Neighbourhoods

House swap: the policy

Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps, the man whose very name sounds like a third sector funding crisis, has announced that under a Tory government every family living in social housing "will have the chance to move around the country by exchanging their home for another one". (Sources: Regen & Renewal, New Start).

'A Tory government would set up a national database that would enable social tenants to find alternative accommodation anywhere in the country.'

Maybe don't knock it just yet - it could have some positive consequences for use of housing stock. Moves are surely more likely to be local than regional or national; but some cases could get singed by eg inflammable family tensions over child-care versus employment opportunities, being further from extended families, reluctance to change schools and so on.

If I knew more about the contemporary stream of tacky television programmes, I might just be suspicious that the idea occurred to someone in a Tory think-bowl without their even having to move from their own sofa. That's what we need, a government that is frugal on its own development costs and lets the broadcast media do what it's good at.

There's no there, there

The Sunday Telegraph has this story about a non-existent village in Lancashire, apparently spawned by Google maps. Just green fields.

Maybe it's just as well. I seem to recall that one riposte to Gertude Stein's famous comment about Oakland ('The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there's no there, there') was something like:

'The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, it's there.'

Joining up street campaigns

The Civic Society Initiative has announced a Street Pride campaign for next year, 'to help rid our streets of unnecessary clutter and create streets we can be proud of'.

'The campaign will include a toolkit for civic societies to involve their members and others in identifying and urging action against unnecessary street clutter and a number of campaign workshops around the country. We will focus on poor pavements and unnecessary signs, posts, bollards and guardrails. The results will feed into a national database and support a high profile campaign for national action.'

No mention there of the chief cause of clutter, cars. All power to their elbows, though: except, aren't there already a few elbows grinding on these and related issues? I could find no mention of the Street Pride campaign on the Living Streets site for instance, nor at Sustrans, but I hope there's been some dialogue. And reading this leader in yesterday's Times I was reminded of the origins and achievements of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England.

It would be good to be reassured that some joining up is being done.

Picnic and 'community'

Victorian picnics were often feats of military-style organisation and endurance. They established the picnic as a grand social event rather like the 18th century ball, made possible by the servants, at which the manoeuvres of social interests (marriage and money) were played out.

But being Victorian English, eccentricity had its place, depicted by Dickens and Surtees among others. Francis Kilvert in his diary for 1870 records one example:

‘We had tea all across the road, completely obstructing the thoroughfare…’

I'm writing an essay about picnic and community, following the Wellcome event back in June. As far as I can discover, the large-scale picnic was never a strategic instrument to stimulate trade from the global tourism industry (although Dorothy Wordsworth probably came very close). But this is is the twenty-first century, and big cities can turn to 'community' as a device to attract attention, strategically, within that global market.

In Sydney they closed the harbour bridge for a picnic - turf laid especially, entertainment ditto, breakfast all across the road. In the Beeb's coverage, one of the first words you hear from a participant is 'community':

'It's a sense of community. Everyone's here having a good time.'

A politician appears. Sydney needs the boost, we're told. So picnic is a device for 'community' which in turn is a device for economic prosperity. Hence the spectacularisation. And you thought you were just packin' a snack.

Having a structure for civic involvement matters

The Civic Trust was precisely the kind of organisation of which it might have been said, if it didn't exist they'd have to reinvent it. And so they have. The Trust closed in April this year leaving local civic societies in a haze of uncertainty. The Civic Society Initiative has just published the report on their consultation which I mentioned in the summer.

Among the main findings:

• Civic societies want to be less reactive, work more in partnership and be more campaigning in their outlook.
• There is a refreshing openness within civic societies about their shortcomings and their mixed reputation – ageing, negative and out of touch but also locally knowledgeable, actively concerned about the future and wanting to connect more with their community.
• The movement lacks confidence in itself and others can appear to value it more than civic societies themselves.
• Civic societies seek a unifying mission and purpose for the movement. This is likely to be based around issues of place, pride, identity and community.

The analysis reveals a wish to move from being:

• Separate voices to being a collective movement
• Hierarchical to being more networked
• Dependent to being more independent (especially financially)
• Organised top-down to being more federal.

Three main roles have been identified for the national body:

• Providing information, support and advice to civic societies
• Facilitating civic societies to network and cluster together
• Being a national lead and voice for the movement which provides inspiration and direction; lobbies and campaigns on its behalf; and raises its profile and influence.

The organisation is now seeking feedback on the report by Friday 20 November.

Hope and fear jigsaw

I'm a bit late catching up with this but glad I've done so. Artist Michael Pinsky generated a 70m² jigsaw based on local aerial maps of 150 localities, onto which people had inscribed their hopes and fears for the future of their neighbourhood. It was pieced together at CABE's recent 10th anniversary event in London.

Housing freeze

Apparently there are some 20,000 abandoned houses in Detroit. Architect Matthew Radine and photographer Greg Holm offer their take on this and the freeze in the housing market: they plan to spray one of the uninhabitable properties with water in subzero temperatures, gradually building up layers of ice over the course of several days or weeks during the winter as part of an architectural installation. And then?

'In the Spring we will be working with Detroit based neighborhood organizations to deconstruct the house and clear the property, and then donating the property to one of many urban farming groups in Detroit.'

They are funding the property acquisition, and the piece, micro-finance style, here.

Is it unfair, no I think it's a complement, to mention Christo and the idea of 'revelation through concealment.' More here, including images by Greg Holm.

Demolition face-off

I like this. Emine Saner in yesterday's Guardian explains how 67 portraits of residents come to cover the windows of flats on the Haggerston estate in Hackney, east London, due for demolition.

Previously: Door to door: a thirty minute film featuring social housing tenants at their front doors.

Designing suburbs

With localism in the autumnal political air again, and some people's thoughts turning to housebuilding targets, here's an article on 'deprivation in the suburbs' by Ben Kochan on Planning Resource. Includes comments from Nick Falk, on the need to give suburbs a distinctive character, and the HCA's Jim Bennett arguing for greater planning diversity and flexibility:

'Bridges between existing and incoming populations can be built through the provision of social facilities.'

You might be thinking, social facilities have a few other uses as well. But the idea is not to play 'Spot the Simplification,' the idea is to get people thinking about how to turn suburbs into sustainable social environments.

Allotted places

In the summer the Guardian mentioned that the mayor of London had launched a scheme to turn over 2,000 pieces of land in London (should that be 2,012 pieces of land?) into space for food growing by the 2012 Olympics. And the financial centre could soon host some of its first temporary allotments with giant 'grow bags' set up on building sites.

What an appropriate location. Perhaps the time of the allotment has come at last, thanks in part to the indiscretions of a few financiers. The New Local Government Network (NLGN) has published a review of the importance of allotments, pointing out that

Allotments can improve people’s quality of life, prevent exclusion, increase physical exercise, encourage a nutritious diet, support mental health, help people relax, teach new life skills, empower people, give individuals self-esteem, reconnect people with the food they eat, educate citizens about healthy food and environmental stability, tackle CO2 emissions, reduce packaging, support more sustainable waste management, conserve biodiversity, facilitate social interaction, build cohesive communities, strengthen social ties and networks, reduce crime and secure our food supplies.

The authors, Nick Hope and Victoria Ellis, recommend that 'edible landscaping' design should be actively encouraged by councils and large scale urban developments should be forced to allocate land for allotments. They also recommend that local authorities encourage community gardening, noting that it improves 'opportunities for greater social interaction and cohesion'. They explore socially responsible approaches from landowners to making land available.

The recommendations include:

• Offer discounted allotment rates to citizens with lower incomes.

• Adopt a collaborative approach so that people who can travel have access to plots in neighbouring council boroughs if supply exceeds demand in their area.

• Produce an allotment strategy to support the planning, promotion and protection of allotments, both now and in the future.

• Councils encourage public petitions from their citizens on allotments.

• If the council’s overview and scrutiny committee decides the response to a petition is not adequate or substantive, petitioners should be able to secure a debate of the full council.

Previously: Allotment folk

Meet the EMBYs

Over on Planning blog, Michael Donnelly offers the remarkable tale of a few residents in the village of Highworth, near Swindon, who attempted to capture some public land, annexing part of the village green for their gardens. There's neighbourhood action for you.

The seven homeowners on Barra Close then, unbelievably, applied for retrospective planning permission to change the land use from open space to domestic gardens.

It would be fascinating to know quite what they thought they could get away with. I can just about visualise their covert evening meetings around a couple of bottles of Chardonnay, encouraging one another in their pioneering role as EMBYs (Extending My Back Yard), the settler mentality determined to protect themselves from the possibility that, er, young people might climb trees near their homes.

It would also be interesting to understand what they thought relations with others in the village would be like after the planning committee's decision, whichever way that went. And it would be interesting to know what other residents in Barra Close think about their neighbours' attitudes.

The committee report says that several letters were received by way of protest, along with a petition signed by 167 residents - which is probably not a bad tally.

The report is enlightening, with several quoted comments suggesting that some bare-faced misrepresentation was indulged in. For example:

'There are contradictions in the support information from the applicants, they state that children are continually climbing in the trees and bushes and then state that "apart from a few children playing on the land in summer months, it is rarely used".'

The application was rejected on the grounds that

'Substantial evidence has been put forward to demonstrate that the area is well used as recreational open space and makes a significant and valuable contribution to the recreational needs of the local population.'

Your street - quick survey

Sustrans DIY Streets project is due to complete this coming March 2010 and staff are trying to establish whether there is a need for an ongoing programme. So if you live in the UK you're invited to complete a quick online survey about beng involved in bringing about improvements to your street. (Pic: Sustrans)
 

 

Graffiti: can authorities do anything other than outlawing or assimilating?

I like the way public art is up for discussion these days, but democracy has never quite sussed its role in relation to public space, public art, and public value.

An article by Caroline Davies in today's Guardian tells us that

'Bristol city council is planning to let the public vote before murals on buildings, walls and fences are scrubbed clean or painted over. If citizens decide they like it, the work will remain.'

And via Bristol graffiti I learn that

'the Council will produce a new street art policy, which will seek to define and support the display of Public Art, where people tell us that murals or artworks make a positive contribution to the local environment and where the property owner has raised no objection.'

I wonder whether one-person-one-vote is quite the right model here. But what interests me most is how this sets up some curious counter-moves in the dark rat runs of democratic behaviour. How does the self-respecting tagger respond?

Obviously your credibility is out the window as soon as you're assimilated with a Yes vote. Acceptability is unacceptable, it's not a risk you'd want to take. So - it's a drag I know but you've got to mobilise all your mates and family to vote against you. Which could be more trouble than it's worth, especially when you have to take account of competitive taggers spitefully putting in votes in your favour.

So maybe you just move to another city, one where they show appropriate disregard for delinquent lack of respect.

Civic society survey

The Civic Trust closed back in April but its vital role in defending local built environments has necessarily been reasserted - the Civic Society Initiative has been busy over the summer and just announced a survey of civic activity by local community groups.

Deadline for responses is 30 September 2009. There are also a few f2f events around the country.

Clubs and informal play

Kids go to organised sessions, kids play out together or hang out, kids stay home. What kind of mix works best? It's not easy trying to understand the social impact of perceived imbalances in a risk-averse, car-oriented, achievement-driven society, but given the power of those forces you'd expect the emphasis to be more on structure and less on informality.

Every year the National Children's Bureau publishes research for Playday (which is tomorrow) and the latest looks at 'making time'. Their survey found that nearly half of adults (47%), think children should go to fewer extra-curricular activities. The focus groups with children and young people offer insights into the recognised value of organised activities, and the extent to which they absorb time from informal play.

'It seemed that some of these children perceived clubs as something they ‘ought to do’, regardless of what they felt like doing with their spare time. Informal play alone or with peers was viewed as having less of a purpose than these organised activities, other than for their own enjoyment.'

'A significant number of children in the study lacked any control over which activities they attended and when they went to them, sometimes eliminating the sense of fun. All of the children favoured a mixture of informal play and organised activities, but for many children there seemed to be an imbalance and children’s time for play was often taken over with structured events.'

The report also contains observations on the reactions of adults to the informal presence of young people outdoors:

'Meeting together, for example on the streets, near shops or in parks, often led to complaints and harassment from adults, including neighbours and local community members. Amongst all of the older children interviewed, those from Sudan were the only group to discuss their experiences of being reported to the police when they met with their friends on the streets and in the parks. Most of the older children thought this was because of their age rather than their ethnicity, although one child reported encountering racism.'

'If we are going on the street, going to the park, sitting there, a lot of people, they will ring the police for no reason and the police would come up to us and say, “Go away” when we haven’t done anything. That happens all the time.’

Playday research page.

Because it’s freedom: children’s views on their time to play.
Haki Kapasi and Josie Gleave, London: NCB, 2009.

Summer socialising in parks: assimilating LA's gangs

Over on the Making places blog, Karen Levy reports on a new approach to gang violence in Los Angeles, by changing the ways in which parks are used. The Summer Night Lights scheme began in eight parks last year, extending hours until midnight and sponsoring night-time movies and family-oriented activities four nights a week. (Image: LA Times).

According to the mayor’s office, the program was responsible for a 17% decline in crime rates and an astounding 86% decline in homicides for those areas.

This year a total of sixteen parks will be part of the programme, with plans to serve 350,000 free dinners over the course of the summer. Activities on offer include basketball and soccer leagues, safe skateboarding programs, screening of local films, and acting, dance, hip-hop, and fashion workshops.

One component of the program is the creation of a ten-member “youth squad” for each park, which will assist in staffing events and help to create neighborhood awareness. Summer Night Lights is being sponsored by $1 million in private donations, which the city has pledged to match – a great example of the power of public-private partnerships in community placemaking.

The city has suspended injunctions for gang members peacefully attending these events:

By allowing these youths to socialize freely in the park with other community members, L.A. is recognizing that providing positive options is an essential tool in improving urban neighborhoods. As gang intervention worker Miguel Leon told the New York Times: 'You can rewrite the narrative of your life and your neighborhood. A gang affiliation is not your whole identity. You’re also part of this community.'

And good luck to them. Turning back to read what Jane Jacobs had to say - always concerned that people didn't over-romanticise the role of parks - I find her dismissive of the idea that parks could be 'community anchors':

'Parks are not automatically anything, and least of all... stabilizers of values or of their neighbourhoods or districts.'

Meanwhile, Planning resource reports an increase in weekly use of green space in Scotland from 49 per cent to 63 per cent over five years.

Our very own surveillance

Here's a new take on the outsourcing of surveillance. The Beeb reports that a ceremony has been held 'to celebrate the installation of CCTV equipment bought by residents' after two years of fundraising.

Colville Estate Residents' Association raised £16,000 for the equipment in Cherry Hinton High Street, Cambridge.

Councillor Robert Dryden from the residents' association said: "We are the first in Cambridgeshire to have bought our own CCTV."

Gosh, I'm impressed, are you impressed? When charity begins at home, people give generously.

Let's all reflect on the use of the word 'celebrate'. And ponder a few questions. Is the £16k matching funding, or the entire amount required? If the latter, it would be interesting to know why residents did not have the support of public agencies.

Did the fundraising activities not generate sufficient social capital to obviate the need, at least in part?

Who owns the data collected by these cameras?

Reflections on 'mindless vandalism'

A couple of years ago I posted about the pinfold in Bishopthorpe, a restored medieval pound now a simple village meeting and resting place. It's also a neat example of public property that is community-owned.

But community-ownership is not always easy. Bishopthorpe.net, the local site set up by my friend former resident Martin Dudley, unhappily reports vandalism to the pinfold.

Three quick thoughts occurred to me as I read the post and comments.

First, it's seems unfortunate how quickly the unquestioned assumption is made that young people are to blame. Many of us have probably seen grown men (or women, less likely) do considerably more damage in no time at all in a variety of contexts, with or without the influence of alcohol. There may be justification for the assumption that there are no such adults in the vicinity of Bishopthorpe, I don't know.

Secondly, there are parts of the country where this level of damage in one day or night, and no stabbings, would be regarded as a stunning result for the policing and anti-social behaviour teams. But let us not fall into the trap of therefore dismissing its impact in this context. Disorder in the local environment can have rapidly accumulating negative effects, and people are right I think both to remain sensitive to levels of order around them, and to take pride in the way they have collectively restored their heritage.

Thirdly, it's reassuring to think that issues like this can and do get aired openly, and views considered and refined, in an online space.

Just a pity that young people don't seem to be occupying much of that online space, because it might be a good place to be hearing their views.

Place survey: the headlines

Headline results from the 2008 Place Survey, which reflects and contributes to local priorities under local area agreements in England, have been published today.

• 59 per cent of the population felt they belong to their immediate neighbourhood

• 76 per cent felt that people from different backgrounds got on well together in their local area

• 29 per cent felt they could influence decisions in their local area

• 30 per cent feel that in their local area parents take enough responsibility for the behaviour of their children

• 31 per cent felt that there were problems with people in their local area not treating one another with respect and consideration (37.5% in London).

Links to various formats here.

Designed spaces for young people

AdiZones are outdoor gyms or fitness spaces designed mainly for young people, which have been around for about ten months in London. Yes, they're sponsored, well spotted.  Via CYP Now I see there's to be a national rollout for a few more of these highly configured third places.

Well and good, but I do think there's a problem with the official impulse to over-design spaces for young people. It's natural that they will put some energy into redesigning it their way, and if that involves a little damage or graffiti we shouldn't be surprised: at that age, our instincts are charged to beat off anonymity, and it seems we live in a society determined to impose anonymity.

I think I know who will win, most times. There's a very successful space for young people in a town near me, which is basically a fenced-off disused building site, with some concrete ramps and tables for skateboarding. The authorities wisely left it to the kids to decorate it themselves and invent its uses. AdiZones feel to me like another example of Uncle Society telling young people how to spend their time, which is just not smart.

And I'm just curious about this: the adiZone freestyle space is designed 'to encourage Taekwondo, Judo, gymnastics and other activities like dance and aerobics.' I note that the equipment 'does not require electricity', but is there a power supply so that people can plug in their dance music? (And if they do, will we all have to hear it?)

Community involvement in planning

Wholly sensible article on Planning Resource by David Tittle, noting that it's now five years since the requirement for statements of community involvement (SCIs) in planning was enshrined in statute:

The best engagement develops residents' capacity to understand and plan the future of their place.

If planners' and urban design officers' time is not invested early to talk with local people and argue for positive design, it will only have to be spent later on trying to dig residents and councillors out of entrenched positions.

Neighbouring in inner-city apartments

Take a relatively young, diverse and wealthy population of 'small-sized, non-familial households' in a new apartment development in a booming European capital: what level of neighbouring would you expect?

I don't think you'd be surprised if it was well below the kind of average I've been referring to lately.

Peter Howley has just published a study of neighbouring in apartment units in inner-city Dublin, with a very welcome article in Irish geography (subscription required). He found that only 13 per cent felt that neighbours 'look out for' each other. Well, 77 per cent feel that it is likely or very likely they will move residence in the next five years, so maybe they won't invest much and it's not surprising that 22 per cent 'never' speak to their neighbours.

Howley rightly asks questions about the social impact of promoting high-density housing. But there are a few other things to take into consideration. First, previous research (Churchman and Ginsberg in Israel for instance) has shown that some people regard it as an advantage of certain kinds of high-density housing that they can avoid contact with others. Churchman and Ginsberg looked at moderately 'high-rise' blocks and found that those who wished to were able to develop active social ties with fellow-residents.

Secondly, there is an established reputation (although I'm not aware of any research) for the balance of sociability and privacy in city centre apartments in central European cities. A long-standing cultural tradition with less sense of transience can make a lot of difference.

Thirdly, neighbouring does not always take off in new developments - presumably it depends mostly on household structure, levels of employment, and housing type. Howley reports that in his sample,

29, 31 and 29% respectively of households surveyed consist of either a single person living alone, a couple without children or non-family households

- not exactly propitious.

There's one curiosity among Howley's findings, which might justify further attention:

residents who are from an ethnic or cultural background other than Irish are much more likely to interact with their neighbours than their Irish counterparts.

The usual explanations for higher levels of prosocial behaviour and participation among minority groups are about compensating for having more complex social and economic problems, and being less likely to have informal connections to power and influence.

But it doesn't sound like that's the explanation here, and in light of the national stereotype of Irish garrulousness the finding stands out.

My last point is that the housing developments described by Howley are probably crying out for an experiment in neighbourhood online networks. If a network had been in place at the outset, when people were getting the teething problems with their properties sorted, it might have created the platform for some consistent and supportive neighbouring. Sounds like a job for folk like Neighbo.

 

The power of maps

This image might look staged but it wasn't. A colleague and I were were running a session with a group of young Bangladeshi and Chinese mothers, and it was time to get them talking about their local environment.

So we spread the map on the table and instantly they all shot up out of their chairs and started pointing and talking.

In this case, it was particularly useful because it led to clarification of the extent to which the women remain in their houses even if they have friends on the same street; and the extent to which confidence that is undermined by inadequate english language skills can be further undermined by their experience of the built environment.

Thinking about sustainable communities

Planning Resource has followed Regen and Renewal in setting up a blog and immediately sparked a little discussion around fantasy plans for sustainable communities...

The image is Ebenezer Howard's 'Social city', 1898.

Measuring the social value of a community pub

Back in February I posted on Rick Muir's revealing work on community pubs. The report was launched last night, in a sparsely-attended, lacklustre, and completely dry meeting of the All Party Beer Group in a committee room in the House of Commons. Specific gravity indeed. OK you missed nothing, but take a look at the report, which is an expert blend of readable scene-setting and punchy policy points.

At the launch it was suggested that the most important section was Appendix C, and I'd agree. Using SROI methodology (Social Return on Investment) it sets out a method for measuring the social value of a community pub. Example:

Choose yer indicators, gather the data, fix on some financial values for the outcomes, and calculate.

Next we need a set of examples encompassing pubs and other assets such as parks, post offices, libraries and community centres, to make such places easier to defend.

DIY streets for ten neighbourhoods

Detailed article from Daniel Black about Sustrans' DIY Streets initiative to reduce the impact of motor vehicles and make neighbourhoods more attractive and safer.

He notes that work on home zones ground to a halt 'after a series of pilots demonstrated that they were too expensive' (too expensive for what exactly? you might ask. It's worth pointing out that they were inadequately evaluated, without a half-decent cross-disciplinary cost-benefit analysis)...

Be that as it may, with recession now upon us, it's DIY time, and Daniel trails a three-year programme whereby residents in ten neighbourhoods (with an eleventh lined up under separate funding) will be applying Sustrans' design proposals themselves. Each group of residents will be working with their local authorities and a budget of £50-100k. I hope the social interaction component gets properly evaluated.

Danel writes:

'Making streets safer and more attractive at little cost is more a matter of process than design. The hard stuff is all there already - planters, trees, chicanes and chairs and tables. It is the approach to implementation that needs to change, both on the street and in setting policy.'

Development dilemma

Should living standards be compromised in the face of urgent need to provide accommodation for homeless people?

An inspector has upheld an enforcement notice aimed at blocking the conversion of two houses in Leeds into six flats, finding that noise and disturbance for neighbours and poor living conditions are not justified by the need to find temporary accommodation for homeless people.

From Planning daily.

School grounds: ambiguously-public spaces

I was ejected from school grounds the other day, hasn't happened to me for years.

I had a favourite little training patch (non-athletes look away now), a straight path with a good surface measuring about 500 metres, well away from traffic, and from time to time I would do a set of timed reps up and down at a modest speed. Only ever at weekends of course, or during school holidays, when there was no-one around.

The grounds were always open, and I've never seen a sign telling me I shouldn't or couldn't go in and use the path. I happen to think there are such things as community assets, and if not causing any damage (except to myself perhaps) it seems reasonable to take advantage of them.

Well someone came and politely told me I couldn't, which led me to realise how access to such assets has been eroded, apparently arbitrarily, over the years. A couple of other local schools, with grass running tracks marked out in summer, which is always useful, have long since been fenced and gated, so of course the spaces are largely unusued for a lot of the time. Fortunately my kids' old school, although without a proper track, remains sensibly accessible and I can plod about there whenever the place is empty. For how much longer, I don't know.

These are ambiguously-public spaces, and we seem to have surrendered them incrementally through unchallenged local policies.

Lifetime neighbourhoods in recession: what about people?

A couple weeks ago I was at a debate organised by the International Longevity Centre (ILC-UK) on the lifetime neighbourhoods agenda in the current economic climate. ILC have published a collection of essays to reassert the importance of this agenda, which is based on what in my view was one of the best government policy papers of recent years, written by Ed Harding.

The debate covered all the hardware stuff thoroughly - all the issues around building, planning, mixed use, transport connections and so on. Discussants understandably put a lot of effort into emphasising the need to keep a focus on quality environments. The mantra of 'the flight to quality' was served up for the converted to repeat, to strengthen our determination not to let present underfunding give rise to shoddy construction and uninhabitable townscapes in the future. Quite right too.

But we badly needed a perspective on local social relations to make these prospects of lifetime neighbourhoods seem worth realising. Understanding how to make mixed use neighbourhoods function in an ageing and diversifying society is already challenging us desperately. We don't invest properly in intergenerational work or community development, while continuing to plan new settlements apparently without thought for local amenities Will lifetime neighbourhoods be another agenda which gets stripped down simply to those things the accountants know how to measure? - bricks, heating, journeys...?

Well, maybe not. Absent on the day but present in the published volume, up pops JRF's John Low with a solid essay which I strongly recommend. He reminds us that there are good reasons to expect that deprived neighbourhoods will decline faster than more affluent ones and that 'housing solutions alone will not solve the multiple problems that beset our worst neighbourhoods'.

Of course financial cuts are threatened all over the public, voluntary and community sectors. But here, with my emphasis added, are three 'rays of hope' offered by John Low:

• Community empowerment has risen steadily up the agenda of all political parties, including a plethora of initiatives from the current administration in England. Especially in local authorities that have taken this seriously, good practice is reasonably well embedded and may prove harder to cut. Also, as suggested above, localised and affordable neighbourhood management approaches seem very much the best bet for ‘recession proofing’ deprived areas; and such initiatives need underpinning with good community work.

• Over the last 10-15 years independent voluntary and community sector bodies have increased their national profile and collective voice. This too may help to act as a brake on cuts. We should also not forget that many development trusts, churches, other faith groups, councils for voluntary service and schools are playing key roles in supporting neighbourhoods. Everything possible should be done in the present climate to sustain their work.

• Finally, although institutions are often criticised as having poor memories, the serious social disorders that broke out in the 80’s and 90’s in a number of very deprived areas will not have been forgotten. Nobody will want a repeat of these, and his fear could act as a strong disincentive to paring down services and funds, in such neighbourhoods, to the very bone: and as an encouragement, on the contrary, to retaining a range of low level but effective services in these areas.

Why don't we do it in the road? (Updated)

If you talk to Streets Alive's Chris Gittins about organising a street party, and maybe you should, one of the things he'll suggest is that the organisers' meetings be held in the street rather than in people's houses.

'A good place to hold meetings is in the street as it is more welcoming and you can catch people as they go by.'

Just a few neighbours for half an hour or so sitting on a wall working out who's going to do what.

This came up in a conversation today and sparked someone to tell me that where they live, in south London, ward councillors have meetings in the street. If you can do it, a brilliant way of making democracy visible, and minimising the fussy trappings of power.

Someone tell me this happens where they live too.

Postscript

Thanks to Chris Corrigan for this pic of the 'hedgenda' he mentions in his comment. Pic by openspace facilitator Michael Herman.

Privacy and the home

Google Street View continues to expose the fact that we haven't done our thinking about the changing nature of privacy. On Wednesday, residents in the village of Broughton, near Milton Keynes (described by the Mail, which doesn't like to burden its readers with accuracy, as being in Cambridgeshire) blocked the passage of a Google Street View car and persuaded the driver to turn around. Ah the playful rebelliousness of middle England. The Times has them as a 'village mob'.

There's an account here that is altogether more placid.

In the Beeb's report, one of the protesters said:

"If they were simply going to view the street as a street scene rather than drive almost into people's drives and take pictures of the houses - I think that's a different issue."

Almost into people's drives? That would be like what we call 'going past' then, would it?

The Mail managed somehow, don't ask me, to raise the possibility that 'it's an invitation for burglars to strike':

"I don't mind estate agents taking pictures but this shows people how to get in and how to get out."

Getting out as well as getting in? I didn't realise there was so much detail.

But don't we need to get beyond the petty mindedness of the property-obsessed, to reflect on how the house-as-home remains central to our understanding of notions of privacy, even while that privacy has been reshaped by other forces around e.g. data, citizenship and broadcast media?

The excitable defensiveness of wealthy home-owners is not enough to convince me that I have a fundamental, irrevocable human right to stop people looking in my windows. As I recall, Witold Rybczynski's book Home is a good start for understanding how very recent the idea of the private home is in human history. The privacy part of it may already be in decline - not because the notion of 'home' has changed necessarily, but because the notion of privacy is changing.

There are other confusions, such as discussing Street View with reference to the high number of CCTV cameras we have in this country (about 20% of the world's total, I heard recently). But as one comment here notes,

There is a big difference between cctv and streetview for example, number of violent crimes caught on street view isn't quite as high. It's privacy invasion for the sake of privacy invasion.

But that's my point - what do we mean, 'privacy invasion'? Where's the public debate that gets us away from knee-jerk insistence on a vague sense of interference and the self-righteous defence of property?

I can't say I'm particularly bothered about Street View, and the notion of there being people who might describe themselves as 'Street View Enthusiasts' is just depressing. But it's more depressing to have people getting pompously worked up about keeping others away from where they live. If having lots of stuff gets you so fussed about losing it, maybe don't have so much stuff.

And if I find myself feeling that the sight of a car with a camera on it is sinister, I hope I'll have the grace first of all to examine why I feel like that, before squalling for the police.

Anyway, I liked this little comment on the Mail's adjectivally-super-charged coverage:

"I'm outraged! I just saw clear pictures of my street and the houses with kids playing on the road and their little faces not blanked out.

Mind you, they are in black and white and taken in the early 1900s!"

Creative uses for tunnels?

A residents' association in Mansfield has countered the problem of 'large groups of young people hanging around in the underpasses drinking' by having pink 'acne' lighting installed. CYP Now reports:

Tony Gelsthorpe, chair of the association, said the intention of the project was never to show up spots, rather utilise the fact pink is seen as 'uncool' by some young men.

A member of the residents' association said:

'The groups aren't there as much and it feels safer walking through there now, particularly at night.'

In a non-escapable place a gathering of strangers can be intimidating. But young people tend not to like being surveilled all the time, which I happen to think is a healthier attitude than wanting to control people.

Strikes me that the underpasses are a key part of the problem. Sorting out the roads in favour of pedestrians rather than cars would be a start - expensive, but what are the costs of the design mistakes of the past?

Then we should find some creative uses for the tunnels, rather like we've been seeing creative uses of closed shops.

The liberation of new questions

You may find yourself fed up with talk about the recession, but beware, that pose could be passé. I think people are starting to find it healthy discussing it now. We're stimulated and liberated by the permission to ask questions that didn't occur to us before. And the ones we were asking before may now have slightly different force.

There I was this morning meeting up with Ingrid Koehler from IDeA and Steven Feldman of KnowWhere, exploring the contribution of new ('social') media to local government generally and the community empowerment agenda specifically. Steven came up with this:

'How do you bridge the gap between those who care a lot about a place, and those who care a bit?'

In the context of the current cultural shift where thinking and behaving collectively is becoming acceptable again, it's a much more significant question than it might sound. I was thinking about it while I made my way across London to a conference session organised by the Academy of Urbanism and Demos, on 'the resilience of place' in times of economic and social stress. Mostly architects, whose unrivalled tradition of wide-ranging argument always appeals to me.

And here I felt able to appreciate the part of Steven's question that is about time. Lots of people who 'care a bit' don't have the time, at the moment of need for their effort or expertise, to contribute. As Steven would rightly assert, digital technologies have a part to play here.

But in the few minutes when I was speaking to the seminar, I needed to ask this: in a recession, what is time when it is not necessarily money? One thing I think we can anticipate in the downturn is a boost for timebanking. Maybe that's where we'll reinvest our trust.

During the seminar there was much talk about 'the creation of value', 'new understandings of value' and so on. I was starting to wonder what it meant, when John Worthington closed it out by observing pithily that

'Value is only as good as your values.'

Finally a short parable. At our meeting this morning, Steven, Ingrid and I found and discussed a common scepticism about online petitions. Across town later, at the end of this afternoon's debate, Stephen Hill from C₂OFutureplanners told a story about a local petition in his neighbourhood.

Someone knocked at the door to talk about a local planning issue, he said, and they had a long conversation about possible design changes close by. Eventually closing the conversation and offering to sign the petition, Stepen noticed that not many names were listed. The explanation from the visitor was that he'd not got very far because every house he called at, he had a long, revealing and rewarding chat just like this one.

And there's a value in that, which we're not very good at recognising.

Why pubs need the CIA

This morning to ippr for a seminar on the future of community pubs, meaning pubs that predominantly serve their surrounding community. Rick Muir at ippr has been working with CAMRA to research the decline of community pubs, the social implications, and the policy options. The ratio of pubs to people fell from 1:201 in 1871, to 1:761 in 1971. It's gone on falling: 39 pubs are closing each week.

We could rehearse the reasons but they're not hard to list. It's critical not just as an issue for local economies, but also as an issue of local cohesion and the health of social networks.

In ippr's survey, pubs scored highest as the local places where people meet others from different backgrounds. The community pub is widely seen as a great social leveller, although it was acknowledged that they can be exclusive. It's still a somewhat gendered institution with faith and age exclusions.

Apparently the average pub raises £3,000 per year for charitable causes. A lot of business is transacted in pubs, they're essential meeting places for numerous local groups. Unlike supermarkets, which encourage less convivial drinking, pubs tend to put money back into their local economy.

And tradition matters to people - the sense of continuity and authenticity matters, the resistance to homogeneity and anonymity. People call it 'character'.

CAMRA's Mike Brenner raised the question of defining what is meant by a well-run community pub. So right, let's have a debate that generates awareness, understanding and motivation. It's apparent that pubs could be run as community interest companies, let's get a model that recognises their social role instead of regarding it as coincidental.

I took the opportunty to bang the drum for the idea of Community Impact Assessments (CIAs). I just want to see a robust methodology using social network analysis so that we can demonstrate the social impact of significant changes at local level (like road changes, large developments, provision of amenities etc). I've thumped out this rhythm often enough before (eg) and I feel that if we'd started work on it years ago, we might not have got into the mess we're now in with post offices.

Apart from anything else, having and using an accepted device to demonstrate 'community impact' could create an incentive within the pub industry to make a contribution to local community cohesion.

One of the MPs present said that it 'would help massively'. A ministerial adviser followed up with a call for the think tanks to get together and sort it out - which sounds either naive or ironic, given the way think-tanks behave, but encouraging, because I've been suggesting this for some years with understandably have less influence.

I propose to try and get a few folk around a flip chart and see what can be teased out of their brains.

Four types of deprived neighbourhood

It's theory time. Here's the new typology of low-income neighbourhoods, based on the dynamics of household mobility.

The overall level of mobility in Britain is about 11% per year, and it's mainly a function of the age structure of neighbourhoods and the life-cycle stage of households. Brian Robson and colleagues at the Centre for Urban Policy Studies in Manchester have proposed and tested a model of four types of deprived neighbourhood:

• Transit areas are deprived neighbourhoods in which most in-movers come from less deprived areas and most out-movers go to less deprived areas.
• In Escalator areas, most of the in-movers come from areas that are equally or more deprived, so that the neighbourhood becomes part of a continuous onward-and-upward progression through the housing and labour markets.
• Gentrifier areas are ones in which there is a degree of social improvement since most in-movers come from less deprived areas and most out-movers go to similarly or more deprived areas.
• Isolate areas represent neighbourhoods in which households come from and move to areas that are equally or more deprived. Hence they can be seen as neighbourhoods that are associated with a degree of entrapment of poor households who are unable to break out of living in deprived areas.

The report, published by CLG last week, draws particular attention to Isolate areas:

Isolate areas may provide the strongest case for comprehensive policy intervention to improve the prospects of all households since the areas are unlikely to improve without intervention.

In Isolate areas, especially those whose adjacent areas are also deprived... the opportunities for residents are likely to be more restricted and... the net result of in-flows and outflows is unlikely to lead to ‘natural’ improvement in the stock of households.

Also, the authors note that deprived neighbourhoods which are surrounded by other deprived areas could face greater problems and present more challenging contexts than those that are adjacent to more prosperous areas. In the latter, local opportunities – for employment, for access to higher-performing schools, etc – are likely to be markedly greater.

Mending broken window theory

What's the effect of a disordered physical environment on children's behaviour and exam results? Here's a Guardian article by Jessica Shepherd on recent (apparently qualitative) research suggesting that boarded-up houses and shops, and littered scruffy pathways aren't exactly going to inspire young people to pro-social behaviour.

Indeed. So has the death of broken window theory been exaggerated? The Harcourt and Ludwig (2006) research discrediting the original theory may tell us that physical signs of disorder do not predict neighbourhood crime; but what they do predict is more physical disorder. And on what grounds is it deemed acceptable that people should be expected to live in such an environment? Where broken windows are not being repaired and other maintenance is not being carried out, residents (yes, that includes schoolchildren) are being subjected to disrespect on the part of the services established and funded to maintain order.

From work I've done on estates in the past I'm sure that local people often sense the danger of a tipping point of disorder, although they might not articulate it in terms of 'broken window theory' or collective efficacy or whatever.

And schools are, or should be, an integrated rather than separate part of their localities ('community' if you like). As the researchers point out:

'throughout government policy, schools are presented as though they exist in isolation from the surrounding area.'

Too many schools resemble fortresses or prisons, and I guess this research could help begin the reversal of that trend.

Previously:
A crisis of community presence

It's curtains for broken window theory

Sipson may or may not be a community

I don't want to hear people banging on about how cosy and convivial is the village of Sipson.

The village is in the news because a brain-free decision by the UK government today means that if appeals fail, it will be buried under Heathrow's proposed third runway. (The decision ultimately could be close to suicidal for this government because the opposition is bound to attract votes for vowing to reverse the decision if elected).

I like what the BBC have done here in bringing the views of local people to the foreground, and I've been listening to radio reports where, with an echo of doom, residents celebrate the existing sense of community. I came across a note on London RIP from an apprentice reporter whose patch included Sipson in the 1980s:

Just a few fields away from the airport, the villages then were bucolic dots on the very edge of London. Old (Harmondsworth boasts a 11th century church and ancient barn) and surprisingly quiet (no detention centre there then), they coexisted uneasily with the airport – which was much resented by old-timers for apparently never having had planning permission in the first place. It started off as an airstrip in World War One and just growed and growed.

My job involved spending hours tramping around the villages to find news stories to fill the paper every week. This was a truly epic struggle. Cat up tree was big news in Sipson and Harmondsworth at the time.

The debate has polarised around environmental concerns and national economic competitiveness. But there are other axes, particularly the line beyond which broader national priorities can trump local community concerns, or indeed individual private rights. In Sipson there is a man in his 90s who refuses to move: I wish him many more years in his chosen, legitimate place.

And I hope that confrontational anti-expansion campaigners with global perspectives will show due respect for the residents' own, locally-focussed campaign. People live here, and don't you forget it.

But the emphasis on Sipson as a cheerful, close-knit village bothers me, because it seems to imply that without this sense of community, verifiable by visiting journalists, the place - and the people who live there - wouldn't matter. But it would, as long as people wanted to live there.

The image is by Stephen Hird for Reuters and I found it here.

Regeneration and neighbourhood relations

All round the fringes of London in the south east counties of England, there is regeneration work going on around numerous huge solid Victorian public building complexes - hospitals and asylums which were testament to a characteristic approach to social and health issues of the time. I once had a guided tour round one of these - Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital - and was hugely impressed by the reassuring solidity and detail in the architecture and the sense of space that was created for people condemned to its confines.

In some cases the regeneration, which is largely about housing from a mix of refurbishment and new-build, seems to have been brought to a halt by the recession. Arguments about our 21st century notions of 'sustainable communities' characterise the contemporary use of this land. Here's Andrew Simpson, Regeneration Programme Director at Springfield Village in south west London, in a recent IDeA interview, talking about what they're trying to achieve:

We are working with Queen Mary’s Medical School on what constitutes a good environment for people’s mental and physical health. Their work to date shows that the stress associated with noise outside of your home that you have no control over – loud music, traffic and so on – is one of the biggest sources of potential health problems arising from your environment.

How you don’t manage this, as far as I can see, is through ASBOs and central government diktat. So we are trying to codify what it is that we need to build into the management of Springfield Garden Village to encourage people to respond to the needs and wishes of their neighbours, but within boundaries that people will see as acceptable.

My assessment is that this readiness to think about neighbouring is still quite rare, in spite of the inevitable rhetoric about 'community' in every masterplan for projects of this kind.

The image is from the Springfield Village vision and masterplan.

Social interaction and mobile technologies

Keith Hampton describes research findings (in press) which suggest that social interaction in urban public spaces (parks, plazas, and markets) is likely to be more diverse than interactions through wireless internet use, which in turn are likely to be more diverse than interactions through mobile use.

I think this is just what we would predict, because the serendipity potential of the mobile is negligible compared with face-to-face, and wifi use is more open to interruption than is mobile. But that doesn't mean it isn't reassuring in a way, and you can be sure the methodology was robust.

It builds on Keith's previous paper which looked at wifi use in cafes and included consideration of the possibility of

‘contextual’ or ‘neighborhood effects’ within cafes, whereby the lack of sociability of some cafe users has the potential to reduce the overall sociability of a public space.

Blinged-up houses

I think I may detect a reduction in the number of houses blinged-up with lights in my area this year, but there may be greater intensity of negative feeling about the habit generally.

Here's Graham Norwood in the Independent with a researched article including the tale of Vic Moszczynski from Berkshire. Following a court injunction in 2006, Moszczynski's routine festooning of his house with yuletide kitsch was restricted to '300 lights, four seven-foot-high inflatable cartoon characters, eight 30-foot-long strips of rope lights and two illuminations in the front garden.' Very subdued and sensitively modest I'm sure.

Meanwhile BBC Radio 4's PM Blog has recently been playfully tracking '"bad" Christmas decorations that we love'. And there's a book, Christmas houses, published last year.

Mostly this is harmless enough, although as Norwood points out there have been numerous cases requiring mediation and much unpleasantness experienced. One can only sympathise with our authorities when they are expected to deal with discrepencies in taste.

I also wonder how far the attitudes expressed for example at Houseblinger.com or Uglychristmaslights.com are from, say, the kind of comment you can read at Rotten neighbors (access to which should perhaps be restricted to authorised sociologists wearing protective theories).

So anyway, there are two sets of questions. The first is a familiar one about how online technologies facilitate expression of views that otherwise might not find a channel, and the moral ifs and buts of the visibility of contested taste.

The other, related questions are to do with privacy and the rights to individual self-expression around the boundary of the home, which I prodded at a few years back.

 

It don't mean a thing

I liked this image from San Francisco, posted by Kit Hodge over on the Neighbors Project blog.

Not sure quite what that car's doing there in the background, making a rather different statement.

Community venues: a multinational model?

I'm quite interested in Starbucks as a social phenomenon, but I'm always puzzled as to why they claim an interest in coffee. Take this, the company's response to enforcement action by Brighton & Hove City Council:

'We believe that our coffee houses make positive contributions to their local areas and, in particular, Starbucks store on St James’s Street has helped its community by creating around 14 new jobs and by providing a relaxing and safe environment for customers to enjoy great tasting coffee.'

All very well until the last few words, slurring their well-earned reputation as a cafe for people who don't like coffee. Not long ago I had a meeting in a Starbucks and, not wishing to make the classic mistake, I ordered tea. Oh dear.

In future if nomadic needs lead me into one of their places, I'll drink from my own bottle of water. If challenged by the staff I will ask eagerly when they expect to be selling something palatable.

In the meantime, here's a challenge for their Social Responsibility Division: could Starbucks accept its own limitations and develop the model of local community hub around the things they seem to be good at? - seats, space, high street accessibility, wifi, and being private in a public place. I know libraries got there already but they're not hogging the template, and they depend on public funding. A multinational model of a community venue, how about it? Is there a commercial (or social entrepreneurial) model there (minus that strange brown water)?

Play with your own neighbourhood shape

Neighbourhood defined by people who upload local images to Flickr. No reason why this should not be systematised and less random. Via Nick Booth. More here.

But what will our systems call the places that don't get coverage? 'Near', I suppose. They'll take all the images tagged 'Near X' or 'Near Y' and we'll be able to identify all the planet's zones of exclusion.

Anyway it gives me a chance to nod to this paper in which Nick Sheep Dalton discusses whether or not it is possible to identify areas of potential neighbourhood without recourse to social records, using space syntax, and comparing with residents' boundary definitions.

Contra-bland

Occasionally this blog points to little changes that suggest the erosion of something we vaguely think of as 'local life' - the threat to post offices and local shops, the unjustified carriage of children to school by car, the withdrawal of older people and negative attitiudes towards younger, and so on.

It all adds up and I just came across Paul Kingsnorth's Real England, described by Portobello Books as:

'A book that makes the connection between these isolated, incremental, local changes and the bigger picture of a nation whose identity is being eroded.'

Associated blog here.

Outside

A character on Gary, Unmarried, a new sitcom on CBS, the American TV channel, observes his son playing Second Life and says: “We didn’t have this when I was young. We had . . . outside.”

India Knight in an article on Second Life in today's Sunday Times.

Door to door

More like this please. A thirty minute film featuring social housing tenants at their front doors, neatly linked together - 'a patchwork of doors,' the images projected onto and illuminating public buildings in Bolton.

Think of all the connections and conversations in the making of it, and add the connections and conversations in the street every evening this week as it is being shown. Brilliant.

Image from Bolton News article.

Guardian article and film clip.

Waiting rooms

The waiting room on the platform at Lymington, Hampshire, feels like an unofficial museum with its unfinished jigsaw puzzle.

And thanks to Chris Gittins of Streets Alive for this image of a furnished bus shelter. Does the bus driver stop, get out, and come and wake you I wonder?

What have neighbourhoods got to do with designing-out crime?

Policy-makers still struggle to consider the local context of changes they would like to see. Here's the Home Office announcing new investment in designing-out crime, bringing industry, the public sector, designers and crime prevention experts and victims together. The programme is expected to come up with design-led ideas and develop 'solutions to a wide range of crime-related problems,' including:

• Schools – design solutions to reduce problems such as bullying, fighting and petty theft.

• ‘Hot’ products – innovations to make personal electronics more ‘crime-proof’.

• Housing - embedding design-led crime reducing approaches in the planning and construction of houses.

• Alcohol-related crime – to reduce the harm caused by alcohol-related criminal behaviour.
• Business crime – using design to minimise crimes such as shoplifting.

At least there's nothing there about graffiti; but what about neighbourhoods? Does the impact of local environment not impinge on the consciousness of those who set up this initiative?

My guess, and it's just a guess, is that initial discussions among officials may have included 'Neighbourhoods' as a heading but it was thought just too difficult, too political, or too inconclusive. A pity, because a new initiative which revisited the tensions between new urbanism and 'designing-out-crime,' while taking account of the new surveillance culture, recent experience of home zones, the Manual for Streets and so on, would have been welcome.

Benchioners' anti-social behaviour

They carry sticks, discuss the price of bleach, and reminisce about the blitz. Some are arthritic and drink lucozade. So when they congregate on the park benches you know to expect trouble. Sometimes they stay out til three in the afternoon. They can be noisy and very intimidating.

The Telegraph reports today on a gang of pensioners aged between 69 and 96 whose behaviour, gathering on four benches on an estate in south-east London, is a cause of local concern:

'Neighbours complained of noise and nuisance and the local housing association proposed to disperse the gang by removing the benches.'

Someone's being monumentally daft, but there's a serious point. It's only possible because of some too-familiar themes - a culture of blame and assertive intolerance, and the relentless marginalisation of older people. One wants to ask how come any authority can get itself into such a mess; but of course in this low-interaction, risk-averse contracted-responsibility culture, people can complain about anything and require an agency to take action.

Democracy as miracle: a new community centre

This is the new community centre of the Thomasgemeinde church in Mannheim, Germany. The dancing-dollies / folded paper cutout style facade gives a sense of people lingering round the outside. See better pics on the Mimoa site, along with this observation:

'Surprisingly the architects have been able to built (sic) almost the same design as that with which they won the competition. In Germany, where decision-making is mostly done with a very large group, including the pastor, representatives of the congregation and members of the town council, this is a small miracle.'