Neighbourhoods

Neighbourliness, street parties, and apartments

With street parties taking place around the country today, there will be plenty of fodder for those who fancy the contemporary political line on local community: this rhetoric continues a long tradition calling for local social relations to be close and supportive in the way that friendships are, echoing chocolate box close-knit neighbourhoods of the interpreted past.

And indeed, I've no doubt that many new connections will be made today, and many established relationships will develop from recognition to conviviality and perhaps to friendship.

Of course I don't have any problem with that, but I do wonder about the insistence that it is 'what we need' as a society, the implication that this need is self-evident, and the expectation that we should all be looking for mechanisms that help to bring it about.

As I sat uncertain in my own neighbourhood get-together this afternoon, watching the conversations, I was thinking about the temporary sense of beleagueredness of the least clubbable. Those for whom this kind of nationally-decreed sociability is at best awkward may well resent the social forces that try to make them feel guilty.

Also happening a lot during today's street parties, I'd guess, will be plenty of qualification of the assumption that we choose to live near people who are like us. You might wonder about this received wisdom if you have republican views and suddenly find out you've been living among flag-waving monarchists all these years. Or vice versa.

Perhaps the point is that, to the extent that we are able to choose, we choose to live among people whose values and behaviour we can get along with, so long as we don't have to find out too much about them. That's why we don't tend to talk about politics with people we don't know very well. Certainly the popular political ideal of a country full of strongly-bonded, unified local communities that readily achieve consensus and exploit it for the nation's greater glory just seems plain daft. No amount of royal weddings or associated street parties is going to change that.

Would the anthopologists tell us that living among people without knowing or wanting to know too much about them is normal? Normal for advanced urban societies? Or peculiarly British? Well, while you're thinking about that, here's Hugh Schofield offering the beeb's 'From our own correspondent' view on the code of neighbourliness in Parisian apartments (thanks to Paul Evans at Local democracy for pointing to this):

'I am certain that the fact French and other European societies are more socially-minded, both less free and less individualistic, is linked to the habits of apartment living.'

I've come across this view before in architectural discussions about the potential for neighbourliness in tower block living, referring to mainland European cities to suggest cultural differences based on urban housing forms. But I'm not aware of any comparative studies. Schofield claims that:

'In apartments you get to know your neighbours much more intimately than perhaps they or you would like. So you learn to keep your relationship one of formal distance, respectful but not friendly. You learn not to express your independence too readily by playing music late or having parties, or running a bath at midnight.'

If you go to the Neighbours from Hell website it's likely you'll find plenty of people who would welcome widespread adoption of this accommodating culture in the UK, because their experience is painfully different.

So how do we get our politicians to recognise that you don't invest in a sense of neighbourliness that is 'respectful without being friendly' by repeatedly asserting the romantic gospel of earnest, committed, close-knit community? It's rather like the government's over-insistence a few years ago, on meaningful social interaction, as if apparently superficial neighbourhood relations were not important. They are.

 

Loneliness, isolation and social media

JRF have published a useful and clear literature and practice review for the Neighbourhood Approaches to Loneliness programme.

It's worth reiterating a few points. As I've noted before -

• loneliness is not the same as isolation - it's an unwelcome form of isolation which has social (and by extension economic) consequences;
• loneliness is not age-related (the Gulbenkian Campaign to End Loneliness is focused on people in old age, and I fear this serves to perpetuate the social dismissal of the issue among other age groups);
• loneliness is quite separate to the sense of belonging or not belonging to a place; and
• the way we address it could be influenced by the power of social media in strengthening and sustaining local connections.

There seems to be a widespread assumption that loneliness is increasing. The Mental Health Foundation's excellent report last year suggested as much but does not seem to confirm it. I think we should be alert but sceptical.

As it happens, with a little time to do some catching up over the past few days, I've managed to read one of Keith Hampton's recent papers, on the relationship of internet and mobile phone use to network size and diversity. Among the points made with characteristic thoroughness are the following:

• reports that social isolation has increased significantly in the USA since 1985 seem to have been exaggerated and in fact isolation may have declined; and
• there is no evidence that the use of internet or mobile phones diminishes the size or diversity of people's core networks. Specific uses of social media were found to have a positive relationship to network size and diversity.

The Neighbourhood Approaches to Loneliness programme includes a question about new media, but JRF's approach to technology has always been tentative, not to say reluctant. It would be good if they would grab the initiative in this case, and really open up the potential here. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the evidence on local online channels gives us plenty to go on.

Previously:

• Local social ties have weakened, but where's the evidence?
• Loneliness and mental distress

 

Local online network supports co-production: 'we don't expect to have to do this on a regular basis'

Hugh Flouch and I have been doing a routine for some time now talking about the way local online networks help residents to co-produce the quality of their local environment. Now here's a little gem of an example, from Harringay Online, the site which Hugh set up four years ago.

On April 18 at 14.13 Darrell Osbawn posted the following message:

'Fairlands Park is in a bit of a state. The Council knows about it and is organising some staff to come and empty the bins etc. However, there is a lot of small litter spread across the grass areas and rocks/sticks all over the play areas which the Council probably won't get. Is anyone interested in meeting at the park sometime in the next few days to spend an hour of so to help sweep the play areas and pick up the loose rubbish? If so, please send me a PM on here and we can organise a time to meet and clean.'

Less than two days later, thanks partly to the way social media helps people to organise informally, eight residents had turned out, filled ten bags of rubbish, notified the council to pick them up, and the job was done. Follow up is here.

Note the observation:

'We don't expect to have to do this on a regular basis. It was only necessary because the Council has/had not emptied the bins for 2 weeks.'

Subsequently it has been noted that due to recent public sector funding cuts the Parks Hygiene Team has been reduced from 15 to 5 persons; and the question raised:

'How can a borough be covered by 5 people, bins & litter picking?'

Neighbourhood environment clearly affects neighbourliness

For a long time, I've been saying that neighbourliness can be 'designed-out', and asking why it cannot more deliberately be 'designed-in'. The literarure is gradually starting to accumulate and this question gets a little extra feeding from some interesting research recently published in Environment and behavior (subscription, online first).

The researchers used measures of the physical environment in ten neighbourhoods in Portland, Oregon, and found

'a greater probability of higher levels of neighborliness as the total number of positive physical-environment characteristics increased.'

Judiciously they used the neighbourliness index from the 2003 social capital report on the General Household Survey.

Strikingly, the results were unchanged

'after controlling for race, self-reported health, perception of safety, years of neighborhood residence, age of house, market value of house, and proportion of homeowners in neighborhood.'

The authors point out that causality is not demonstrated: conceivably, people who are disposed to be neighbourly give rise to neighbourly environments. But it seems more likely that it is the other way round, don't it?

The picture I took some years ago in an area called The Roger in Joao Pessoa, Brasil. I've chosen it because it reminds us that there are probably quite a lot of features not solely to do with the physical environment, that influence neighbourhood interactions. Like for example: low volume of cars, favourable weather, people having stuff to do outdoors, dogs, children, impromptu seating arrangements contrived in community spaces and so on.

Behaviour change, my arse

Well here's a little entertainment. Matthew Taylor, for whom I have enormous respect but who in my opinion is visibly in the wrong place, takes issue with Dave Clements on the Joe Public blog for the way he challenges 'nudge theory' and the whole morally-suspect 'behaviour change' approach promoted by what is still known as the 'government'. He describes Dave's post as a 'predictably tendentious and intellectually second rate contribution'.

Well ok, the post looks a little hurried and not as well under-pinned by supportable assertions as we might like, but hey, it's Joe Public. And all credit to Dave for putting his hand up to challenge the snide 'behaviour change' rhetoric. I'd like to extend the challenge to some of the piffle about 'innovation' that comes out of our tired, wretchedly tired, think tanks.

I really don't care about intellectual rates, whatever they are, and I doubt that Dave does either. What I'd like to hear of is some thinking about what comes after the think-tanks, partly because some of them seem to be running on empty, and partly because as a consequence there's a serious danger of this government doing yet more of its own thinking. How scary is that?

About a year ago, before I took this stab at the lamentable pomposity of the RSA, I wrote that:

'Part of the difficulty is that many London-based suits don't speak to people who have the dirt of estate life under their fingernails, unless for a photoshoot and through an interpreter. They meet together in London events to problematise the issue as 'out there', thus ensuring that they do not see themselves as part of it.

'One of the consequences is that any action to be taken becomes the subject of organisational management (control) rather than local networked response.'

I don't think that's far from the point that Dave Clements is making. Because these policy approaches have too arbitrary or fanciful a connection with the reality of so many people's lives, it's hard for them to be anything but coercive.

I see no sign of this state of affairs improving, and 'behaviour change' and the fashionable rhetoric about getting ordinary people to 'learn to innovate' etc seems to confirm that decline. Perhaps the time is right to hear the regal opinion of Jim Royle: 'innovation my arse'.

Whoops, I think I just slipped a few more places in the intellectual ratings.

What chance of some policy on second homes?

Shelter reminds us that 'there is a drastic shortage of housing in England'. There are approximately 252,000 second homes in England, and 288,000 long term private empty homes. Second homes are largely concentrated in attractive rural and coastal locations (including Cornwall and the south west, Norfolk, and Cumbria) plus the City of London. Beyond this regional trend, they are very much localised, with properties clustered in particular villages or neighbourhoods.

Shelter have published a new policy briefing which notes that evidence is mixed as to the impact that second homes have on local communities and housing markets, but

'Local authorities have limited tools available to mitigate any negative impacts.'

The paper notes that private empty homes could make a contribution to meeting housing need:

However, they are not spatially concentrated in the areas of greatest housing need and local authorities face challenges both in getting empty homes back into use and preventing homes from falling empty.

Among the recommendations:

• Council tax subsidies for empty and second home owners, which reward underuse of stock, should be abolished
• Councils should be allowed to charge higher rates of tax for unused stock and use the revenue raised to fund housing development.

Hands up who expects this government to grab this one with all four hands?

Neighbours Day Aotearoa

I’m fascinated by the momentum for nationally coordinated, policy-sanctioned efforts to stimulate social capital. One day perhaps it will be possible to study and compare the expressed objectives and reported outcomes of some of these schemes.

Our kiwi friends had their inaugural national celebration of neighbourliness, 26-27 March. Hopefully there will be some useful evaluation material to emerge: at least they’re giving it some thought. One of the founders, Rebecca Harrington, is reported here on Scoop:

'Because the idea of Neighbours Day Aotearoa is focused on locally organised gatherings in homes, backyards, or footpaths across the country, gauging exact levels of participation was always going to be a challenge.

'The indicators we have are the visitors to the website, media coverage, participants in social media, and direct contact from individuals (which was hard to keep up with)' she says. 'A huge number of websites have helped spread the word, and we’ve discovered mentions published in all kinds of places we didn’t know about from kindergarten notices to businesses’ staff newsletters. So we think the real level of involvement is a lot higher than we can see or measure.'

The pic is from here.

Income inequality and violent crime

The Equality Trust have published a research digest on the effects of income inequality on violent crime, noting that:

• There is a relationship between inequality and homicide. It has been found in many different settings.
• Research has shown that small reductions in income inequality cause large reductions in homicide.
• This relationship seems to be part of a more generally divisive effect of inequality, which weakens the social fabric.

 

Can you have local community when you don’t need to have it?

Pseudonymous comment on Carlone Carter’s article on street parties, in the Economist:

‘…when people are poor, vulnerable etc, they need to support each other. When people are rich they don't. Perhaps it is in human nature for people not to care about each other once they are not vulnerable...or perhaps its a negative externality of our neoliberal society. Perhaps you need government intervention..as when my local council sent out SMSs asking us to check on neighbours since apparently people have been dying at home without anybody knowing. Surely what ever the cause, the decline in community is not a thing we should aspire to.’