Neighbourhoods

Social mix and attachment

The debate over social mix continues, which in itself is not a bad thing. Here's something from a report on The influence of neighbourhood deprivation on people's attachment to places, published by JRF and the Chartered Institute of Housing today:

'In general, high levels of mix of various sorts do not have much of a negative effect upon attachment. Indeed, some dimensions of mix (notably tenure and education) can be good for attachment. Where policy creates new communities, this research suggests that the most beneficial form of mix to consider is a mix of educational levels.'

(Attachment is assumed to be a Good Thing). The summary points out that:

'Higher levels of social mix are not generally associated with lower levels of attachment'

and also suggests that

'it might be useful to find ways of recognising or valuing local connections when assessing applications for social housing, since this may help to strengthen existing networks.'

Indeed - noting that suggestions like this tend to get made in a tentative way, I'm gathering a little collection because I suspect/hope that there is some momentum building, and we'll gradually start whispering more loudly. Summary. Full report.

Meanwhile, yesterday we had a report from the Dept for Work and Pensions, on
Social housing and worklessness: key policy messages, coming a little while after this literature review.

I still wonder about the government's new-found purpose in addressing 'worklessness' wherever it thinks it can be hit. I was struck by this paragraph:

'It is questionable whether interventions intended to diversify the social mix in existing areas of social housing will have a substantial impact on levels of worklessness for two key reasons. First, there are various practical challenges associated with the creation of more mixed-income communities. Second, it is questionable whether the promotion of social mix will effectively address social polarisation and concentrations of worklessness in areas of social housing. Disadvantage in the labour market was far more commonly associated with personal disadvantages and roles and responsibilities that were incompatible with work, rather than anything intrinsic about where people were living. This is not to suggest that gains might not be forthcoming from the promotion of social mix, but to point to the importance of such activities being complementary to efforts to improve the incomes and support the livelihoods of existing residents of disadvantaged areas.'

Researching social relations in urban environments

Yesterday to Manchester for a workshop on reseaching social relations in urban environments, I got to hear three nicely judged and matched presentations about how people relate to their neighbourhoods and how the notion of neighbourhood is constructed.

If you go to the link above you can follow through to some of the work discussed. While the meeting was mainly about methods, it's interesting to think about two points that came across from the research that was described -

From Mags Adams ('Sensory Urbanism: sensewalking as a methodological device') and Andrew Clarke ('Understanding community through mobile interviews and participatory mapping') I learn that people do not separate the physical environment from the social when they speak about their neighbourhoods. (Well, I could have told you that, but it's good to have the research to back it up).

Meanwhile from Roger Burrows (talking about 'Life in Coded Spaces?') I learned, if I have this right, that there are externally applied systems (geodemograohic systems) that are not simply objective, but in some way invasive and distort the social while describing it. (So a bit like humans really). Fascinating stuff, I left wanting more.

Milkmen: the official mention

Here's what my sister-in-law told me. She was watching BBC Breakfast this morning when the milkman called, so she went to the door to say she didn't want another pint, too much already, but I can't stop and chat cos my brother-in-law's on the telly talking about neighbourliness...

Naturally most milkmen are interested in the topic, and this one is no exception - keeps an eye on folk to make sure everything's ok - so in he comes to watch for the few minutes that I'm on, in a somewhat shapeless conversation with Wayne Hemingway following one of David Sillito's short film pieces. Then apparently just a quick question - 'does he mention milkmen in his book then?'

If you're curious about the answer, one good way to find out would be to go to this page and be enticed.

The neighbours who never speak / David Sillito 7 May 2008.

Trust and key-holding

David Sillito has some pieces on BBC Breakfast tv this week, beginning today in a couple of localities where I've done interviews myself, Pembroke Street in Devonport, and Bolton Woods in Shipley.

And if you want to find out more detail on some of the stories David's picked up - and the detail on the research he commissioned which suggested that 36% of respondents would not trust any of their neighbours with a spare set of house keys - perhaps you'd like to come along and hear him speak at this book launch.

The question about key-holding was posed hypothetically. In some research I carried out in Manchester a few years ago, reported here, we asked the direct questions: 'Do you hold a spare key for any of your neighbours? And do any of your neighbours hold your key?'

We found that in the 65-74 age band some 49% had keys held by neighbours, and 43% held keys for at least one neighbour, but the other age groups were significantly lower. The size of our sample left some of our stats a bit shakey, whereas the BBC survey had 1000 respondents and shows little variation across regions (England and Wales) or age groups.

Are we a nation of strangers? / David Sillito 6 May 2008

Neighbouring and older people

My text about older people and neighbouring will be published shortly by Community Development Foundation.

There will be a launch, or to put it more technically, an excuse to gather and guzzle, at Shared Intelligence in London on Tuesday 27 May 2008, which happens to be National (wait, make that European) Neighbours Day. (Thanks to Ben Lee from the National Neighbourhood Management Network for providing the venue).

Speakers include David Sillito from BBC News, Chris Gittins from Streets Alive, and Ryan Campbell from Age Concern England. If you'd like to come along, please register as places are limited. Further information is here.

You're not from round here are you?

The other day we had the first in our modest series of locally-based Living Library sessions.

One highlight was a conversation between a young male teenager and a woman who had been evacuated from London in wartime and had lived in the village for 40 years. She said that she still did not feel like a local.

It's a nice example of just the kind of nuanced, hidden aspect of local relationships that we think the Living Library process can bring to the surface.

Thoughts for tormented neighbours

What can we say of events in Amstetten, other than to note that 'in a community where most neighbours knew each other,' sure, such things are possible.

And where tormented neighbours must be questioning themselves - did we do enough, should I have thought of this, should you have asked about that? - yes, the line between privacy and collective concern or responsibility is often hard to discern. It is not wrong that a person who wants to keep himself to himself, can do so.

Neighbourliness is a partial solution to many things, but it is probably not the whole solution to anything.

A bang at the door

I met a bloke today who told me he'd once put a firework through the door of a house on the corner of my street.

'They got me down the road - my trouser got caught in the chain on my bike, I fell off and they caught me. But they looked after me cos I cut my leg. They took me back and patched me up, and it ended up I went out with their daughter for about three years.'

Yes, since you ask, I had the temerity to ask him why he put a lighted banger in the letter box.

'Cos it was a big metal box' - his arms outstretched - 'it would have gone Boom!!'

This gent, now aged around 55, was clearly still animated at the thought of the sensational percussion he almost orchestrated. It was nowt to do with the people who lived there, about whom he knew nothing.

It's a nice reminder, chiming well with my own childhood recollections, that some behaviour perceived as anti-social is just boyish exuberance. (Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

Learning from the local: engagement and cohesion

A quick note about yesterday's Learning from the Local conference organised by the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths.

The main purpose was to report on a recent local project, the Newtown Neighbourhood Project (report will be linked here when I'm told it is available). This material was well contextualised with other presentations, including an update from Marj Mayo on a current JRF project on community engagement, governance and ethnic diversity - 'fluid communities, solid structures'; and a session on researching and working with gypsy-traveller groups.

The Newtown Neighbourhood Project worked in a predominantly white area with a sizeable proportion of residents of gypsy/traveller origin. The partnership (a housing association, a community engagement consultant, and CUCR, with Housing Corporation funding) seems to have worked really well, so that participative research was possible and small specific actions followed from consultative exercises.

The event got me thinking about the ways in which the community engagement agenda may be merging with (or coming into collision with) the community cohesion agenda.

My take on it at the moment, FWIW, is that the two agendas come from different drivers but just because there are tensions between them - for example, there are practices of engagement which might seem to contribute to segregation; and at the same time, as Michael Keith pointed out in response to a question, there's a politics of cohesion which is fairly reactionary - I don't see why there should not be a natural combining process here.

I'd like to live in a society where people incontestably have the right to informed participation in decision-making processes that affect them, and where at the same time people from different backgrounds get on well together. Doesn't sound too much to ask.

Play in the street: a straw poll and a doodle

Society Guardian tomorrow is running some comments on the government's play strategy which has been published for consultation. (My two euros-worth on JoePublic. More here). Trying to get a handle on the issues, I did two things.

First, I ran a straw poll among contacts to see what they thought was the single biggest obstacle stopping children from playing in the streets. I got 22 responses, not all easily categorised but with eleven people saying cars or traffic and seven referring to parental concerns or perceptions. Some people made the reasonable point that in their areas, children and young people do occupy the streets.

While the responses were coming in, I tried roughly to flowchart the parental decision-making process to see if doing so would bring any clarity to the issues.

I don't pretend to be any good at logical or sequential thinking, and I've no experience at doing flowcharts in theory or in practice. I do have experience, albeit some years since, of taking decisions to do with my children's play.

My doodle proceeds through questions about the weather (issues around screen-based entertainment if the children stay in); do they have friends to play out with? In view? Safe spaces? If there are safe spaces, are they in the street or segregated?

At the bottom I scribbled 'Too much traffic?' and a subsidiary question, too seldom raised: 'Too many cars?'

I noted John Adams, in a letter in yesterday's Guardian, claiming that:

'Since Labour came to power the country's motor vehicle population has increased by almost 8 million. To provide just one parking space for each of these extra vehicles would require a car park equivalent to a new motorway stretching from London to Edinburgh - 90 lanes wide.'

Nope, can't get me head round that. I scribbled on:

'Invent fold-away car.'
'Stomp all over them.'
'Wait for policy to confront car lobby.'

Further suggestions welcome.

'How are you?'

Curtain-twitching and eyes on the street

The other day, on the point of going out, I glanced out the window and saw a delivery van in the street, the driver with a parcel at a neighbour's door.

I knew they would be at work, so I popped out and offered to take the parcel to save all that hassle of signed notes and 'collection between the hours of'. Apart from anything else, this meant that when I took the parcel round that evening, I had the chance to ask after my neighbour's health, knowing he'd been unwell the previous week. All sounds perfectly routine don't it?

Only later did I ponder that whole biz of looking out on one's neighbourhood - referred to as 'curtain-twitching' from one point of view, or 'eyes on the street' from another. I reflect on it here because I'm going through the proofs of a forthcoming text and just came across this bit in a section about privacy:

"Older people can use signs of occupation of the home for mutual support, taking a degree of responsibility for one another. Against this, the phrase ‘curtain-twitching’ is commonly used to denigrate such or similar actions. The easy misuse of the phrase is damaging, since the readiness to have ‘eyes on the street’ is a key component of neighbouring. In this sense, over-emphasising privacy threatens older people, both as subjects of concern (whose difficulties might go unnoticed) and in their legitimate role as co-custodians of the neighbourhood."

Well I'm not that old yet, but I'd like to think that if I ever get to be, social attitudes towards curtain-twitching will have dissolved in favour of more sensible notions of 'eyes on the street'.

And if you want the source for the above quote (and you do, badly, in order to help keep an impoverished consultant fed) watch this space.

Post offices, informality, and participation

And so the threatened closure of too many post offices brews a storm, and the issues seem to get more complex. Today I was at an Involve workshop about community cohesion and participation, which might have had nothing to do with post offices had not another participant mentioned them to make a point, sparking a clarification for me.

It seems that everybody (presumably including MPs who voted for the closures but want to defend those in their constituencies) believes that post offices play a social role - variously described as being 'at the heart of' or constituting 'the hub of their communities' and a 'lifeline' especially for older residents.

There's no reason why there should necessarily be only one such heart or hub - indeed a mix of third places (broadly defined) is surely desirable. Pubs, cafes, libraries, parks, community centres and other venues claim this status from time to time.

But when the threat is made to post offices on economic grounds, as I've noted before, we don't have the methodology to defend them because we don't know how to quantify their value in terms that The Accountants Who Run Things would understand or accept. (Incidentally, the threat to post offices is commonly described as a rural issue, but closures in urban areas could also be devastating and there's a lot of concern in London).

My point is this: the reason we don't have the methodology to demonstrate the social value of such amenities is because no political value is placed on human processes that are informal and organic. Which also presumably partly explains why we don't get much research on social networks (eg on home zones).

To return to the Involve workshop, which was thoroughly absorbing, not least because I met some very experienced and articulate folk. I found myself banging the drum for informality because of the tendency (better expressed by others who, under Chatham House rules, I may not name) to discuss participation within a context of formal structures and strategic (service delivery) processes.

The point was made painstakingly by other participants that this is an unsatisfactory approach. We need to prize, stimulate and protect the values and knowledge that local people bring to their shared experiences in their neighbourhoods, for its own sake. To do that we need to ensure that there are more occasions for encounters, more conversations between different groups of people, more recognition - before oganised participation can be expected to have a role to play in promoting cohesion.

To put it another way: we need a healthy ecology of conversations and encounters and recognition and relationships, and places to bump into people or to sit and gaze or go for a natter or just hang out, before we can have meaningful 'participation' that in turn serves to strengthen cohesion. I guess you could say that this blurs into some forms of civil participation - being part of stuff that goes on in the neighbourhood.

So maybe the question, both for understanding the contribution of participation to cohesion and for appreciating the social role of third places, is perhaps something like 'how do we get our policy makers to place more value on organic development, informality and local social interaction?'

Answers on a postcard please.

Previously:

The local post office: a brand in jeopardy.

Post offices and social value.

Please serve yourself: rural post offices.

Lights, camera, just popping next door

Channel 4 are showing a Cutting Edge documentary called My street on Thursday 21 February 2008 at 9pm.

After 14 years of living on the same road Sue knew practically none of her neighbours. Intrigued by what stories might lie on her own doorstep, she began knocking on the 116 doors on her street and meeting some of the 300 people who are her neighbours.

Or you could organise a street party. Try to stifle the allegations of cheap programme-making, nothing wrong with that, and it looks like a good initiative.

I'm more curious about this as another example of the grudgingly slow recognition by the media and politicians that, as forces associated with globalisation stretch their influence ever thinner, there's often something quite interesting at local level that the rest of us are already talking about. It sounds as if the programme may be almost confessional in that respect.

More here, including a clip with this comment from Sue Bourne, the director:

I didn't find a huge sense of community and neighbourliness but there were pockets of it...

It will be interesting to see whether the programme spends any time exploring why this is; whether it is as widespread as my forthcoming Age Concern review suggests; the factors that explain why she knew so few of her neghbours in the first place; and to what extent it matters.

How 2 gras sum 1 up

'Young people on a London estate are using text messaging to report antisocial behaviour discreetly and without fear of recrimination, in an initiative which is believed to be the first of its kind.

'Young residents on the Campsbourne Estate, in Haringey, are being encouraged to use MSN, texts, email or phone to secretly report any trouble they witness or fear on the estate.'

More here - Children & young people daily bulletin.

Memories of childhood and street parties

With the Children's Society's project on 'cherished early memories' we're sure to hear plenty about how the childhoods of many older people were happier and their neighbourhoods blessed with a more 'enfolding community.'

I don't dispute the validity of many such accounts, any more than I'd dispute the reported unhappiness of much contemporary childhood. But in trying to write about intergenerational aspects of contemporary street parties, in work I'm doing with Streets Alive, I'm struck by the feeling that childhood happiness was so often constructed in a way which no longer applies.

Some of the photographic evidence (eg) from the mid-century street parties (VE day, the coronation, the jubilee etc) suggests insights into the differences in older people’s perceptions of community and public occasions.

Typical images (eg) show children sat at a row of tables along a street or in a playground. Bunting and flags distinguish the occasion. Adults, mostly if not exclusively women, stand round, usually at the children’s backs, policing the territory. The menfolk, we’re sometimes reminded in reminiscences, had performed their roles in securing the bunting, sorting the wiring for loudspeakers, and setting up the tables, and were most likely down the pub by tea-time.

Scanning these images, it’s often difficult to discern many smiles on the children’s faces. This adds to the niggling impression that they have been corralled into this arena, been told that they will enjoy themselves, are prohibited from escaping or improvising their own entertainment, and afterwards, will be told that they enjoyed themselves.

And surely, for many, that’s how the world was. There were hierarchies of authority which knew what was best for you (not just government, council, church, teachers, extended family, parents etc, but other institutions such as the BBC and the police as well) and it was culturally eccentric to question them. The world had an order to it and street parties, like so much else, conformed to that order, that sense of solidity.

What we have here are some of 'the solids' whose turn has come, according to Zygmunt Bauman, 'to be thrown into the melting pot and which are in the process of being melted at the present time, the time of fluid modernity.' These are

'the bonds which interlock individual choices in collective projects and actions - the patterns of communication and co-ordination between individually conducted life policies on the one hand and political actions of human collectivities on the other.' (Liquid modernity p6)

If studying street parties and childhood memories (and responses to climate change, come to that) show us nothing else, they should help us understand how individual action in relation to collective initiative is changing at local level.

Local Links - let's hear it for informal networks

Last night saw the launch of the Local Links report, following a joint Common Purpose / JRF project run by Susie Hay. The project worked in four areas of West Yorkshire, stimulating active networks with the aim of uniting people and energising them 'to make networks more productive, worthwhile and sustainable.'

The project injected a lot of energy into local networks over a relatively short period, based on the assumptions that (i) there is often insufficient connection between existing active networks in a locality, and (ii) informal ineraction can make a massive difference to people's perceptions, confidence and contribution.

It's an important project but a difficult one to describe because it examines the benefit of informal networking at local level -

'meeting other people who are active and involved in the area, knowing what they do, talking and working together and forging stronger links.'

All credit to JRF and Common Purpose for making the case for what too many funders would see as 'talk shops,' too wishy-washy to justify resources.

To me, Local Links is an important contribution to the growing pressure to assert informality and the value of conversations in local life. This is not just about saying 'conversations around community action are a good thing' (ho-hum) but saying that culturally we should place more emphasis and value on them as indicators of engagement, participation and a healthy democracy. Thanks Susie.

Report.
Evaluation report by Icarus Collective.
Findings summary.

Commuting and local acquaintances

The other day I posted a comment over on Front Porch Forum in a discussion about the effect of commuting on local social networks. It was sparked by a post by Facebook's Cameron Marlow, picking up some Putnam material which noted that:

The car and the commute... are demonstrably bad for community life.

I was just adding a point that, if people have to travel for economic reasons, some forms of commuting are not totally detrimental to local social relations.

That same day I was at a meeting in London, after which I met up with my brother and we took the tube for a few stops. When we got out he said, wow, talking on the train, I don't usually do that, that doesn't happen on the trains I use.

Later that evening I took the overground train to my home in the sticks, and as I left the station chanced to meet an acquaintance I've got to know over the years from our local gym. He lives about half a mile from me, so I'd certainly not classify him as a neighbour. We walked up the hill together chatting. 'Tell you who I haven't seen for a while' says he - 'Irene.' (Another long-time fellow gym-user). Nor I, says I. Hope she's ok. I know whereabouts she lives, but not where exactly. We may have just missed her. We could ask the staff at the gym.

Which sort-of illustrates not just the way local connections can get reinforced in the commuting context, but also the limits of this kind of relationship. Maybe it's not my role to check on Irene, although she's getting on a bit and always on her own. But the missing component is the communication channel which would legitimate such a role - the local online network of course.

Neighbourliness and older people

In the autumn I prepared a research briefing on neighbourliness and older people for Age Concern England, which they've now published. This publication is based on a review carried out on behalf of Community Development Foundation in 2007.

A full version of the review is now in the editor's hands and as always, it's a shame the shorter version appeared first because it necessarily skips over a lot of issues and even omits some. (Meaning, I hope you'll read the full version!)

Respect, neighbourliness and narratives of decline

Community safety journal has just published a piece I wrote on the theme of 'respect in the neighbourhood.' I drew on sections of the book plus interviews and focus groups I ran last year with older people and street reps.

A key argument I try to make is that serious policy attention being paid to social networks is long overdue:

Once the discredited ‘crack-down’ policies have been cleared away and the rhetoric of community engagement has stopped echoing, what remains is a lasting failure of policy to acknowledge the significance and vulnerability of local social networks, and to minimise damage caused to them...

Because we know too little about how local social networks function and how vulnerable they are, we lack the intellectual resources to defend them or to detect weaknesses; and it is not until they have gone missing that we begin to recognise their significance.

In the work I carried out last year for Age Concern (not yet published, watch this space) people were describing the density of the enfolding networks in the past, in neighbourhoods characterised by a greater volume of available connections. Reflecting on this leads me to comment in the article on the notion of 'community lost':

People readily describe acts of helpfulness and friendliness around them now. But these interactions and exchanges are more individualised and do not seem to amount to a healthy stock of neighbourliness, as a resource on which everyone can draw with confidence and without hesitation, as of right. For the people I spoke to, the resource of neighbourliness has somehow become impoverished. A sense emerges in their accounts of a former enfolding community now mysteriously mislaid.

To what extent is the local close-knit community recoverable, given the networked nature of contemporary relationships? Various researchers have contested the general validity of the ‘community lost’ thesis: Sampson for instance suggests that it ‘was wrong 100 years ago and remains so today’. But there is a question of degree here: on an individual level, and within many neighbourhoods, a sense of loss is what people experience and express.

There are two points I’d like to make about this. First, ‘community’ lost or mislaid is demonstrably recoverable. The notion of a surrounding sense of ‘mutual support spanning the generations and involving everybody’ – a sense of community as sanctuary, as fostering, and as protecting – has not disappeared entirely, and those who dismiss it as a myth in the past may need to spend some time examining its contemporary manifestations...

Secondly, however - while filtering out some over-romanticised claims for such close-knit communities, which could be harsh and unforgiving – we should reflect more carefully on the feeling of loss that is being expressed. The sentiment points to the validity of a secure, enfolding community, for older people especially, one in which norms are readily absorbed and recognised, and which also offers interdependence.

A version of the article is available here.

Neighbourhood communication

Communicating with your neighbours - latest in an inexhaustible series. From the letters column of a local newspaper in Andover, MA, USA:

We would like to take this opportunity to apologize to our neighbors on and around Pasho Street for disturbing their sleep in the early morning hours on Friday, Jan. 4. We were unaware that one of our automobile horns had malfunctioned due to the extreme cold and was incessantly blaring until the Andover police made a courtesy call to our home to make us aware of the situation.

Via the Neighbors Project blog.

Footnote on pavement chalking

Following a reference in Tim Gill's No fear, which I mentioned recently, I came across another couple of cases in the bizarre outbreak of criminal chalking. First this one (if you're of a nervous disposition, look away now):

Two teenage girls were fined £80 for drawing chalk pictures on a pavement in Bangor, Gwynedd. Hazel Mercer and her friend Charli Lyth, both 16, were given fixed penalties when a police officer saw them drawing hearts and rainbows.

(BBC Wales, 29 April 2007)

And then this one -

A group of youngsters has fallen foul of the law for playing hopscotch. West Midlands Police community support officers asked parents in Spring Street in Halesowen to remove chalk markings after complaints about them.

(BBC West Midlands, 31 July 2006)

In his book Tim Gill quotes the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police talking about complaints made to his force:

'The interesting thing to me is when you ask them what they are worried about, it's not young people committing crime or young people committing criminal damage... it is actually young people just being there. Young people simply existing is now a major source of concern for people.'

Pavement chalking epidemic?

I've just been reading some interview and survey material from a range of local residents who attended street parties, as part of a wee project I'm doing with Chris Gittins at Streets Alive. Let me share this extract with you:

How do you get on with younger and/or older people in the street generally?

Fine. Except someone in the street called the police about our 2 young children drawing with chalks on pavement outside our home. We actively want our kids to play in the street and were shocked and depressed by that attitude.

This took place in a city in England. I have no more information and don't know if it took place during a street party or not. But it's an eerie echo of the story of the Brooklyn sidewalk-chalker who received an official fine - indeed it may pre-date that story. What next?

In both instances, I'd have hoped the officials would have taken the time to make a point to the complainant, because it's in the authorities' interest that civil relations prevail, and it can't be hard to do that when there is no serious threat to anyone or to any property.

I can remember when I was a kid, with siblings or friends, riding small bicycles up one end of our street invariably caused one particular older woman to step out her door and tell us to go away. Presumably, she wanted that portion of the planet over which she had some control to remain just so. Is that what drives this uncivil anti-neighbour nastiness? The poverty of generosity under which she existed must have been wretched.

The idea that civil relations with the people who live around us is universally regarded as desirable seems to be simply false.

Sense of place: designing-in neighbourliness?

With all this housebuilding going on and planned, questions are raised more often about the quality of residential design and layout. Even getting that right isn't going to guarantee the promotion of neighbourly relations, but you'd have thought it was an important start.

CABE is on the case, and has just published research into the views of residents of new homes completed within the last three years. The study blends two surveys, one involving 643 residents living in 33 new developments; the other covering 704 residents at six case study developments.

A key point is that being highly satisfied with the home itself does not necessarily imply a high degree of satisfaction with the wider development, or vice versa. People may express satisfaction with their new home (and often are reluctant to acknowledge problems with it), but very significant numbers of respondents expressed negative views about their neighbourhoods.

For example, although 82% of residents thought that their development was attractive and 69%found it had a pleasant road layout:

• 40% thought that there was not enough public open space in the development
• 48% thought there was not enough play space
• 34% thought the layout of their development was unsafe for children to walk, cycle or play in the streets, and
• 45% say that they live in the kind of neighbourhood where people mostly go their own way rather than doing things together and trying to help each other.

Well, the sense of belonging on new estates is unpredictable. The received wisdom is that you usually get an initial high level of interaction because people move in at around the same time, have similar issues, and may be at a similar stage in the life-cycle (especially parents of young children). Car-based lifestyles make a massive difference of course; and after a few years anyway this sense of community often dissipates or settles back down.

But in a recent conversation at a fast-expanding housing association I was told that lack of social integration on several new developments was giving rise to a lot of problems.  I suspect social landlords are generally well aware that it won't do to lay all the blame on the designers or the developers.

Meanwhile, CABE says:

This is not about a failure of national government policy: there is a perfectly good policy framework in place, which puts a strong emphasis on the quality of residential design and layout. It is housebuilders and planners who need to take more responsibility for creating a sense of place within new housing developments.

But how? I think there is some confusion about expectations of neighbouring. First, a general disinterest among people looking for housing (and I have only contempt for the stream of television programmes encouraging people to buy, make profit and move on without a moment's reflection on the social context of the home). Cultural expectations of local social interaction tend to be low: for the prospective resident they're a matter of chance not choice. Neighbourly relations are an afterthought.

And secondly, perhaps there is sometimes a naive assumption among developers and planners that people are motivated to be neighbourly, as if it just needs an appropriately-designed environment and we all live happily ever after. There's a whole stack of sociological issues waiting to tease us for this approach.

I've always said that since it seems possible to design-out neighbourliness, it ought to be possible to design it in. But that is certainly simplistic. Perhaps we need a study of evident neighbourliness in a poorly-designed environment, and of low levels of interaction in a development described as well-designed, in order to understand a bit more.

Lifetime neighbourhoods

Many neighbourhoods fail their residents because important opportunities for development and regeneration go ahead with little consideration of age in their planning. The International Longevity Centre has published a paper arguing the case for lifetime neighbourhoods which 'involve the creation of multi-generational space where the needs of all ages are catered for with a considered, negotiated balance.'

Lifetime neighbourhoods should also constitute a preventative investment in good health for future generations... They provide both a built environment and an attitudinal environment in which people of all ages feel both comfortable and informed when taking part.

Towards lifetime neighbourhoods: designing sustainable communities for all.

Hello Bin Gents

I came across this thorough example of community communication recently, heavily taped to an outside door.

I like the way it seems to represent quite closely what the communicator would probably have said face-to-face, if they'd had the chance. I note the matter-of-fact assumption or acknowledgment of gendered roles. And most of all I like the civil negotiation of a minute change in working practice that could make a welcome difference to someone else's daily routine.

Banal encounters?

It could be that the cohesion movement is discovering the importance of informality. A report by the Institute of Community Cohesion on divisions among young people in the London Borough of Hounslow has apparently floated the idea of creating more 'banal encounters' where children and young people from different communities meet.

This gradual recognition is very welcome. I recall some background unofficial conversations around the work of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, which indicated how difficult it was to get even those who are very familiar with the issues to appreciate the significance of everyday unstructured encounters with diverse others. If I go on about it a lot (eg ephemeral relationships; or respecting informality as a principle) it's because I'm persuaded that it's under-appreciated.

The point surely is not whether this makes sense, because it's attention which is obviously overdue; but how to ensure (i) that the occasions and opportunities for encounters are constantly there, maintained and reinforced, and (ii) that people have the confidence and competence in social interaction to manage and benefit from encounters with diverse others.

Source: Children and young people now. (Thanks to John Vincent of The Network).

Regeneration damages community. Discuss.

A community activist and local shop-owner, who is also chair of the local Neighbourhood Action Group in Sefton, Liverpool, is challenging a compulsory purchase order that is part of a regeneration scheme.

In a witness statement before the court, Mr Powell says the Klondyke community was once a friendly and viable one, with many generations of family living together in a close-knit neighbourhood.

He says it was a popular neighbourhood which was in demand for people looking for homes.

However, since the start of regeneration in 2004 and resulting compulsory acquisition of properties, he says the area has suffered from increasing anti-social behaviour, including vandalism and joyriding, and he says the trade in his shops has begun to decline. He says he has had to reduce staff as a result, costing jobs to the local area.'

Source: Planning resource.

Family neighbours

Speaking about City survivors the other day, Anne Power was emphatic about the need for policy to help extended families stay together on estates or in the neighbourhood.

Her remarks are unlikely to generate much passionate opposition, but they did remind me of the Australian research which questions family support by comparison with friendship networks, in terms of the benefits for older people.

I don't think there's a conflict there, necessarily. The needs that parents of young children have are often acute and persistent, and may be best satisfied by other family members. For older people, family neighbours can play an invaluable role in informal support: in one study, 83% of the informal helpers named were family members.

Meanwhile, to my surprise, according to a recent BBC/ICM poll,

'Almost a quarter of people see the parent they are emotionally closest to every day, but 45% say they see them once a week or less.' (Emphasis added)

It could be that as local friendship networks seem to have weakened (if indeed they have), it places more demands on extended family and so they increase in significance for those that have them.

Families in cities

I'll come straight out and express a sense of mild jealousy here. Anne Power and colleagues at LSE ran a well-funded programme of work to generate seven years of interview data with parents in cities. That's a lot of material reflecting what it's like bringing up children in contemporary urban neighbourhoods. One result is City survivors, just published by Policy Press and launched last week.

I'll also readily admit to not being a fan of Anne's previous Jigsaw cities, which I found a real slog to read, with all the evidence of being hurriedly slopped together and crying out for an editor's attention. City survivors however looks much more significant, if only because the connection between the expressed experience of local people and the policy assertions is clear.

The edited material is interwoven with analysis and generalised reflections on the policy context. The book is packed, and punches are not pulled: a key message for regeneration is that 'neglect ends in disorder.' At the launch Anne said that regeneration needs to be brokered and 'any withdrawal of effort immediately results in a deterioration of conditions.' How do we explain, for example, how this sort of thing comes about:

'They've pulled all the swings down. The kids have nowhere to play. We tried to fight the council to stop them taking our play area away but they sold it to private buyers.'

(I don't know. Previously, eg, A crisis of community presence).

Here are some of the points I got from Anne's wide-ranging presentation:

• Community involvement really makes a difference: 'families are much happier if they're involved. Those who are involved, loosely or seriously, feel different to those who aren't.' (So why is there still so little investment in community development?)
• Keeping extended families together on estates or in the neighbourhood can make a huge difference to parents' ability to cope: this means housing allocation policies that prioritise relatives.
• People do notice when agencies attempt outreach.
• Establishing friendly rapport with neighbours is a significant factor in helping families survive. The usual constraints are apparent - precarious, unstable community relations with too many strangers.

And I noted Lynsey Hanley's striking observation in her comments, referring to the experience of neighbourhoods where there is constant building, constant traffic, and no sense of place:

'You have to be massively adaptable in order to get beyond just existing, in marginalised places.'

The overall message is that families are abandoning cities in large numbers, because they are such unsympathetic environments for young children, and this is bad news all round. The a rgument is made that families can regenerate cities if conditions are right:

• Neighbourhood conditions have a direct impact on family survival.
• Families can counter wider problems by creating support networks.
• Cities can help families by creating more locally based structures to deliver sensitive local services.

One further thought, provoked by various comments made by academics at the launch: why is the idea of talking to local people about their experiences seen as such an eccentric way of finding things out? You'd have thought, by the way people were talking, that some kind of methodological breakthrough had been achieved. More interest among funders to support this kind of work would be welcomed (he pleaded naively)...

I'd link to the publication page, but Policy Press haven't got their act together yet.* Get hold of it anyway.

* Update: it's here.

Property protected

I came across a string of these signs while running through an affluent neighbourhood the other day.

For some reason at first I thought it said: 'We're rich. Go away.' But then I saw the reassuring use of the C word.

Neighbourly baking

I took my neighbour to the health centre this morning and brought him back, so I had a fair idea the Doyenne of Neighbouring would be tappin' at the door some time today.

And here she is now: 'I'm just making a christmas pudding, will I do you one while I'm at it?' As an endurance athlete I'm not beyond consuming a modest-size christmas pudding in a single calorie-binge, so I managed to say yes please.

Collective responsibility for children and young people

There is a perception among adults that the community is currently fractured and that it needs to unite and recognise the collective responsibility of all for the children and young people in their midst.

People see the role of the community as providing guidance and support for young people, but also spending time with them and providing activities for them to do. This suggests the potential for the community to get more actively involved with young people, giving time, skills and resources to promote happy, healthy and safe childhoods.

This comes from a lengthy consultation report published today by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which summarises 'knowledge on the wellbeing of children and young people in England today' and will form the basis of the forthcoming Children's Plan, due next month. It incorporates the views of children, young people and adults.

It's unfortunate how a statement like this one (especially the last sentence quoted) suggests the resilient notion that there is something called 'the community' which government still feels it can exhort or conjure up for a given cause.

Off-hand I can think of a few points to be taken into account before the problem can be cured by community involvement; such as -

• the extent to which informal social control has been designed-out and people encouraged not to occupy their own neighbourhoods, and to drive all over other people's;
• the difference in scale between the mental map of 'community' held by an official (local government or similar agency) and the neighbourhood as perceived by even moderately localised residents;
• the contribution made by policy over the past ten years towards a culture which vilifies young people (the Blunkett legacy).

But meanwhile, it's reassuring that the importance of informal social control emerges when government starts talking to people and listening to what they say. Press release.

Criminalising kids: questions about risk and respect

It may be that the story about the delinquent Brooklyn sidewalk-chalker could be trumped in England. According to this BBC report yesterday, children in this country have been arrested (unh, arrested?) for:

• drawing hopscotch on a pavement
• taking a slice of cucumber from a sandwich and throwing it at another child, and
• damaging a tree while building a den.

Not perhaps in the same league, but we've also had the heinous disgrace of flip-flopped feet on seats.

Meanwhile, the risk aversion debate has received significant renewed momentum from publicity following Tim Gill's No fear, published recently. (Various links currently on the Gulbenkian home page). And some energy is being coordinated in the US with Playborhood.

Questioning risk aversion was a rumbling cross-departmental sub-theme in Whitehall in the early years of the Labour administration at the end of the nineties, but it didn't stick. Maybe the urge to control took over, and anyway the culture is highly resilient, resisting some passionate challenging, eg What are we scared of? And yes I do accept the importance of recognising, as the Health and Safety Executive put it, that the term is shorthand for 'excessive risk aversion.'

It seems as if there are two trends in tension here, with two related themes - risk and respect - but I'm not clear how they are related. On the one hand we have attempts to program most risk out of children's lives (which is profoundly disempowering, and means that many seem to grow up expecting and accepting disempowerment as what society does to them). But measured exploration of risk can be stimulating and creates bonds: games and sport, still occasionally practised in some quarters (although very much subject to risk averse policies) offer semi-formal arenas in which such exploration can be played out.

And on the other hand, we have created neighbourhood contexts in which learning the give-and-take and cheek-by-jowl rubbing-a