Neighbourhoods

Community Harm Statements

The Chartered Institute of Housing has published a template and toolkit to help social landlords and their residents prepare court statements about the impact of anti-social neighbours.

'The Community Harm Statement introduces a new tool designed to make it easier for social landlords to demonstrate the impact of anti-social behaviour (ASB). Developed by CIH and a range of partners, it provides a recognised template to present evidence to court in a consistent way that properly captures the impact of harm on the community. It gives a stronger voice to communities by helping ensure that the damage inflicted by ASB is properly voiced and listened to when landlords take legal action. It can also be used to support non-judicial actions, casework and partnership working.'

According to the government press release, it

'has been piloted by 11 landlords across the country, and has already proved successful in 21 court cases where it has been vital in assessing the harmful impact of anti-social behaviour.'

 

The curious phenomenon of littering by waste bins

Does it seem odd to you that some fellow-citizens are sufficiently conscientious about their recyclable waste to take it all off to the neighbourhood recycling containers; but then they just dump it on the pavement? There was an example recorded in some detail over on the Kings Cross site recently (thanks Will):

‘Once in the morning I caught one man who also had just dumped his waste in spite of an empty container, and when I showed him that the container was in fact empty, he shrug his shoulders and walked apologetically off (leaving his waste though put). On this and on other occasions I have just taken other people’s rubbish and put it inside the container. It seems a task impossible to some.’

This contrasts nicely with a similar case that I reported in chapter 4 of Respect in the neighbourhood a few years ago, thanks to a picture sent to me by my Belgian friend Jan Steyaert. It shows a standard bottle-recycling facility in Antwerp, with the ubiquitous blue plastic bag on the ground alongside. At the front of the container someone has placed a board with a message painted on it, which reads in Dutch ‘vetzak verboden te storten.’ The English translation is: ‘Don’t leave litter you slimebag.’ (Subsequently I have thought that a better translation would be ‘you fat slob’). The language chosen by our Kings Cross correspondent is quite different. His note read

‘please insert the waste into the container out of neighbourly respect.’

In the book, considering alternative communication options for the person who painted the vetzak message on the board, at the end of a short list I added:

‘In a connected, networked neighbourhood, a comment posted online might have broadened awareness of the problem and produced a collective response.’

I suspect there may be other examples beyond Kings Cross and I’d be pleased to be told about them.

So this phenomenon of almost but not quite properly disposing of litter, what’s it about? Perhaps if you’re carrying stuff in the other hand, you might not easily be able to open the container. Perhaps you dread the stench on opening; or you don’t want to risk getting dirty hands from touching the handle or lid, if you’re off somewhere posh. Maybe you're confused about the separation of different kinds of waste so you'd rather it stays hidden in a single bag. Or you can't quite bring yourself to conform completely. Or you might think it’s easier for the operatives, as I believe they are called, to pick your stuff up from the floor rather than use the technology designed for the purpose. I’m struggling to think of any convincing explanations here.

Ok let’s suppose that some people are less comfortably acquainted with the idea of a public realm and public norms of behaviour, than others are. They have a relatively low level of Public Realm Awareness (PRA) – not close to zero, like the dickhead financier I mentioned recently, but low enough to appear a bit inconsiderate at times.

They know they have to take out their waste, but they don’t know how the system works, the system of behaviour in public. There’s stuff on the ground, and alongside it, theirs looks inconspicuous, and that’s simpler, so down it goes. It becomes part of an apparent routine process. I suppose one could argue that this behaviour, as far as it goes, is consistent with the public realm, not working against it.

The inconvenience can be absorbed, if such behaviour does not become too common. This might matter more than you think, given that we currently have a government which is keen to see a reduction in general PRA, being ideologically opposed to the notion of anything being ‘public’ in the first place. By reducing the public realm as much as it can, the government very seriously risks increasing the proportion of the population with low PRA. The technical term for this set of policies is 'stupid'.

 

Keeping ourselves to ourselves

So much of contemporary neighbouring is about noisiness, but this is about nosyness.

A survey reported as part of the Digital Switchover Help Scheme has found that for 27 per cent of the 2,000 respondents from across London, ‘fear of appearing nosey’ was the reason for keeping themselves to themselves. Disparaging terms like ‘curtain twitcher,’ ‘nosy parker,’ or 'sticky beak' have damaging cultural ramifications.

Fear of appearing nosey might be seen as a consequence of the way we emphasise privacy. We are not allowed to build or extend our houses if they allow us to see each other within. My house was built before such legal insistence, and fortunately a healthy relationship with our neighbours is reinforced by being able informally to keep an eye out for each other.

In the Netherlands, a curious culture of window dressing evolved through the late twentieth century, whereby it was frowned upon to use curtains or shutters, so homeowners would restrict what was visible internally through elaborate decoration (see 1989 article by Hernan Vera).

I’m reading Emily Cockayne’s history of neighbours and finding various examples of intimate details shared unintentionally in previous ages, due to ‘the thinness of pre-modern walls’ – complicated no doubt by lower expectations of privacy.

The determination to avoid accusations of nosyness obviously reduces people’s availability to respond in time of need; and as soon as a critical mass of people with the same attitude has built up, it’s likely to have an impact on the other side of the equation, readiness to ask for help. This is one of the explanations for what Lilian Linders terms the 'request scruple'. As I noted a year ago, her research shows that this reluctance is more problematic than the assumed shortage in the supply of neighbourliness.

Dilemmas of interference in neighbouring are persistent unless you choose not to occupy your neighbourhood. Here’s my own example, after which I started to wonder if my neighbour thinks I'm nosy for having advised him that his downstairs window was open overnight in the rain.

 

The golden age of neighbouring is now

Monocle 24 had a feature about urban neighbours last week. It included an interview with Lucy Musgrave talking about the public realm – so refreshing to hear someone just use that term these days, in the public realm, let alone speak about it with such refreshing assurance.

There was also a lengthy piece about the garage sale trail, a booming initiative that sees social benefits (including informal local trade as well as environmental advantages) from the systematising of local markets based around household surplus.

And there was an interview with Emily Cockayne about the history of neighbours, heralding her forthcoming book, Cheek by jowl. I’m fortunate to have a review copy on the desk beside me, and will be offering some comments here in due course. For now, a few thoughts prompted by Emily’s remarks.

She put particular emphasis on the way that relationships between neighbours had changed by midway through the twentieth century, with opportunities for less and less contact, which changed expectations. Urban neighbours in previous ages often struggled for the segregation of living space, so the history of neighbouring depends heavily on a consideration of the architectural and design constraints. My take on that is that the notion privacy had to be invented and may not be a given feature of human social relations. (Why isn't there ever an anthropologist here when I need one?)

By 1950, says Emily, if you were a good neighbour it meant you kept yourself to yourself. The point – well-made already in much of the literature but here with a wider historical perspective than, say, scholars like Barry Wellman have adopted – is that since then a shrinking proportion of our friends are now neighbours.

But where does the assumption come from that all or some or any neighbours should be friends? In early modern England, people moved around a lot more than is sometimes assumed, so I’m not too sure about the assumption that one might have known few others beyond the locality, and therefore if you had friends, they’d be neighbours. Allies, certainly, you probably needed as many as you could accumulate within hearing distance. Are we faced with historically fluid meanings of ‘friend’ I wonder? Anyway, contemporary neighbouring to me seems clearer if we accept the distinction between friendship and friendliness (a chance to declare indebtedness to Philip Abrams).

Asked by the interviewer if she favoured any particular age for neighbouring, Emily replied ‘It’s now!’ The golden age of neighbouring is now she says, because we can choose the degree of relationship we want to have. Tell that to the Daily Moan.

I’ve long been curious about the comparison of our age with the late medieval and early modern periods, and I crammed some of that fascination into my reflections about changing attitudes to ‘community’ in Picnic last year. So since I started reading Cheek by jowl I’m finding Emily’s range of sources stimulating, and her highly-readable style is a delight. More soon.

 

Neighbours for half a century

Here’s a story from the Sheffield Telegraph about a group of residents who are celebrating 50 years in common on the same street, having moved in at the time the estate was built.

It raises an interesting question about the notion that neighbourhoods should have a variety of housing to accommodate changing personal and family needs over the life cycle. Presumably the houses have been more-or-less suitable throughout the residents’ lifetimes; and the tight local network of support is likely to help them overcome some of the difficulties that in other circumstances cause people to move elsewhere.

 

Neighbouring and mental health

Being a neighbour is not necessarily straightforward: managing the relationships can be tricky and stressful. Those of us who have positive, easy-going relationships with our neighbours have much to be thankful for, the value of which is easily overlooked.

One of the problems in engaging with any neighbour at a mutually-acceptable level on the spectrum between provocatively negative and intrusive, is to assess the other’s communication impulse and readiness. Somehow you have to find out where they are on the scale between ‘gab about everything endlessly’ to stubborn dull silence about most aspects of life as it passes by; and they have to do the same for you.

At any point on this range, but especially at the extremes, your neighbour could be someone with mental health problems. And as Clare Allan suggests in a Guardian article today that I encourage you to read,

‘in the age of the "big society", professional support is being cut dramatically. Situations such as this are going to become ever more common.’

So are we ready for it, as a moderately-sized society? How good are we at connecting at the right level – not too close, not too easily drawn-in, but close enough to react fast in case of real need - with neighbours whose mental health is not what it might be? It’s hard to think of anything more important to get right, at local level; but I fear there will be many tales of avoidance, misapprehension, ignorance and recoil.

 

 

'I want to recreate that sense of community'

I’m not doing this to be mischievous, honestly. I read the following paragraph, the sort of statement that reaches me about once a week on average:

“I grew up in [N], in a neighborhood where my family knew everyone on the block and we all looked out for each other. All the kids played together, and if we did anything wrong our parents would hear about it from one of the neighbors. I wanted to recreate that sense of community.”

And for some reason, you know how it is, this is what I interpreted:

“I grew up in Placetown, in a neighbourhood where my family knew everyone and truly nasty rumours abounded and there was a lot of obvious domestic violence that no-one talked about and if you were gay you just had to suppress it, and if you were disabled you were patronised if you were lucky but doomed anyway. All the kids played together (except of course that little disabled girl, can't even remember her name) so there was no end of bullying that you had to put up with and if we did anything wrong our parents would hear about it from one of the neighbours, who made it their business to exert control because they’d missed out on promotion in the army during the war, and my god they could be vindictive and brutal. I want to recreate that sense of community, cos I’m like that.”

Yes maybe I'm being a little unfair.. But the rosetinting of community really is unhelpful, because it stifles serious policymaking about neighbourhoods. I know that many neighbourhoods in the past were much better in some respects and much worse in others. Now, can we move on?

 

3.5 million licence holders like this

From time to time I have a stab at the habit of using a mobile phone while driving, because it combines two themes powerfully relevant to neighbourhood life - community safety, and respect.

The logic is stark: if someone uses their phone while driving past me, I get an unequivocal message that they think their communication is more important than my safety, or that of the child I might happen to be walking with. Straightforward, brazen disrespect.

Some time ago, walking round my area and watching carefully, I calculated that in 1 out of every 20 cars that passed me, the driver was using their phone. That was just for voice communication.

OK, you wanna get into email and social networking? Research – proper research - claims that eight per cent of drivers (and 24 per cent of 17-24 year old drivers) admit to using a smartphone for emails and social networking while driving. (For sources, see the IAM press release).

Surprise surprise, follow up research by the Transport Research Laboratory shows that accessing sites such as Facebook while behind the wheel had a more dramatic impact on reaction times and driving awareness than texting, alcohol and cannabis.

‘Participants who were sending and receiving Facebook messages saw their reaction times slowed by 38% and often missed key events. They were also unable to maintain a central lane position or respond quickly to a car in front changing speed.’

Somewhat forlornly, the report hopes that

‘it may be possible to develop a smartphone application which restricts access to some functions of the phone while driving.’

 

 

Home consumption

This is the worst case of junk accumulation I have seen documented (except perhaps in Dickens's novels), although I've heard a few tales. A house in San Jose, California, is apparently disappearing under 'a 10-foot-tall tidal wave of rusty chains, oily mattress springs, filthy animal cages and garbage bags...'

Never mind the possibility of it being tidal, the house is being consumed by its junk. And apparently the stench, when something is burned within, is worthy of note.

Three points are striking about this story.

First, we are told that a neighbour trapped 23 cats and six kittens living on the property and took them to a shelter. Another neighbor then said the place is now overrun with rats, which the feral cats had at least helped keep in check. You can't win - but should neighbours be put in that no-win situation in the first place?

Secondly, it seems that the fire service has declared the house an 'official fire hazard.' But nothing has been done. As a neighbour, what value would you place on the words 'official fire hazard' as a trigger for 'official' action on a problem that has festered for a decade or more?

And thirdly, consider these remarks from the county code enforcement manager:

'I certainly appreciate and understand the neighborhood's sense of frustration. We have a certain toolset at our disposal, and it works for most people. When you deal with someone who just doesn't respond, you're faced with a last-resort scenario.'

We can understand this in the fading light of 'big society' thinking, which implies quite reasonably that citizens have a responsibility to handle the local problems that they can, before turning to agencies - which should be seen as a last resort. Here we have an agency which is confounded by the discovery that it is the last resort, and seems to be startled and paralysed and cannot take action.

Mysteriously, the article reports not a single word of complaint against the local authority. This could be explained by (a) poor journalism; (b) uncritically pro-council journalism (which is a variant of (a)); or (c) a cultural over-emphasis on individual responsibility at the expense of reference to the state. I have no idea which it might be.

 

 

Civic journalism, no messing

'Back in those days,' croaked Grandpa Harris, 'there was tales about something called multimedia, we'd never heard of the internet but people in huddled meetings would whisper about the political potential of 'self-publishing' and whatnot...'

In parallel gatherings, no doubt some educational and psychological theorists were muttering about the general contraction of attention spans.

Now try Alan Stanton's latest 14 second civic-epic on an all-too-familiar neighbourhood blight. And if you can take it, Disgusting II: the close up.

 

Social justice is no longer available

‘People come together through day-to-day activities, not 'integration projects' which too often feel irrelevant and prove unsustainable… Central to this will be ensuring that the integration benefits of programmes and projects are recognised and supported.’

These sentences come from a paper on Creating the conditions for integration published yesterday by DCLG. They suggest, first, that the government recognises the value of interactions in everyday life, so it must place value on a public realm where such integration can be stimulated and take place. That's a relief, the sceptic might have been wondering.

Secondly it suggests that the government values the evaluation and demonstration of 'integration benefits' where they can be shown to have occurred. That's good too ain't it?

The paper raises a few other points. First – I don’t think I have a problem with using the word integration rather than, say, cohesion (which is what we’d have expected in the past): but it might be interesting to ask why, why the change in vocabulary? At the Institute of Community Cohesion, they know about some of this stuff: do they feel snubbed, I wonder?

Second – is there an understanding that social injustice, poverty and unequal access to power and influence might be critical barriers to integration and should be part of the equation? (Answer, no).

Third – at least three times in the paper the following phrase is used: ‘We want to hear further ideas for action…’ but there is no channnel offered, no named author with contact details on the document, only the switchboard number for the entire department. Somebody’s not being sincere.

And on the question of social justice, here’s some curious news. A week ago the DWP set up a survey to help define social justice (be quick if you want to catch that link):

'The government will shortly publish a social justice strategy paper, detailing a new approach to it. This will define what social justice means to the government, and principles and current practice underlying activity in this area. The government would like to know what social justice means to different stakeholder organisations, so would like organisations to complete a short survey.'

If you follow the link now, this (at the moment) is what you see:

This survey is no longer available.

Please contact ( ) for further assistance..

 

 

Housing and social media

Yesterday I took part in a live panel discussion on social media in housing, for the Guardian’s housing network, and blogged a note about it here.

 

Co-op capitalism

I'm not an economist and I've been puzzled at how little open practical debate there has been over alternative forms of capitalism during the recession.

Now here's Noreena Hertz in a Co-Op think piece outlining the potential of a capitalism associated with collaboration, loyalty and trust, interaction, social connectedness, and respect for process not just outputs.

Here are four of the features of co-op capitalism that she offers:

• The collective has value
• How we interact matters
• The network has worth
• Collaboration can trump competition.

It's a list that you might readily find on a flip chart after a workshop on community development.

I've often noted that there is a fresh receptivity to social values, albeit sometimes in a shallow way; and the evidence of their widespread application in local entrepreneurship is plentiful. As so often, we are waiting for our leaders, so-called, to catch up.

 

How we treat kids

Two contrasting posts about how we treat young people, from two wise minds of the blogosphere today.

Tim Gill has this story of school children being banned from playing hide and seek, from writing notes to each other, and banned from having best friends. I'm sure in time this story will reveal a dreadful poverty of understanding of childhood among those who we expect to appreciate it.

After which, I hope this might cheer you up: David Barrie has this post, with videos, about the great treehouse challenge.

 

Over the garden wall

Here's an example of an informal but sanctioned short-cut for the kids to play with the kids next door. From a section of the BBC's feature on neighbouring which I mentioned yesterday.

 

 

97 per cent of neighbouring surveys say neighbouring ain’t what it used to be

The chorus of popular survey reports lamenting the decline of neighbouring continues to swell and boom. I don’t scour for them systematically, but I have at least half a dozen per year from the last few years. What I most long for is the moment when one of my neighbours rushes in to tell me about new survey results they've just found, showing that X per cent of neighbours share information with each other.

Today’s survey results come from the Ordnance Survey, although since there’s nothing about it on their website thus far, I can’t tell you what they think it shows, nor why they had it carried out.

Here are the headlines:

• 35% of those surveyed do not know their neighbours’ names
• 29% said lack of community spirit and anti-behaviour (sic) were the two biggest problems in their neighbourhood
• 17% of parents in the study stated they never let their children play outside
• 11% said they rarely or never visit their high street
• 25% said a community forum where they could air their concerns would help tackle community issues, whilst 29% claimed that a source of local information would help tackle community issues.

As always, it’s hard to comment without seeing the questions, especially on the first two of these points (all neighbours’ names? Any neighbours’ names? Some neighbours’ names?). Perhaps they will be made available in due course.

I promise to do an extended update of my previous review of popular surveys, because I do think there are things we might learn from them.

A related but separate phenomenon to examine is the media-political obsession with telling us how we are no longer neighbourly, and we all were, unfailingly, in the past of course. They chant the mantras, hoping to light upon some magic combination that will cure all social ills.

My thanks to the dependable Chris Gittins of Streets Alive who offered some commonsense observations when interviewed about the issues on BBC Breakfast this morning.

 

New data on neighbourliness

Rightmove’s ‘Happy at Home Index’ for UK towns has received quite a bit of publicity, mostly pointing gleefully or disparagingly at towns regarded among the ‘happiest’ or ‘unhappiest’. It illustrates how competition between localities for contented residents has become a theme of policy and media attention.

The company has generated an index using 12 measures to assess how people feel about where they live, covering aspects of their property, subjective feelings about their home, and sense of community.

The four questions used for the ‘community’ category seem pretty good to me and are worth reproducing here.

Apparently Dorchester scored highest for neighbourliness and Ilford scored lowest, but I’m not sure it’s helpful to dwell on these rankings.

One might have wanted to see something in there about the local economy and transport: and there’s nothing anywhere in the index to allow for people’s feelings about the value of their council tax and services.

But the survey had a whopping 25,340 respondents and a ten-point scale for each question, so there could be some interesting work to be done on the relations between some of the measures, if the data can be made available.

Pubs and taverns

According to the Lost Pubs Project, in the UK pubs are currently closing at an accelerating rate of 50 each week. While there's been a fair amount of froth around parliament (eg), acknowledging the implications and condemning the tied pub model, there doesn't seem to have been much to challenge the trend.

Apparently something similar has been happening in Chicago. This article suggests the problem is mainly down to the sheer bureaucratic awkwardness of getting a license. One commentator complains:

"Getting a new tavern license issued in a residential neighborhood is brutal. It's virtually impossible."

The problem sweetly illustrates the extent to which social value, publicness and local economies are intertwined. Perhaps policy makers everywhere could appreciate and value the role of pubs in stimulating local social capital, as well as their role in the local economy. Here's a start: Scott Martin who owns Simon's Tavern in Andersonville, Chicago, says that when he bought the place 17 years ago, he found a shoebox containing $80,000 in IOUs.

Previously:
More on local pubs
Why pubs need the CIA

High street blues

The government-led approach to regeneration through competitions and 'challenges' is becoming a flood-threatening piss-take. When I heard about the 'Portas pilots' - a scheme for twelve towns to bid to become 'areas with the vision and enthusiasm to breathe new life into what should be the beating heart of their communities' according to Grant Shapps - forget the dreadful rhetoric, I must have misread the amount available.

Not unreasonably, I feel. One million pounds each might have been meaningful, but not between the lot. If politicians and central government officials want to complain about the use local government officers make of their time, it's worth asking them (a) why they spend their own time coming up with incontestably crap schemes like this, and (b) do they or do they not expect a lot of officials to spend time developing bids that ultimately will not be successful?

Once upon a time we had policy and strategy on social issues, now we have 'innovation', 'challenges' and 'pilots'. Here's David Marlow's take on the government approach, from Regen & Renewal:

'the pattern of their approach to economic development has now been clear for some time. In default of a coherent strategy, they come up with an ad hoc announcement, with derisory funding, to give the appearance of leadership.'

 

Dickens 200: that quote again

"My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable."

Charles Dickens, born 7 February 1812.

 

Neighbourhood care groups

Neighbourhood care groups and organisations provide an astonishing social resource which seldom penetrates the policy-media consciousness. Some I know a little about, such as Brighton and Hove Neighbourhood Care Scheme, and Tower Hamlets Friends and Neighbours (where I was a trustee for a while). Now, thanks to Bernard Leach, erstwhile head of sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, I’ve been learning a little about a group which has been active in Chorlton, Manchester for 44 years.

Chorlton Good Neighbours (CGN) was established in 1967 by local people and has evolved to become a well-established charity offering a range of services to local older people. It currently has over 250 users and 70 volunteers. The group offers a range of practical support including transport and odd jobs for example; and various activities such as exercise classes, cooking sessions, and trips out.

CGN recently carried out their own research with a view to capturing the benefits that are generated by organising care collectively and providing a context for volunteers. The research was based on a survey which asked about levels of confidence to meet and socialise; health, well-being, independence and self-worth; sources of information and advice; sense of safety; and feelings of involvement. This exercise illustrates the great value in having high quality informal local arrangements for people in need of help and support. Take this quote for instance:

‘there is also a policy of ringing up people if for example, they don’t turn up for sessions they normally come to, or if a volunteer notices when delivering a newsletter that there is a lot of mail uncollected... We go the extra step, not just because it is the correct professional thing to do, but because volunteers and users know each other and care for each other.’

Or consider the chart below, which hints at the benefits felt from the range of activities run by the group:

The report suggests that:

‘Overall, the evidence base points to the conclusion that CGN’s activities do change users’ attitudes, lifestyles and their mental and physical wellbeing. It is reasonable to go on to conclude that such care services can lead to significant savings for both the NHS and the Local Authority’s Social Services…

Core activities such as home visits, wheelchair support, coffee morning, Sunday teas and day trips will remain at the heart of what we deliver as they provide a haven of friendship and support – neighbourliness – which enrich the lives of all those involved with Chorlton Good Neighbours.’

 For more details about the report, contact Bernard Leach – btleach { at } gmail.com.

Is inequality the new exclusion?

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, ‘social exclusion’ was, rightly in my view, a major political issue in the UK and the theme under which a good deal of positive social change came about. But I sense that the concept is being replaced in our vocabulary by increasingly assertive discussion about ‘social inequality’.

Two recent examples may in time come to illustrate this. Yesterday we had the director general of the Institute of Directors, Simon Walker, unhappy that Sir Fred Goodwin, former boss of RBS, had been stripped of his knighthood:

“To do it because … you don’t approve of someone, you think they have done things that are wrong but actually there is no criminality … is inappropriate."

So he still doesn’t get it, and shouldn’t be surprised if he is stripped of any credibility he may have had.

My dad was a bank manager. He would have been appalled at the crass contortions being attempted by financial services cronies trying to justify their greed at the expense of several million other people. The ramifications of the behaviour of people like Goodwin, who arrogantly remoulded their roles in crude attempts to exclude social responsibility from banking when, as my dad would have observed, it is fundamental and ineluctable, are causing widespread poverty, stress and grief.

But today we heard from someone who sounds a little more grown up, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, who warned of a 'social time-bomb' from wealth and income inequality. Let’s be thankful that this man has shown awareness and a willingness to speak out. Who knows, he could start a trend.

And maybe the money from the RBS chairman's declined bonus could go towards copies of The spirit level given to people like Goodwin and Walker and thousands like them, as part of mandatory workshops run by the Equality Trust? It would be good to see them shamed into learning something.

Social exclusion as a principle theme of policy emerged from long-standing debates in Europe about poverty in the 1980s, which mattered because they expanded to include other forms of exclusion. Will something similar happen with ‘social inequality’, which is emerging in the context of 'public concern' about relative wealth? Social inequality is not just about wealth, is it? When do we get to the bit about power?

 

Compound interest

Here's a lesson in grassroots democracy, from Libya. The BBC have a short report from Gabriel Gatehouse on a local democratic initiative emerging from the ruins of Colonel Gaddafi's former compound in Tripoli.

After Gaddafi's cronies fled, apparently some 68 families moved in to the various buildings, some of which are extensive villas, some 'little more than concrete bunkers'. There is public discussion about turning the compound into a large park, but the squatters have organised themselves already, formed a residents' assocation, sent a petition to the national transitional council, and begun the process of negotiating another solution.

 

Local democratic participation and parking

I sometimes wonder whether, in late medieval cities, there were disputes about where people left their carts. Car parking is a major issue in contemporary neighbourhoods, and inconsiderate parking infuriates people. Maybe some kinds of personality just get sparked by the very idea of public space, and always have done.

I’m not known for defending car drivers, but when you have situations where residents cannot get their own cars out of their driveways because others have left their vehicles in the way for long periods of time, you have to ask whether there’s a problem understanding that others have a right of access to public space.

A week ago I designed and ran a consultative process for a public meeting about car parking, in a large village on the outskirts of Sheffield. The material I had to work with included a lot of written remarks in open questions from an online survey, many of which suggested solutions and many of which consisted of repeated annoyance at inconsiderate drivers.

The process I came up with may have helped move things on. One reason is that most participants apparently were expecting a conventional public meeting in which councillors said something from the front, were shouted at by a few worked-up voices from the rows, and nothing much changed as a consequence. There were no rows (in either pronunciation) – the chairs were set around tables, people had the chance to shape their own agenda (and therefore found it hard to complain if the meeting did not discuss what they wanted discussed); they had the opportunity to augment and comment, in groups, on every live proposition as it was passed round, using pre-formatted sheets which included a street map; and they had the chance to vote, at the end, on preferred options to address the parking problem. There was no disruption. It was local participative democracy in action.

What was striking for me was the genuine sense of novelty among the participants, which I’m still absorbing. The sceptical might argue that just because some southerner comes in with an arty-farty creative approach, it doesn’t mean anything will change as a consequence. That remains to be seen. But I sensed from various comments afterwards that some people were grateful for a completely fresh experience of genuinely participative local democracy, which was, well, revelatory to them. That’s change, in itself.

The car resembles the traditional meeting as symbolic of communication confusion: it helps us to share some information (like status, power or detachment); in a car you can say ‘we’ve been through’ somewhere much as the conventional meeting ‘goes through’ an agenda. And cars really mess up interaction, and all the unseen benefits that go with interaction.

 

A socio-economic indicator for our times?

It's January, I’ve been working on my tax return and the last two bits of data I had to find were (i) bank and building society interest; and (ii) charitable donations. At first I thought, wouldn’t it be symbolic if the latter turned out higher than the former, times being what they are? Then I thought, might we have here an interesting indicator?

As the data are officially collected it should be possible to compute an accurate average ratio (whatever it might be - any guesses?) expecting the interest earned to be higher than the formal recorded giving. And have a debate about what might be the optimum ratio, given other economic conditions.

Our government wants both, I assume, but I don't think they'd want to see a negative ratio. I know claimed tax relief is only a partial indicator of what is given, but the charitable sector could come up with a formula to account for unrecorded giving as well…

(And yes, it turned out that for tax year 2010-11 I had a negative ratio. I guess I'm just a spoiler).

Having to use the state

“The only time that I use the state,” one financier worth an estimated £500 million confided in me recently, “is when my driver drives on public roads from the City to my country estate. I don’t like it, but I can’t help it.”

(From an article on The rise of the overclass by Peter Oborne in the Telegraph this evening).

Yup, we're all sighing commiserations, it must be tough. But it may be worth pointing out that this financier is deluding himself or herself, quite why is not clear.

The country estate or the offices he or she uses for meetings, for instance, are likely to make use of electricity provided by companies that are regulated by the state. The financier possibly occasionally consumes food or drink that has been contaminated by publicly-regulated water. (Or uses a lavatory ditto).

The education of others who the financier has to deal with, will in many cases have been provided by the state, which is usually an advantage, I suggest. Also their health: the financier presumably benefits from dealing with and perhaps employing healthy, educated people. It probably also helps if they have decent housing, whether or not the financier cares about that.

Then there's the existence of a wider managed economy (ah, ok maybe not). Or the existence of a police force maintaining order, which might just have helped the financier indirectly to make his or her millions. Then there's the publicly funded research which invents, develops and refines materials, technologies, substances, goods and services. And a legal system to ensure that he or she can seek justice if wronged (no further questions, your honour). And so on.

This person thinks the state is an irrelevance to them whereas of course they simply can’t move, or make a profit, without it.

The more I see of it, the harder I find it to overlook the persistent connection between wealth, arrogance and rank stupidity.

 

Parkinson’s Neighbours’ Law

Parkinson’s Wife’s Law – work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion, and he still hasn’t done what I wanted.

Parkinson’s Neighbours’ Law – work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion, and then they have an almighty row about it.

 

Christenings and funerals

Striking story from Steph Jennings on Podnosh about Mosies, a resident of Handsworth in Birmingham, who is working with a group to help influence people who are stuck with the perception that joining a gang is their only option.

'The girls have babies and the boys shoot and stab each other. I’ve lost count of the amount of christenings and funerals I’ve been to but I’ve never been to a wedding that’s just not what we do.'

And Steph is right in observing that you're unlikely to get this kind of story or insight from the prescribed training session format. Semi-formal community-based occasions, like the social media surgeries Podnosh are involved in, are more likely to nurture the sense of camaraderie and ownership that stimulates a shared determination to bring about change.

 

 

Occupy London wish list

I just caught up with this pic by Alan Stanton of the Occupy London wish list. Also needed, I suggest, is a web cam focussed on this board, then we could all keep an eye on it.

 

 

Neighbouring, older people and those who live alone: statistically they don’t stand out

Thank you to ICM Research, who have published questions and data from a recent survey of neighbouring and concerns about winter (the Home Alone survey), carried out for AA Home Emergency Response. In spite of attempts in the press release to put an alarmist spin on the findings, I think they’re largely reassuring.

The claim is made that

‘Overall more than one in eight people (13%) say they don't know any of their neighbours.’

Among those who live alone, the figure rises unsurprisingly, but only to 16 per cent. For those who live with friends, it’s a whopping 30 per cent, but this goes unremarked. It may be worth pointing out that quite a lot of people prefer to have nothing to do with their neighbours; and quite a lot of people will have been in their current place of residence for only a short time (length of residence is not included as a variable).

What the data show is a little more nuanced than the quote above, with a decent attempt to get beyond the blurring caused by the word ‘know’. The results include the following questions and overall percentages:

I would recognise my neighbours but I don't know them to speak to: 7%

I wouldn't recognise most of my neighbours: 5%

I wouldn't recognise any of my neighbours: 1%

I think I preferred the question that was used in the 2008 Full of Life survey, which asked people to indicate if they knew their neighbours well enough to say 'hello'. (With the change of government, the Full of Life study has now disappeared from the DWP website, but at the time I noted that 93 per cent said that they did).

The Home Alone survey shows very little variation between social grades. There’s a remarkable consistency in these two sets of responses, for instance:

	All	AB	C1	C2	DE
I know most of my neighbours	38%	38%	39%	38%	37%
I wouldn't recognise any of my neighbours	5%	4%	6%	5%	4%

The 2010 YouGov survey for the Co-Op used two social grade categories (ABC1 and C2DE) and similarly showed negligible difference in responses to the question ‘Approximately how many of your current neighbours would you say you know by name?’

The Home Alone survey was designed to probe for the need for help or support ‘if you had a problem at home’. According to the results, older people are as likely as the rest of us to know someone within range and certainly on their street, who they can call for help. Overall, 51 per cent of respondents said the nearest was within a quarter of a mile (14 per cent said ‘on my street’); 59 per cent of the over-65s claimed this, with 17 per cent saying ‘on my street’. Again, that's reassuring.

The question is slightly spoiled by the wording, which refers to ‘the nearest friend or family member’: it would have helped to be clear as to whether or not neighbours are assumed to be included, since on the whole they are neither friend nor kin.

But it’s still an interesting question with some unexpected results. For instance, among those who say they ‘know all’ their neighbours, almost a quarter (24 per cent) would go beyond a quarter of a mile to get help if they had a problem at home; and 37 per cent of those who say they ‘know most’ of their neighbours would do so. That’s quite a lot of people who we’d expect to be on good terms with their neighbours but who would go beyond the immediate neighbourhood in case of need.

Previously:

Five per cent have no contact with neighbours

Older and young people relate differently to neighbours: shock news

OK, how well do you know your 'immediate' neighbours?

Shock news: neighbourliness might or might not be in decline

Six per cent would prefer no contact with neighbours

 

Pavements, litter and decoration

Pavements (sidewalks to some) are littered more easily than they can be inscribed, but the former can provoke the latter.

Be warned: using chalk to broadcast a message may seem harmless, but previous posts on this blog (see links below) have shown this not to be the case. Some people may more readily take offence at pavement chalking than dog mess or random chewing gum.

The image below is of artist Ben Wilson who paints on pieces of discarded gum. Apparently he was arrested, something British cops like to do if someone seems a bit strange to them. BBC video here.

 

 

 

 

Previously:

Pavement chalking: this time seen in a positive light

'If it can be washed away, it's not graffiti. But'

Pavement chalking epidemic?

Footnote on pavement chalking

Floor targets

Neighbourliness and the natural disaster effect

Here’s an article by Queensland sociologist Lynda Cheshire, reflecting on the contrast between neighbourly behaviour during the floods in that state last year, and a reported ‘rise in neighbourly tensions’ that apparently characterises contemporary Australian life. Why are neighbours still there when needed, she asks, 'even if their noise, smells and habits are cause for complaint the rest of the time?'

Cheshire notes that the contrast might partly be explained by an increased ability to avoid confrontation by referring difficulties to official intermediaries (like this example I blogged not long ago) and points out that this is ‘a costly habit’:

‘There is a possibility that the wave of goodwill exhibited during the floods will minimise neighbourly conflicts, or at least reduce registered complaints. But it may also create new sets of expectations about neighbours and new forms of conflict if these normative codes are breached.’

I’m reminded that some months ago I wrote about the way supportive neighbourly responses in time of large-scale disasters throw up somewhat nostalgic reflections about how our societies have 'lost' the values that are warmly evidenced in time of adversity. Cheshire’s article does not come into that category, although she does appear at least in this case to reproduce uncritically the received narrative of decline. I'd like to know more about whether neighbourliness in Australia really has declined and in what ways, and how that compares with the UK where similar claims are so often made.

 

Foretelling the crash

It’s nearly ten years since the death of Ivan Illich. A few years ago I found his work was out of print, which maybe helps to explain how come we’re in such a mess. We need to make more of his wisdom.

Looking for something else the other day, I found myself re-reading sections of Tools for conviviality. I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out, but this bit strikes me as grimly prophetic:

Almost overnight people will lose confidence not only in the major institutions but also in the miracle of prescriptions of the would-be crisis managers. The ability of the present institutions to define values such as education, health, welfare, transportation, or news will suddenly be extinguished because it will be recognized as an illusion.

This crisis may be triggered by an unforeseen event, as the Great Depression was touched off by the Wall Street Crash. Some fortuitous coincidence will render publicly obvious the structural contradictions between stated purposes and effective results in our major institutions...

People who invoke the spectre of a hopelessly growth-oriented majority seem incapable of envisaging political behaviour in a crash. Business ceases to be as usual when the populace loses confidence in industrial productivity, and not just in paper currency…

Governments think they can deal with the breakdown of utilities, the disruption of the educational system, intolerable transportation, the chaos of the judicial process, the violent disaffection of the young. Each is dealt with as a separate phenomenon, each is explained by a different report…

Tools for conviviality, 1973, chapter 5.

 

The problem of civility: a parking vignette

I thought I was lucky to grab a parking slot on the edge of a row, with a yellow crossed box marked on the passenger side. This kind of thing matters if you’re moving from place to place with a growing bairn who is hard to manoeuvre into his seat at the best of times.

I got back to the car to find a large van snuggled up alongside, leaving me enough room to get the door open about one and a half feet. Aware of the potential havoc to my back I cautiously got the bairn strapped in and closed the door. I then heard the van driver approaching to say ‘You alright there mate?’ I grumphed audibly. ‘Where do you want me to park?’ he says, ‘on the roof?’

Er, well how about legally?

‘Oh what you gonna do?’ says he, ‘call the police?’

Which epitomises the problem of respect and civility in public spaces. It’s impossible for any system of government to oversee all potential disputes, so our society depends on most of us taking other people into consideration in the first instance (citizenship), before questions of legality come into play. Some people seem to see inconsiderate acts first and foremost as either legal, or illegal-but-can-be-got-away-with.

One of the popular questions of our time is whether the proportion of the population in the latter category is increasing. I’m more than ever persuaded that this perception is related to the amount of time we spend cocconed in our cars, a peering position which subtly alters the relationship to the Other. And if it is increasing, I think the next question to ask is: where’s the tipping point?

 

A glance back

Big society belittled, arab spring-summer-autumn and winter, localism, neutered community development, disturbances in English cities... Here's a quick glance back at some sample posts, as it's been such a curious year.

In January - ('thought leaders my arse') - a post about street reps and new forms of governance. Are we 'witnessing the ungainly, messy emergence of the new order'?

In February, in a year when we finally saw the global power of technologies that foster horizontal communication, some thoughts on networks and democracy.

And a slightly caustic post in which I suggest that anyone who can write 'the extent to which communities are willing to seize the opportunities available' without self-parody is manifestly part of the problem.

In March I wrote about the 'request scruple' - for me an essential post on Lilian Linders' insightful research into neighbourliness, after an inspiring study tour in the Netherlands.

And I was asking 'who's next for the Grand Tour for Saviours of Low-Income Neighbourhoods?'

In May a gentle chuckle observing pétanque, seule, and some reflections on the sense of generalised respect in the French public realm, compared with the British.

In June, here's a more serious moment, squaring up to the idea of community development without the politics:

'government would like to see lots of community action where people do not recognise that some of their problems are externally-determined and are the consequence of unequal and unfair policies.'

(I hit the same nerve in November).

And one of my favourite juxtaproses.

Also in June, some thoughts about the assault on the public, asking

'what will it take eventually to spark a serious debate about the nature of 'public' in this country?'

Here are two posts about the disturbances that started in London in August (no, they weren't 'riots') - first, Maybe capitalism didn't quite work:

'If you relentlessly celebrate consumption; unambiguously and unashamedly pursue policies that promote an unequal society; encourage the spectacularisation of culture (a key component in what we're seeing, I think); demolish whatever is public that you can get away with; and then confiscate a lot of state support that gives young people legitimate occasions to test their need to disrupt things - don't suddenly look surprised.'

and 'The suspension of civilisation' in which I referred to young people’s need to disrupt things:

'That is what young people do: get used to it. A responsible society will find ways to help this process take place creatively and without negative consequences – in sporting encounter, in adventure, in semi-formal flexible environments like youth centres, by giving young people space without obsessive surveillance or devious assimilation. What chance is there now that our society’s neurotic control-freakery towards young people can be cured?'

In October I had the chance to report on a remarkable social inclusion project - Helping young people locate themselves.

In November I blogged about the publication of my essay on picnic and community, launched that month.

OK, there have been very few vignettes this year, but this one earlier this month, although dated, I thought you might quite like.

Just trying to be sociable

"Previous research suggests that U.S. residents may use holiday decorations on their home's exterior to communicate friendliness and cohesiveness with neighbors. In the present research, we examine whether strangers (naive raters) can accurately identify the more friendly residents, and what aspects of the homes' exteriors contribute to their impressions. We also examine the possibility that residents who decorate for Christmas but who have few friends on the block may be using the decorations and other cues as a way of communicating their accessibility to neighbors. Participants rated residents based only on photographs of their home and front yard. Stimulus homes had been preselected to represent the four cells of a two by two factorial design crossing the presence/absence of Christmas decorations with the resident's self-rated social contact with neighbors (low/high). As expected, a main effect for the decorated factor indicated that raters used Christmas decorations as a cue that the residents were friendly and cohesive. Decoration interacted with sociability in a complex but interpretable way. In the absence of Christmas decorations, raters accurately distinguished between the homes of sociable and nonsociable residents; in open ended comments, they attributed their impressions to the relatively more 'open' and 'lived in' look of the sociable residents' homes. When Christmas decorations were present, raters actually attributed greater sociability to the nonsociable residents, citing a more open appearance as the basis for their judgments. The results support the idea that residents can use their home's exterior to communicate attachment and possibly to integrate themselves into a neighborhood's social activities."

Werner, C et al (1989), Inferences about homeowners' sociability: impact of Christmas decorations and other cues. Journal of environmental psychology, 9, 279-296.

 

The social life of pop up spaces

More ideas like this please, as described on the Placemaking blog - the New York City Department of Transportation has been partnering with local restaurants to install pop-up cafés in parking spaces. They offer a short time-lapse video of the use of one such space.

It raises a few creative questions. In what sort of locality would this work best? Obviously not town centre, but given the apparent expense and need for sponsorship, it's unlikely to happen in low-income areas or on peripheral estates. Probably it's best suited just off the suburban high street.

But could a sponsoring agency - perhaps a housing association with many suitable sites - have the portable hardware available for rent and delivered to estates at low cost, and the rest done by tenants' associations?

And what other legitimate uses can be squeezed into the idea without distorting it? Could you have a creche for some of the time? Could you have a volunteer bureau occupy a table there for an hour or two? Suggestions please.

 

What is social participation?

‘Social participation comprises three dimensions: neighbouring, trust, and interest in politics.’

This comes from a chapter of early findings from the ESRC’s Understanding society programme (the new household longitudinal study, described as ‘the world’s largest household panel survey’). The sentence is regarded as sufficiently important to be given a large-font margin box all of its own, so they must have meant it.

It’s certainly different. Those who construct these large national surveys have to make a few questions go a long way, which ain’t easy; but it’s quite hard to see how you could get to this 3D reduction from the mix of concepts covered for example in this mindmap which I knocked up a few years ago. And we need the survey makers to get their structures right because they will set in train a whole lot of subsequent research, policy and practice for years to come.

We can compare and contrast the Understanding Society framework with, for instance, the framework offered in the recent Pathways through participation report. Distinguishing social, public and individual participation, the PtP summary report suggests that social participation includes

'being involved in formal voluntary organisations, informal or grassroots community groups, and formal and informal mutual aid and self help.'

The PtP project put a lot of intellectual effort into the topic, and the tag cloud on their site boasts an enticing array of terms; but I don’t see the words ‘neighbouring’ or ‘trust’. There are just two items for ‘politics’.

So here we have two national level initiatives offering quite different frameworks for a concept that affects all of us and has increasing salience in policy. The Pathways approach is more thorough and altogether more convincing, but unfortunately the Understanding Society approach is likely to have influence for some time as the next waves of data build up and get used.

In their effort to explain their framework, the Understanding Society authors trip themselves up quite quickly:

‘Neighbouring captures informal social participation, while general trust and interest in politics capture participation in formal organisations.’

Well no, they don’t, not by a long way. I’m not an academic so I don’t know what the protocol is, but I suspect that if this was an undergraduate essay you’d send them off to start again.

Safe neighbourhoods: the role of design

Anyone who thought agencies like CABE were a waste of public money should look away now. In their current status as part of the Design Council, using material generated in their previous independence, CABE have produced a set of clear, directive briefing papers on Creating safe places to live through design. They are well worth spending time on.

There are six case studies augmented by a summary of lessons learned. The summary hits four main issues:

• Parking and problems associated with parking are 'a major source of neighbour disputes, anti-social behaviour and in some cases criminal damage and assault'. Issues discussed include paying attention to where visitors are likely to park.

• Design quality… Specific elements that need extra design input are:

'Corner properties – they are at greater risk of crime and need careful resolution to ensure they provide overlooking to both streets.
Avoiding situations that expose rear access to dwellings – all dwellings should be the right way around with fronts and backs resolved properly for every dwelling.
Ensure the movement network passes to the front (or if necessary overlooked sides) [of] dwellings rather than to the rear and is logical, fitting in with wider movement routes.'

• Management and maintenance strategies – noting problems resulting from the rise of buy-to-let properties owned by absentee landlords.

• Gating - 'strong perimeter security through gating is not a panacea for good design within a development. The highest crime scheme in the research was the only one that was gated.'

The image below comes from the case study of the gated estate. Never mind the fencing and gating, the door appears to have been designed so that we can all keep prison life firmly in mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(And what is that slit at the bottom of the door? Designed to make anyone delivering post bend down unnecessarily? Or is it a squat cat flap? Time to leave I think).

 

 

Lifetime neighbourhoods

Four years ago I posted a note about an excellent CLG discussion paper on lifetime neighbourhoods prepared by the International Longevity Centre. CLG have now published a new report by Mark Bevan and Karen Croucher from the Centre for Housing Policy in York. It’s an important document which brings together a wide range of material to give this theme some welcome momentum.

The main components of lifetime neighbourhoods are given as

• supporting residents to develop lifetime neighbourhoods – especially resident empowerment
• access
• services and amenities
• built and natural environments
• social networks/well-being
• housing.

There are several valuable strengths in this report. I would highlight the appropriate breadth of research and practice material, the significant number of practice examples, and the emphasis on resident empowerment. It’s also very readable.

Against that, there are two weaknesses that struck me very quickly. The main one is that there is no recognition of the damaging over-emphasis on cars in our local environments, of the way design has too often privileged the driver, and the knock on effect on local social quality of life.

A few years ago the designer Wayne Hemingway told me a story about trying to get residents in a new tower building to accept an underground car park in the design. They wouldn’t, because they wanted to be able to see their cars from their windows – hence using up vastly more land to accommodate them, than was necessary. People treat cars as extensions of their homes, and as a way of marking territory, probing out into the world. It’s hard to see how we can develop lifetime neighbourhoods without confronting this peculiar obsession, but it doesn't help to overlook it. As a society we seem to be in denial.

The other unexpected weakness is a lack of insight into the potential of digital media to strengthen social networks. We can anticipate a future in which residents will expect to be connected and to enjoy and exploit the benefits of their networks, online and face-to-face. And as the Online Neighbourhood Networks study suggested, there are benefits to service providers.

 

Network ennui

Today the Guardian community action hub published an article by Rosie Niven on ‘social media in community building and development’, and I added two or three comments explaining some aspects of the Online Neighbourhood Networks research which I carried out with Hugh Flouch.

I thought I’d mention here that in passing I refer to the notion of ‘network ennui’, which I have decided will become contagious - a period not too far in the future when swathes of the world’s population just get pissed off with the dreary effort of maintaining our social networks and do other stuff like looking where we’re going on the street, experiencing silence and playing solitaire WITH REAL CARDS… the age of social media will just quietly die with an untweeted whimper.

I can’t tell you more cos it’s already started, must go.

 

Neighbour relations can reinforce boundaries - or break them down

We have builders working on the house, this time it’s Dave from just five doors away, and his mate. Yesterday was pretty cold up on the scaffolding, so I heated up some of the apple crumble that my next door neighbour had brought round a little earlier, and took two portions up the ladder for them. They had the chance subsequently to thank her from above as she popped out.

A slightly unusual triangle of service and support then - perhaps an exception to theories of standard neighbour behaviour. Theory tends to inspect some wider social problems - class tensions, ethnic relations - in neighbour relations and then to generalise back out from there. There are symbolic boundaries that we use to differentiate ourselves, and according to this recent paper in Sociological research online, neighbouring reinforces those boundaries rather than breaking them down.

It seems to me that people do both in the neighbouring setting. I can learn a bit about Nigerian culture from a family a few doors along, crossing cultural boundaries with ease for example just by asking for a recipe; or I could shut out all contact from the Irish Catholics next door if I was minded to, just by limiting interaction to a grunt.

 

 

Taxes and governmental powers: what are they for?

When I dropped out of school and went into ‘the world of work’, as it used to be called, I remember being disturbed by the fact that the education system left me utterly ignorant of what government and local government do, and what taxation is for. It looks like things have got little better, in spite of the introduction of citizenship to the curriculum.

Yup, it’s time for a bit of seasonal gloom, with the British Social Attitudes report published today and plenty of publicity given to this statistic:

The proportion who think we should pay (more) taxes to improve health and education and social benefits is only 30% in England, 40% in Scotland. A decade ago it was 60% in both nations. (BBC)

Like a separating galaxy, it looks like we are moving at speed away from the traditional civilising notion of the ‘common weal’. (In case you missed it, here’s the link to requirements for people who don’t want to pay taxes).

Do people who think like this imagine, for instance, that business could function without publicly maintained roads and systematically tested vehicles, or a managed wider economy? Or that the police could maintain order without some sort of funding; or that the food and water they consume could be guaranteed to be hygienic without public agencies? Perhaps it does not occur to them?

Ah wait, perhaps what really bugs them is that poverty is self-imposed, not structural:

63% believed parents who don't want to work were to blame for children living in poverty.

I suggest you blink hard, and re-read that figure: almost two thirds.

According to Mark Easton on the BBC site today, the UK ‘has long been the most judgmental of the needy in Europe.’ In a way, that’s a relief; but yes we do seem determined, disastrously, to become more and more like the US. Income inequality is increasing, with a government apparently comfortable with polarisation. And we seem to be a bit angry too.

Dark age ahead, as Jane Jacobs warned. Jane listed five pillars of culture including ‘taxes and governmental powers that are directly in touch with needs and possibilities’. But civilisation will pay a heavy price if too few citizens really appreciate what they’re for.

 

Pavements are for people

I recently mentioned the Living Streets campaign against pavement parking. By coincidence, clearing out some old papers, I just came across this little gem. It's 25 years old and appears to have been part of a national campaign, the leaflet being distributed with vehicle licensing documents. After that, everyone pretty much gave up I think.

The unedited writer

When I was working on my essay about picnic and community, I took a decision not to share the text with critical friends, nor to use an editor. The Bookleteer publishing process made this realistic, but it was a little scary.

I’ve just posted a note on the Bookleteer blog, discussing what this was like and why I did it:

‘The key justification for me was that to submit to editorial control would have been a crass betrayal of one of the essay’s themes. The essay contrasts picnic with formal meals, it contrasts organisation with networking, and disorder with order, as a way of exploring our tendency to idealise community in structured, formal terms. I felt that by submitting to the convention of editing – a fundamentally conservative process – I would have contradicted that theme in a rather feeble way.’

More here about the essay, and orders can be placed here.

 

Communication vignette

This blog is eight years old today, but the following note predates it. I found this text among several forgotten vignettes in a dusty corner of the hard drive.

A woman got on the train at Gatwick, although not particularly burdened with luggage as so many air travellers are at that station. I was wearing dark glasses as I was trying to sleep. She clattered through the door between carriages, the sound woke me from a doze. She spoke as she clattered through – “Is this the train for Brighton?” At first her words were directed at the woman closest to her, but immediately she noticed that passenger had a walkman and was not ready to receive the question, which was deflected, by the enquirer’s glance in flight, to me. By the time she had reached the question mark, I had flicked the shades up from my eyes, and genuine face-to-face interaction took place, so that I was able to reassure her.

The woman sat down and to my delight, shortly after the train moved on, took out a portable typewriter, opened it up, and hammered a few keys to the rhythm of the train.

June 2002

 

Effectively censored

This lady can’t get her home village of Effin accepted on her Facebook profile page. Facebook apparently screens out some place names, claiming in this case that the village is too small to be featured as a home town on the website.

And yet the phrase ‘Effin Facebook’ seems very familiar.

 

Picture this

Thanks to a fascinating academic meeting this week about ‘researching contemporary communities,’ I was directed to this striking image based on shopkeepers’ countries of origin. It comes from an ethnographic study of the Walworth Road in south London, carried out by Suzanne Hall, an architect. The illustration is dated 2006. It neatly captures what Doreen Massey meant by a ‘global sense of place’.

I like this particularly because of the immediacy of the story it tells. Rather like Donald Appleyard’s famous (1981) drawings of local social interactions on ‘light traffic street’ and ‘heavy traffic street,’ you get the message straight away, and it confirms what you are already likely to know, so it’s more reassuring than thought-provoking or challenging.

 

A new age of collective action?

 

According to a reporter on R4’s Today programme this morning, one trade union has seen membership increase by 11,000 in the past three months. So while the coalition government is determinedly polarising British life, by making no effort to constrain the vulgar greed of the wealthy while patronisingly clobbering the least well off, it’s proving quite efficient at stimulating collective action.

So this ‘rebuke to an elite that gives money to banks at the expense of the poor’ might just be an unanticipated manifestation of big society, for those who remember it. And there’s nowt like a bit of class confrontation to help take your mind off the niceties of economic forecasting.

Meanwhile it’s fun to scan through the 102 things not to do if you hate taxes – for example, ‘Do not walk or run on sidewalks… Do not expect to be able to vote on election days.’ (Via Diane Dyson).

Maybe those of us who believe in the importance for civilisation of some things being public, and who resent the systematic erosion of that principle by the Haves, should keep a short version of this list in our pockets as a handout for those moments when we encounter these people – which is always in public space of course.

 

Space in the home

BSHF have started some interesting-looking research into what constitutes a ‘decent’ amount of domestic space.

‘A range of different standards are used by central and local government to measure aspects of space in the home, like overcrowding and under occupation.  There is also a range of space standards available as guides for new housing development. But the assumptions behind these standards are not always clear. And there is little information on what the general public thinks is acceptable when it comes to space in the home, and what not.’