently I've been building a wiki on neighbourhood support for older people, to try and focus information and understanding on this crassly-overlooked issue. I'll open it soon, but meanwhile if you're interested in contributing please get in touch.

Here's the sort of thing that goes into the pot, so to speak: ILC-UK have published a paper by Lisa Wilson on Personalisation, nutrition and the role of community meals. It notes that there is a strong underlying economic argument for supporting older people to remain independent and in their own homes, and for ensuring good nutritional status. It begins with a striking statistic:

'There are currently more people in the UK receiving meals in their own home than there are older people in care homes.'

Hence one of the main arguments:

'Meal provision and access to food must be considered a core part of social care packages and meals must be provided to at risk groups, not just to those who have reached the point of being unable to manage themselves.'

Social justice, trust and generosity

Super post from Julian Dobson about fairness and how our frantic politicians have assimilated it as a central concept as a way of talking about social justice:

'to ensure everyone plays by the rules, we spend more and more time checking for abuses and seek to create fairness by finding new ways to stop people getting something for nothing. So we give destitute asylum seekers a handout of just over £5 a day to meet all their needs, on the grounds that they might abuse the system if we were any kinder.'

It reminds me of a distinction which I still find I have to make occasionally, between neighbourly relations based on trust and neighbourhood watch which is based on distrust. There is something about generosity of spirit and meanness of spirit, which Julian brings out:

'every successful project I've come across and that has made a difference in its locality... has worked by cultivating a culture of generosity.'

 

Social inclusion and local sites

To Leeds today for the second Talk About Local unconference on local websites - a more relaxed event than the last, exuding a more confident, 'we know what we're doing' getting-on-with-it air. Nice pic of TAL founder William Perrin taken from the Cover It Live coverage here.

I got in a huddle with a few others to explore the contrasts between local sites in low-income neighbourhoods and in more affluent or mixed areas. There were about 10 of us, but it must have been a subject of interest because when we emerged, it turned out a separate group had formed to discuss the same topic. That's a risk with the unconference format I guess.

They were probably a bit posher than us, I'd say. I bet they had comfy seats.

I proposed the session because I'm interested in two possibilities:

• local sites in low income areas are realistic but may require different approaches, including sustained community development;
• local sites in mixed areas will appeal to, and be exploited disproportionately by those accustomed to power and influence - crowding-out those in the neighbourhood who might have the most to gain in terms of increased social capital.

Anyway we're not proud, so here are a few points (in no particular order) that I picked up or which occurred to me during our session:

1. Bad press (labelling) can be a provocation that gives rise to a local site.
2. There still seems to be little perception in the community development field of the potential of local sites. (Some weary head-banging on this...)
3. In a low-income neighbourhood, the other forms of media that are funded by advertising don’t apply to you, so what else have you got that might speak for you?
4. There may be a tendency to under-estimate levels of internet penetration in these neighbourhoods. (Some credit for the high levels was apportioned to Facebook).
5. A degree of inertia about issues locally suggests the need for an intense level of intervention (but see point 2 above).
6. Get people together in a room. The offline is as important as the online. If you live in a neighbourhood where you can't get people together in a room, you betta get some CD and hope you're not stuffed by point 2 above.
7. Beware the tyranny of text: this tech releases video and sound, so use it.
8. The behaviour in social media spaces is something that some people just don’t get. (Like trust – some people become immediately distrustful in online conversation).
9. We may have to make the case for amplifying the voices that otherwise don’t get heard (but see point 2 above...)

I had to leave after lunch but there's a real buzzy feel to this movement now. Back in 2008 I organised an event with CABE which led me to predict that 09 would be the year of local websites. OK, not far wrong.

Walk on

You notice Kev, he's a big fella - burly, bald and tattooed. He has a background in serious drugs and gangs, which he wants to tell me about.

When you come into the community centre he offers you a cup of tea and a cake, 'how d'you like it?' Kev sat in with the street reps who were talking about how to recruit others by having some meetings in the evening and not just the day-time. It's an age-old problem only partly helped by new technologies.

Most of those present don't like to be out nights, not round here. They feel vulnerable and they start talking about the young people who gather round the shops at the end there. No-one says anything negative about the kids, just that they're intimidating, and there seem to be other vague factors.

The idea of a walking bus is revived - grow your own intimidating group. Where would it start, cos you lot're over there but we're all up this end aren't we? The conversation's lively but going nowhere. Kev puts his hand up. I don't mind being out if people'll trust me, and I'll come to your house first, then we'll come onto you alright?

Sorted, locally.

The high life

Diane Dyson draws attention to what looks like a cracking report on the social impact of high rise housing for children and families.

'The geographies of children residing in public high rise housing were dominated by local, designated play spaces. Conversely, the geographies of children residing in private high housing covered not only a larger territorial range but a wider variety of purpose built play spaces as well as public transport and commercial spaces.'

'We found public housing children with high levels of independent mobility but a small territorial range, and private housing children with low to average levels of independent mobility, but lacking in the critical mass of other children and social infrastructure that would make them feel part of their new high rise communities. This is not a problem of high rise housing in central cities. This is a failure of planning to consider the needs of children and families.'

Vertical living kids: creating supportive high rise environments for children in Melbourne, Australia.

Big Society is being watched

David Wilcox has blogged more on the Big Society Network, which describes itself as 'an organisation being set up by frustrated citizens for frustrated citizens, to help everyone achieve change in their local area.'

Our aim is to not only create the largest co-operative or mutual in Britain, but to create a mutual that is Britain. Every citizen can be a shareholder, contribute, receive help and rewards.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think there's a difference between a network and an organisation, which is kinda significant. Either that's been thought about and is being disregarded, or it hasn't been thought about. If I'm reluctant to trust the network it's because it seems to be an organisation with an agenda, and the agenda doesn't appear to include values and principles that in my view are essential to community development: inclusion and social justice, for instance.

If the response is, 'no, the members set the agenda, so join in and help shape it' then it begs all sorts of questions such as why there are no proposals to strengthen the existing community sector networks (er, we call this 'bottom-up' - it's just a bit if jargon we use, you'll get used to it chaps). At least the Brown government recognised this, albeit in its central-controlling way. Any self-respecting community activist can smell a hidden agenda from well beyond their own territory: they will be suspicious of the Big Society Network perhaps not because it has an expressed agenda just yet but because it's a centralised construct coming from a philanthropic tradition.

A post on ConservativeHome notes the possibility of 'the politicisation of community activists' under the Big Society umbrella, which apparently has also occurred to the Taxpayers Alliance. Is it possible that these people have been immersed for so long in a cakestall-mafia version of the voluntary sector that the prospect of voluntary action having a political dimension is a bit of a shock?

Here's a suggestion: start from the recognition that community action is fundamentally, insecapably political, and get used to it. Attempts to depoliticise it will be self-defeating and may lead to a revival of confrontational radicalism. I welcome the Big Society thinking from the tories because it might just force us to think about the politics of communty action after a couple of decades when that really hasn't been paid much attention.

Julian Dobson has it about right I reckon:

If we want community activity that won't frighten the horses and will leave most of society pretty much as it is, and will give you social action without having to worry about social justice, this kind of set-up may be a good bet. Those who want more substantial change may well find themselves suffocated in such a network.

 

My networking opportunity: your unjustifiable public subsidy

My thanks to the excellent Tim Davies, too busy writing his thesis, for permission to post this delight:

Talking to Derek Wyatt MP during a tour of the House of Commons he gave to students from the Oxford Internet Institute, Derek commented that the cost of pensioners collecting their pension at the post-office far outstripped the cost of delivering direct bank payments. Regardless of the social interaction people felt they got at the post office, Derek said, it was simply not a cost-effective way to offer pensions.

Later in the tour, we came to the voting lobby of the House of Commons. 'We could all vote electronically' Derek noted, 'But coming into these lobbies is one of the few chances you get to catch a Minister to speak to, or get quick interaction with them'.

(Authors report, House of Commons Visit, Winter 2009)

Previously:

'We would like a say in our way of life'
Post offices, informality, and participation
Please serve yourself: rural post offices
The local post office: a brand in jeopardy
Post offices and social value

'To spend more time with my sheep'

I spent a couple of hours yesterday in a meeting about co-production where we discussed, among other things, the ways in which many local councillors in England are sidelined by the governance structures (if it's not strategic enough for cabinet, it's not important. But here, read this stack of papers before Monday's meeting...).

We also compared the motivations of councillors and the incentives, or lack of, by comparison with community activists for example. There's always a sense of puzzlement at why people choose to stand as councillors given the persistently unfavourable regard in which they are held and the ways in which the system makes it awkward for them to help residents.

But I see that for some city councillors there are other distractions. Bulgarian City Struggles as Councilors Play Farmville on Facebook.

Via Keith Hampton.