Neighbourhoods

Of the social capital of a social capitalist

Today I had the privilege to be speaking (at a conference of the Society of Chief Librarians, no less; not an indian in sight) alongside John Field, whose excellent book on social capital is about to be published in its second edition. A privilege, but not an easy act to follow.

John spoke about social capital and I was talking about the Living Library project I've been involved in, and about community engagement. I think between us we offered a healthy serving of social policy and practice ideas from beyond the field. There seemed to be a great deal of support for the notion of a locally-grown, non-confrontational model of Living Library - a model which facilitates and legitimises conversations that would otherwise not happen, building relationships in an organic way.

When I reached for a biz card to offer to John, he laughed and said he didn't have one. The explanation being that he came originally from Northern Ireland where 'everyone knows everyone'. Maybe one doesn't need biz cards for bonding ties, and if you don't need bridging ties I guess you can do without. To my delight, our social networks overlap through our common friendship with Alison Gilchrist: I think it took us five minutes at most to discover this connection.

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.

Music and collective wellbeing

A while ago my daughter got herself a t-shirt printed with the inscription 'What if the hokey-cokey is what it's all about?' Community singing certainly does something special for some people, but why?

There was a totally absorbing programme about music and health, broadcast on R3 today, parts of which explored how 'music facilitates communication and community'.

I learned about one project, Singing for the Brain, which taps into the associative memories of those with dementia and Alzheimer's and has a demonstrable healing effect. I heard from people who have studied the ways in which music affects our brains, emotions and wellbeing, telling us that in health terms music is 'not a drug - it's the opposite', and

It only works when it's part of a relationship.

And if like me, you wondered whether the legendary longevity of many musicians was something to do with socio-economic class, here's a more likely explanation: musicians are 'self-medicating'.

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.

Rule of thumb about word of mouth

I was talking to a group of community workers today, getting their views on the use of community centres and ways of getting people through the door. Most of the way through a 12 month funded programme, they told of an influx of new people coming in. This is in an area of low expectations and high needs.

The explanation is that 'word-of-mouth takes 8-9 months...'

'It's about people having the courage to act on what they're hearing. It can take you a year to get confidence in the community, that there's something new for them to try and to trust it. It takes time for the confidence to work through.'

Having spoken to quite a few of the residents about their levels of confidence before and after contact with the centres, this makes sense to me. Funders please note.

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.

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.

Social capital in schools

Social capital continues to make a comeback. Last month the Department for Children Families and Schools published research into 'the development and impact of young people's social capital in schools.'

Drawing on survey and qualitative interview data from two inner London schools, the researchers looked at the sense of school belonging, access to social support networks, and attitudes to diversity.

As we'd expect, their conclusions assert the importance of the school context in the social life of young people. They emphasise the uneven distribution of social capital (with white boys from lower socio-economic backgrounds having the lowest levels of social capital, and white girls having the lowest levels of socio-psychological resources).

They also point to the need to relate the citizenship curriculum to the neighbourhood context and build extended services that promote collaborative relationships between different social groups.

The report refers to the new duty on schools to promote community cohesion, and I noted one striking finding described in the summary:

The schools in this study were highly ethnically diverse and, on average, students tended to hold positive attitudes to cultural and racial diversity... However, in both schools gay people were perceived as a small minority, and students seemed much less positive to diversity in terms of sexual orientation. Hence, while cultural diversity appeared to be valued, or at least regarded as a non-controversial issue within school, the data suggest that homophobia was a considerable problem in our two secondary schools.

The value of community centres and the costs of sociability

I was talking to some young mothers the other day about the use of their community centre, and what they went there for. In these cases, in a low income neighbourhood with demanding toddlers at home and nothing much to do, it's mainly social contact.

Once they've gained the confidence to get across the threshold of the centre, they would do pretty much whatever course was available if there was free or cheap creche provision. And when that course's finished they sign up for the next.

Two of the women I spoke to had decided to set up their own group at the end of a course on self-esteem and stress management. One of them told me the only problem was the extent to which her mobile phone bill had gone up:

A year ago I didn't have any friends. Now I make so many calls I've had to switch to a contract.

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.

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-along of socialising, getting along with people you might not necessarily choose as friends, is structurally minimised. And we have overseen a degree of family disintegration so that many young people can avoid having more than the most minimal contact with older people, and the separated generations are often bewildered by each other. Result, a crisis of respect. On its own, transforming the design of neighbourhoods won't cure this combination, it seems to be a deep cultural problem.

I was having a conversation the other day with a teacher who was telling me how depressing it is to have to try and deal with young people when they relentlessly swear and spit (in the classroom or corridor, this is, when in conversation with a teacher). It's unambiguously disrespectful behaviour, which must have some basis in the sense of not being cared about or valued.

How does that square with a society which appears obsessed with protecting its children from risk? I think it's partly because systematised risk aversion is in conflict with notions of genuine caring, it reflects self-interested detachment that says - children are too much trouble to be bothered about, we must constrain what they do. Bollocks.

The teacher and I reflected on the fact that we both know plenty of remarkable young people - far more mature and socially-supportive than most of us were in my day, inspiring young people who are a privilege to be with. And we were left wondering whether there is some kind of divide developing, between those who have had the chance to explore their own potential and responsible social relations, and those who haven't. I suspect I'll be revisiting this theme.

Young people and social networks

Recent JRF report shows both benefits and disbenefits in local social networks.

Place identity can be a source of strength, but it also appeals to the parochial.

Local connections can give some young people strong advantages in the labour market, with family and friends providing valuable support; while wider social and spatial horizons can expand the range of opportunities young people consider and improve their prospects. In more peripheral areas their choices may remain constrained because of limited employment opportunities.

The authors conclude that:

• policy needs to recognise that local, place-based social networks affect aspirations and behaviour;
• it is important that young people are aware of and can access opportunities beyond their immediate neighbourhood.

Petanque alone

What an opportunity spoiled by bad photography. Sorry.

Social capital in neighbourhoods: two recent reports

CASE, the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, recently published a short report by Anne Power and Helen Willmot on Social capital within the neighbourhood.

It's based on seven rounds of interviews with the main carer (or most present parent) in families with children, in two case study areas: a large council estate, and an inner city mixed-tenure area. The material comes from CASE's eight year longitudinal study tracking 200 families in four representative low-income areas.

The researchers look at bonding capital, in terms of family and friendship networks; and bridging capital, in which they include the role of neighbours (something continues to bother me about the equation of weak neighbourly relations with 'bridging' capital...):

In Kirkside East 70% of the respondents, and in The Valley 68%, explained that there are one or more people with whom they actually exchange favours. Furthermore, approximately a fifth of the respondents in both of the neighbourhoods (18% in Kirkside East and 20% in The Valley) explained that there are more than four such people in their lives. Favours exchanged encompassed immediate, momentary ones and more long-term, longstanding arrangements, including the giving of time as well as other resources.

The report goes on to note that:

A dominant theme in the respondents’ narratives on friends and family was the importance not so much of the actual support received from them, as knowing it is there to draw on when ever it is needed

- although this is not extended to neighbours.

The researchers conclude by echoing calls for policy makers 'to recognise, and then not damage or destroy, existing social capital.'

Around the same time, a report by Marilyn Taylor from an action learning set on Making social capital count was published as part of the national evaluation of neighbourhood management pathfinders.

The report is based on conversations (aha) among residents and agency representatives in Manton, north Nottinghamshire, exploring how a focus on social capital could contribute to change in their area. The content of the pdf is protected (there may be some reason for that, which I'm unable to grasp) which hardly encourages me to offer the findings.

But I do note the remark: 'The beauty of this approach is that it is simple - even obvious.' Indeed.

Older people and isolation from neighbours

Help the Aged has launched a new fundraising campaign which aims to help end isolation and loneliness among older people. This follows a survey which claims that 1.4 million older people in the UK feel 'socially isolated' and nearly 300,000 have gone a full month in the last year 'without speaking to any family or neighbours.'

Had they spoken to any friends, in that time, you want to ask. Unfortunately Help the Aged don't seem to offer a link to a report of the research, although I suppose it must be somewhere. [While I'm at it, and without wishing to seem to be picking on this organisation, why is this contemptuous attitude towards readers so widespread?]

Press release.

Neighbouring, parenting and poverty

This is the kind of stuff that gives income inequalities a bad name. A new report from the Family and Parenting Institute confirms that 'Income is a strong factor in families’ experience of their neighbourhood.' The poorer a family is, the more likely they are to feel unsafe after dark, the less likely they are to feel that their neighbours would help out in a crisis, and the less likely they are to have well-maintained green spaces nearby.

The report is based on an online survey of over 2,000 parents in England with a child or children under the age of 16.

While 70% say that their neighbours would help them out in a crisis (eg look after their children if they had to go to hospital for a few hours), the researchers suggest that this masks significant differences in terms of wealth. Only half of those with incomes below £10,000 think that their neighbours would help them out in a crisis.

On the other hand, there's not a great deal of expressed concern about informal social control. Most parents would not worry about talking to their neighbours’ children if they were being unruly. Some 77% said that they would speak to their neighbours’ children if they were misbehaving in the neighbourhood, or would consider doing so, with only 18 per cent saying they would definitely not do so.

Social network gap?

Three and a half years ago I wrote: 'We're all going to have to wait a while for Keith Hampton's definitive report on the e-neighbors project in Boston.' Well yer tiz and worth the wait of course.  It's published in a UK journal, Information, communication and society, in a special issue on 'e-Relationships'.

The three-year e-Neighbors study involved detailed social network surveys in four localities, in three of which residents were provided with a neighbourhood email discussion list and a website. The paper focuses mostly on the take-up and use in a suburban neighbourhood. The great majority of ties formed as a result of people being given access to the list, were weak ties. Hampton claims that the internet does not isolate people from the parochial realm of the neighborhood:

'Internet use over extended periods appears to be an antidote to privatism – it affords the formation of local social networks.'

Of interest in this write-up is the consideration of a 'social network gap'. I've always disliked the notion of a 'digital divide' (why digital? why divide?) and Keith wisely skirts this, raising questions which get us a little closer to the issues. We know that social inclusion is not just about access to stuff but also about social connections, especially weak ties. And some kinds of neighbourhood offer greater potential for establishing ties than do others.

So here's the problem as he puts it to us:

'Those without the technology, and those in neighborhoods without an existing propensity towards local tie formation, are structurally disadvantaged twice over; they are unlikely to build local community with or without the use of information and communication technologies.'

I've always admired the measured clarity of Keith's thought and writing, and it was a privilege to have the chance to contribute some thoughts to the project at an early stage. As it happens, this paper fits nicely onto stuff I've been babbling lately about weak ties and local networks. It's time to get some decent work done on this in the UK: where, for instance, is the housing association that's building or encouraging simple email lists on estates?

Keith Hampton's site.

Previously: On Keith Hampton's 2004 London presentation.

'Social exclusion, social capital, and local online centres.'

Social exclusion, social capital, and local online centres

Yesterday to the Oxford Internet Institute for a session on 'digital disengagement' and social exclusion, where I learned the following from one reported study: 11% of those whose experience of exclusion is most entrenched (ie identified on several measures, not just one or two) are 'internet users.'

Without the source I can't unpack this stat, but I'd like to see more case studies to find out more about what people in this category are doing when they are connected, and what difference it makes to their lives. It happens that I'm involved in the evaluation of a 'social impact demonstrator' at a couple of UK online centres, so may be able to contribute in due course. And Citizens Online's Everybody Online projects should provide some insights.

As it turned out, the need for more qualitative research, to get at some subtleties that were not emerging from survey material, was a lesson for the OII from the seminar. One of the nuances that concerns me is the point that, irrespective of communication technologies, we don't know enough about the extent to which people who experience exclusion are strategic in their approach to weak ties.

People of all ages and classes and backgrounds can be strategic about their need for and approach to connections and friendships, without necessarily being cynically so. Is such behaviour as likely to be found among those whose experience of exclusion is most profound? Whether it tends to be or not will influence people's attitudes to the communication technologies, for example in recognising that mobiles are brilliant for strong ties but maybe not so good for establishing weak ties.

If your personal social network is sparse, then strong ties might be the ones you crave or seem to have most need for. Perhaps also you lack opportunities or skills (or both) to establish weak ties - these tend to require some basic cultural, social or economic capital to start with. But from the early work with UK online centres in low-income areas that I was involved in years ago, it was apparent that some people were establishing weak ties with remote others online, and gaining confidence and skills from that experience.

And right on cue, here's a paper by Sara Ferlander and Duncan Timms, which contrasts users' experience of a 'local net' in a low-income area, and in an 'IT-café'.

The paper examines the extent to which use of the Internet is associated with an enhancement of social participation, social trust and local identity in the area. The Local Net appears to have had limited success in meeting its goals; the IT-Café was more successful...

The IT-Café provided a physical meeting place which facilitated social networking, especially the development of weak ties bridging different local groups, and led to decreased tensions between them. The physical aspect of the IT-Café had positive impacts upon local ties and bonding social capital. Nonetheless, visitors to the Café, in common with the users of the Local Net, mainly used the Internet for non-local networking (bridging and linking social capital) including the creation and/or maintenance of both weak and strong, and interest-specific (bonding) ties. The Internet was used for the maintenance of non-local strong bonding social capital, with many visitors using the Internet to keep in touch with family and friends outside the local community.

It's not an either/or issue of course. And as I understand it (although this is only quietly mentioned) the two resources were sequential, the café established as the Local Net failed, and the latter seems to have been on far too large a scale, so there are all sorts of reasons why the comparison is speculative. It's highly likely that many of those who used the café were already blessed with sufficient confidence and social capital to take advantage of what was on offer. Indeed the authors accept that causal priorities are hard to establish, but 'the evidence suggests that an IT-Café, combining physical with virtual and the local with the global, may be especially well suited to build social capital and a sense of local community in a disadvantaged area.'

In my view this in no way discredits neighbourhood networks, but it does put a nice big tick in the Third Place box. And it sweetly reinforces what some of us were saying 10 years ago (The net result) about the need for local resource centres; or a few years later for example in a paper to government which I co-wrote in 2002:

• Access centres function best as part of wider generic community resources that attract local people for a range of activities. It is not realistic to expect them to become financially self-sustaining without distorting their roles, although they do tend to add value to whatever funding they receive;
• Where they are part of generic community resources, access centres fulfil fundamental social roles that contribute to government objectives on community cohesion, social capital, and community capacity building. They reach parts that other agencies cannot reach, and seen in this context they justify public funding. Such funding would need to reflect recognition of their role as community sector resources rather than as centres of formal learning.

Regrettably, government lost its nerve at about that time, and funding for the centres came with badly-misconceived requirements for formal learning, wholly inappropriate for the policy objective. Now they're wondering where the social inclusion results are going to come from.

'We're most gregarious'

Some time ago I expressed a concern about the tendency to theorise and problematise social capital away from local everyday life. It's important to take account of shallow conversations and brief interactions that take place in the public realm. And now I've just been reading about some research into ephemeral relationships on the trams of Antwerp, carried out by Ruth Soenen.

Over eight months Soenen observed the kinds of brief relationships that spring up and disappear in this kind of public context - she notes for example how people start talking if they have to help one another avoid falling when there's a sudden stop, or if they see something unusual through the window. She records the catalytic effect of a colourful and talkative person stepping on board.

She tries to link this to notions of 'community', arguing that in-depth relationships 'don't have a priviliged status' in this respect:

'Duration doesn’t seem to be the essential marker for the experience of community... Ephemeral relationships can be a social base for the experience of community.'

Soenen goes on to argue that there are limitations in the measurement of social capital when we ignore the potential of ephemeral relationships. Her book about this study is published in Dutch only.

Thanks Jan. My title, showing my age, is from Flanders and Swan.

Previously: Segregation in public space (with reference to buses in Jerusalem).

Social capital entanglements

Here's an example of how difficult it can be to get clarity on where social capital comes from and goes to. Marilyn Taylor, in her recent assessment of the extent to which the neighbourhood management Pathfinders are generating social capital, refers to the significant growth in neighbourhood watch schemes in one of the case study areas, by way of evidence.

But neighbourhood watch organisations are based not on trust, but on distrust: hence their contribution to social capital is ambivalent. I think Marilyn's probably right, to the extent that these groups would be buzzing with bonding and linking capital. But they're probably not going to be doing much bridging: and in a lot of Pathfinder areas, bridging capital is in short supply as it is.

This is a reminder that we still lack sophistication in our analysis of social capital. Hopefully the report, which renews the focus on social capital, will stimulate more work to bring out the implicit contribution of neighbourhood management in its generation.

Previously: Social capital makes a comeback?

The social impacts of heat waves

Here in the UK summer forgot to show up this year, but it's reassuring nonetheless to see that the Environment Agency has published some research into The social impacts of heat waves.

In our family we joke about how my mother used to put on Factor 50 to sit in the shade, but sometimes there's no joke. As Eric Klinenberg's famous study of Chicago showed, excessive protracted heat can be deadly, especially in urban areas, and there are social dimensions (eg strength of social networks and neighbourhood ties) which impact on the chances of survival.

And as it happens, Kit Hodge was reflecting on heat in Chicago just the other day over on Neighbors Project.

Social capital makes a comeback?

I've pondered a few times the curious way in which the term 'social capital' (and the debate around it) seemed to disappear from publicly articulated policy in the last few years. The notions of well-being and happiness flickered on the screen, for a time, presumably in anticipation of greater resonance.

Some people of course have kept talking about s.c. anyway, not least the excellent North East Social Capital Forum, which has now organised a conference 'Social cohesion and community wellbeing: is social capital the secret ingredient?' for 28 September in Sunderland.

And here's a recent report by Marilyn Taylor for the Department for Communities and Local Government, on Neighbourhood management and social capital. The report is based on three case studies. It looks at activities which can be seen to contribute to social capital and explores ways in which their impact can be assessed. Is the term making a come-back because we can't do without it, or is this just a bit of conceptual archaeology?

'Can't complain'

Defra have included a provisional list of 'wellbeing measures' in a recently published set of sustainability indicators.

Fear of crime
  - Perceptions of anti-social behaviour
Workless households
Childhood poverty
Pensioner poverty
Education
Healthy life expectancy
  - Self-reported general health
  - Self-reported long-standing illness
Mortality rates (suicide)
  - Mortality rates for those with severe mental illness
Accessibility
Social justice
Environmental equality
Housing conditions
Satisfaction with local area
  - Trust in people in neighbourhood
  - Influencing decisions in the local area
Wellbeing
  - Overall life satisfaction
  - Satisfaction with aspects of life
  - Frequency of feelings or activities which may have a positive or negative impact on wellbeing
  - Level of participation in sport
  - Access to greenspace
  - Level of participation in cultural activities
  - Positive mental health

The document acknowledges that there is quite a bit more work to do. I'd say this list seems a bit weak on personal and social relationships - friendship, friendliness, neighbourliness, and 'sense of community.' But according to a survey summarised in the Guardian,

While over 85% of those questioned were satisfied with their relationships, less than 65% were satisfied with feeling part of a community.

Also: New Economics Foundation press release on the Happy Planet Index.

Public space, diversity, and social interaction

Back on the theme of public space, I just found out that Demos have published a report on public space and interaction between diverse communities, by Joost Beunderman and Hannah Lownsbrough, about the extent to which public spaces can foster everyday positive interaction between people.

It's hard on a quick reading to say what this report adds to the recent glut of material on this theme, particularly following the rich stack of JRF work published last year. It looks to me like it brings together some key threads from all over the place concisely and, as we would expect from Demos, there's the customary intriguing list to provoke us:

• Exchange spaces: places where people exchange ideas, information and goods
• Productive spaces: used by people engaged in activities to grow or create goods
• Spaces of services provision: support services are run from these spaces, either by statutory or voluntary providers
• Activity spaces: where people gather for leisure, such as for play, sport or informal events
• Democratic / participative spaces: for shared decision-making or governance
• Staged spaces: ‘one-off’ special occasions where people are brought together for a specific purpose
• In-between spaces: places which are located between communities
• Virtual spaces: non-physical spaces, such as those created online by social networking sites.

The authors also note that the number of spaces which fall unambiguously into the category of ‘public’ is dwindling; and that 'many seemingly "public" spaces have implicit barriers to entry that diminish their truly public character.' The lessons put forward, however, don't feel as if they are going to transform practice:

1. be flexible in the use of space, understand the grain of people’s everyday lives and reflect it in the design of public space;
2. aim to create the setting for ‘trusted’ spaces, where people feel secure to take part in unfamiliar interactions;
3. foster positive interactions but don’t promote them: take an indirect approach to changing behaviour;
4. embrace creativity and innovation in finding new and imaginative uses for spaces that will transform interactions between people.

As so often I think the missing voices in this debate are the community and social psychologists. I'd like to learn more about how we associate value or non-value or distrust with confused or neglected spaces, especially those leftover spaces of uncertainty that attract some and repel others. I can't believe that the psychology of space doesn't have a refreshing contribution to make to the issues of cohesion and integration, towards which this report and others (eg Dines and Cattell) have been groping.

This report was prepared for the Commission for Racial Equality, referring to diversity in its sub-title, and Beunderman and Lownsbrough have woven-in some interesting points about territoriality and segregation both in general terms and with reference to their case studies. As the list of lessons above suggests, however (at least to me) we still don't have the confidence to make clear statements about the way some spaces seem to promote and some discourage interactions with people from different backgrounds.

And I do wonder if we don't have too much emphasis on the engineering of sociability, as in phrases like 'the design of public space.' As I've argued often enough, sometimes the first principle is for professionals to make sure they're not doing damage to social networks, and to respect informality as a principle. But then, me putting it like that isn't going to transform practice either.

Residential segregation and community cohesion

The recent report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion was important partly in giving new policy emphasis to what's known as the 'isolation thesis' - the notion that residential segregation restricts social ties between minority ethnic groupings and the host population, and that these ties are important.

I've just been reading some research based on survey analysis in the Netherlands which appears to confirm the first part of the argument:

spatial segregation hampers the social inclusion of ethnic minorities, as it stands in the way of contacts between ethnic minorities and native Dutch.

Perhaps surprisingly, this conclusion was found to apply more clearly to 'non-deprived ethnic minorities' than to deprived.

van der Laan Bouma-Doff, W. Confined contact: residential segregation and ethnic bridges in the Netherlands. Urban studies, 44(5-6), May 2007, 997-1017.

_________

Update

Meanwhile, guidance published today sets out what schools in England will have to do under a new duty to promote community cohesion. The press release includes a broad definition of community cohesion which I haven't seen before.

Integration and Cohesion: the report

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

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

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

The report is structured around four principles:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The third place game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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