How to incentivise considerate dog ownership...
Are dog owners going to be more inclined to scoop up after their pooches, if doing so generates free wifi in the park?
In Mexico City they’re giving it a try. The more substantial the deposit, the more minutes everyone gets. Do watch the video.
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I'm a bit late catching up with this, but I think it's a delightful example of yarnbombing (via). As with other forms of guerilla art, it seems to work best when it draws attention to an inadequate built environment, with subtlety, humour and harmlessness. It looks like this one does the job.
See also: 51 victims of knitted (and crocheted) graffiti
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Does it seem odd to you that some fellow-citizens are sufficiently conscientious about their recyclable waste to take it all off to the neighbourhood recycling containers; but then they just dump it on the pavement? There was an example recorded in some detail over on the Kings Cross site recently (thanks Will):
‘Once in the morning I caught one man who also had just dumped his waste in spite of an empty container, and when I showed him that the container was in fact empty, he shrug his shoulders and walked apologetically off (leaving his waste though put). On this and on other occasions I have just taken other people’s rubbish and put it inside the container. It seems a task impossible to some.’
This contrasts nicely with a similar case that I reported in chapter 4 of Respect in the neighbourhood a few years ago, thanks to a picture sent to me by my Belgian friend Jan Steyaert. It shows a standard bottle-recycling facility in Antwerp, with the ubiquitous blue plastic bag on the ground alongside. At the front of the container someone has placed a board with a message painted on it, which reads in Dutch ‘vetzak verboden te storten.’ The English translation is: ‘Don’t leave litter you slimebag.’ (Subsequently I have thought that a better translation would be ‘you fat slob’). The language chosen by our Kings Cross correspondent is quite different. His note read
‘please insert the waste into the container out of neighbourly respect.’
In the book, considering alternative communication options for the person who painted the vetzak message on the board, at the end of a short list I added:
‘In a connected, networked neighbourhood, a comment posted online might have broadened awareness of the problem and produced a collective response.’
I suspect there may be other examples beyond Kings Cross and I’d be pleased to be told about them.
So this phenomenon of almost but not quite properly disposing of litter, what’s it about? Perhaps if you’re carrying stuff in the other hand, you might not easily be able to open the container. Perhaps you dread the stench on opening; or you don’t want to risk getting dirty hands from touching the handle or lid, if you’re off somewhere posh. Maybe you're confused about the separation of different kinds of waste so you'd rather it stays hidden in a single bag. Or you can't quite bring yourself to conform completely. Or you might think it’s easier for the operatives, as I believe they are called, to pick your stuff up from the floor rather than use the technology designed for the purpose. I’m struggling to think of any convincing explanations here.
Ok let’s suppose that some people are less comfortably acquainted with the idea of a public realm and public norms of behaviour, than others are. They have a relatively low level of Public Realm Awareness (PRA) – not close to zero, like the dickhead financier I mentioned recently, but low enough to appear a bit inconsiderate at times.
They know they have to take out their waste, but they don’t know how the system works, the system of behaviour in public. There’s stuff on the ground, and alongside it, theirs looks inconspicuous, and that’s simpler, so down it goes. It becomes part of an apparent routine process. I suppose one could argue that this behaviour, as far as it goes, is consistent with the public realm, not working against it.
The inconvenience can be absorbed, if such behaviour does not become too common. This might matter more than you think, given that we currently have a government which is keen to see a reduction in general PRA, being ideologically opposed to the notion of anything being ‘public’ in the first place. By reducing the public realm as much as it can, the government very seriously risks increasing the proportion of the population with low PRA. The technical term for this set of policies is 'stupid'.
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'Back in those days,' croaked Grandpa Harris, 'there was tales about something called multimedia, we'd never heard of the internet but people in huddled meetings would whisper about the political potential of 'self-publishing' and whatnot...'
In parallel gatherings, no doubt some educational and psychological theorists were muttering about the general contraction of attention spans.
Now try Alan Stanton's latest 14 second civic-epic on an all-too-familiar neighbourhood blight. And if you can take it, Disgusting II: the close up.
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According to the Lost Pubs Project, in the UK pubs are currently closing at an accelerating rate of 50 each week. While there's been a fair amount of froth around parliament (eg), acknowledging the implications and condemning the tied pub model, there doesn't seem to have been much to challenge the trend.
Apparently something similar has been happening in Chicago. This article suggests the problem is mainly down to the sheer bureaucratic awkwardness of getting a license. One commentator complains:
"Getting a new tavern license issued in a residential neighborhood is brutal. It's virtually impossible."
The problem sweetly illustrates the extent to which social value, publicness and local economies are intertwined. Perhaps policy makers everywhere could appreciate and value the role of pubs in stimulating local social capital, as well as their role in the local economy. Here's a start: Scott Martin who owns Simon's Tavern in Andersonville, Chicago, says that when he bought the place 17 years ago, he found a shoebox containing $80,000 in IOUs.
Previously:
More on local pubs
Why pubs need the CIA
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The government-led approach to regeneration through competitions and 'challenges' is becoming a flood-threatening piss-take. When I heard about the 'Portas pilots' - a scheme for twelve towns to bid to become 'areas with the vision and enthusiasm to breathe new life into what should be the beating heart of their communities' according to Grant Shapps - forget the dreadful rhetoric, I must have misread the amount available.
Not unreasonably, I feel. One million pounds each might have been meaningful, but not between the lot. If politicians and central government officials want to complain about the use local government officers make of their time, it's worth asking them (a) why they spend their own time coming up with incontestably crap schemes like this, and (b) do they or do they not expect a lot of officials to spend time developing bids that ultimately will not be successful?
Once upon a time we had policy and strategy on social issues, now we have 'innovation', 'challenges' and 'pilots'. Here's David Marlow's take on the government approach, from Regen & Renewal:
'the pattern of their approach to economic development has now been clear for some time. In default of a coherent strategy, they come up with an ad hoc announcement, with derisory funding, to give the appearance of leadership.'
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I sometimes wonder whether, in late medieval cities, there were disputes about where people left their carts. Car parking is a major issue in contemporary neighbourhoods, and inconsiderate parking infuriates people. Maybe some kinds of personality just get sparked by the very idea of public space, and always have done.
I’m not known for defending car drivers, but when you have situations where residents cannot get their own cars out of their driveways because others have left their vehicles in the way for long periods of time, you have to ask whether there’s a problem understanding that others have a right of access to public space.
A week ago I designed and ran a consultative process for a public meeting about car parking, in a large village on the outskirts of Sheffield. The material I had to work with included a lot of written remarks in open questions from an online survey, many of which suggested solutions and many of which consisted of repeated annoyance at inconsiderate drivers.
The process I came up with may have helped move things on. One reason is that most participants apparently were expecting a conventional public meeting in which councillors said something from the front, were shouted at by a few worked-up voices from the rows, and nothing much changed as a consequence. There were no rows (in either pronunciation) – the chairs were set around tables, people had the chance to shape their own agenda (and therefore found it hard to complain if the meeting did not discuss what they wanted discussed); they had the opportunity to augment and comment, in groups, on every live proposition as it was passed round, using pre-formatted sheets which included a street map; and they had the chance to vote, at the end, on preferred options to address the parking problem. There was no disruption. It was local participative democracy in action.
What was striking for me was the genuine sense of novelty among the participants, which I’m still absorbing. The sceptical might argue that just because some southerner comes in with an arty-farty creative approach, it doesn’t mean anything will change as a consequence. That remains to be seen. But I sensed from various comments afterwards that some people were grateful for a completely fresh experience of genuinely participative local democracy, which was, well, revelatory to them. That’s change, in itself.
The car resembles the traditional meeting as symbolic of communication confusion: it helps us to share some information (like status, power or detachment); in a car you can say ‘we’ve been through’ somewhere much as the conventional meeting ‘goes through’ an agenda. And cars really mess up interaction, and all the unseen benefits that go with interaction.
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Pavements (sidewalks to some) are littered more easily than they can be inscribed, but the former can provoke the latter.
Be warned: using chalk to broadcast a message may seem harmless, but previous posts on this blog (see links below) have shown this not to be the case. Some people may more readily take offence at pavement chalking than dog mess or random chewing gum.
The image below is of artist Ben Wilson who paints on pieces of discarded gum. Apparently he was arrested, something British cops like to do if someone seems a bit strange to them. BBC video here.
Previously:
Pavement chalking: this time seen in a positive light
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"Previous research suggests that U.S. residents may use holiday decorations on their home's exterior to communicate friendliness and cohesiveness with neighbors. In the present research, we examine whether strangers (naive raters) can accurately identify the more friendly residents, and what aspects of the homes' exteriors contribute to their impressions. We also examine the possibility that residents who decorate for Christmas but who have few friends on the block may be using the decorations and other cues as a way of communicating their accessibility to neighbors. Participants rated residents based only on photographs of their home and front yard. Stimulus homes had been preselected to represent the four cells of a two by two factorial design crossing the presence/absence of Christmas decorations with the resident's self-rated social contact with neighbors (low/high). As expected, a main effect for the decorated factor indicated that raters used Christmas decorations as a cue that the residents were friendly and cohesive. Decoration interacted with sociability in a complex but interpretable way. In the absence of Christmas decorations, raters accurately distinguished between the homes of sociable and nonsociable residents; in open ended comments, they attributed their impressions to the relatively more 'open' and 'lived in' look of the sociable residents' homes. When Christmas decorations were present, raters actually attributed greater sociability to the nonsociable residents, citing a more open appearance as the basis for their judgments. The results support the idea that residents can use their home's exterior to communicate attachment and possibly to integrate themselves into a neighborhood's social activities."
Werner, C et al (1989), Inferences about homeowners' sociability: impact of Christmas decorations and other cues. Journal of environmental psychology, 9, 279-296.
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More ideas like this please, as described on the Placemaking blog - the New York City Department of Transportation has been partnering with local restaurants to install pop-up cafés in parking spaces. They offer a short time-lapse video of the use of one such space.
It raises a few creative questions. In what sort of locality would this work best? Obviously not town centre, but given the apparent expense and need for sponsorship, it's unlikely to happen in low-income areas or on peripheral estates. Probably it's best suited just off the suburban high street.
But could a sponsoring agency - perhaps a housing association with many suitable sites - have the portable hardware available for rent and delivered to estates at low cost, and the rest done by tenants' associations?
And what other legitimate uses can be squeezed into the idea without distorting it? Could you have a creche for some of the time? Could you have a volunteer bureau occupy a table there for an hour or two? Suggestions please.
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Anyone who thought agencies like CABE were a waste of public money should look away now. In their current status as part of the Design Council, using material generated in their previous independence, CABE have produced a set of clear, directive briefing papers on Creating safe places to live through design. They are well worth spending time on.
There are six case studies augmented by a summary of lessons learned. The summary hits four main issues:
'Corner properties – they are at greater risk of crime and need careful resolution to ensure they provide overlooking to both streets.
Avoiding situations that expose rear access to dwellings – all dwellings should be the right way around with fronts and backs resolved properly for every dwelling.
Ensure the movement network passes to the front (or if necessary overlooked sides) [of] dwellings rather than to the rear and is logical, fitting in with wider movement routes.'
The image below comes from the case study of the gated estate. Never mind the fencing and gating, the door appears to have been designed so that we can all keep prison life firmly in mind.
(And what is that slit at the bottom of the door? Designed to make anyone delivering post bend down unnecessarily? Or is it a squat cat flap? Time to leave I think).
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I recently mentioned the Living Streets campaign against pavement parking. By coincidence, clearing out some old papers, I just came across this little gem. It's 25 years old and appears to have been part of a national campaign, the leaflet being distributed with vehicle licensing documents. After that, everyone pretty much gave up I think.
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Thanks to a fascinating academic meeting this week about ‘researching contemporary communities,’ I was directed to this striking image based on shopkeepers’ countries of origin. It comes from an ethnographic study of the Walworth Road in south London, carried out by Suzanne Hall, an architect. The illustration is dated 2006. It neatly captures what Doreen Massey meant by a ‘global sense of place’.
I like this particularly because of the immediacy of the story it tells. Rather like Donald Appleyard’s famous (1981) drawings of local social interactions on ‘light traffic street’ and ‘heavy traffic street,’ you get the message straight away, and it confirms what you are already likely to know, so it’s more reassuring than thought-provoking or challenging.
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BSHF have started some interesting-looking research into what constitutes a ‘decent’ amount of domestic space.
‘A range of different standards are used by central and local government to measure aspects of space in the home, like overcrowding and under occupation. There is also a range of space standards available as guides for new housing development. But the assumptions behind these standards are not always clear. And there is little information on what the general public thinks is acceptable when it comes to space in the home, and what not.’
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As a pedestrian and experienced buggy-pusher living in an outer urban area that has a high car population, I'm pleased to see this: the good folk at Living Streets are cranking up their campaign against pavement parking.
I know parking options are a problem for a lot of people - inadequate housing supply often means several people in the same household who depend on their car (or think they do) for work, living in houses not designed for multiple car ownership. But there are two far worse problems I suspect - unnecessary use which suggests possible unnecessary ownership, and downright inconsiderate parking.
Because authorities have been so slow to crack down on the habit, it is seen as acceptable. What effect will the campaign have?
I suggest it needs universally available stickers issued to all buggy-pushers, wheelchair users and pedestrians with mobility problems, with a legend saying 'please show more consideration to pavement users'. The stickers could be applied to the windscreen and should not be too easy to remove: it should take at least as long for an inconsiderate driver to remove the sticker as it does for a buggy-pusher to wait for a safe moment to go into the road, around the vehicle and regain the safety of the pavement.
Another option of course would be a website with geo-located and time-stamped images - and forget that stuff about blanking out the registration plates.
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The National Housing Federation have published a new guide on Greener neighbourhoods:
This publication sets out ideas for developing partnerships and improving green spaces to meet the needs and aspirations of communities now and in the future. It presents a number of ways in which housing green space can be used and managed to facilitate local involvement and increase resident satisfaction.
The guide includes a useful short summary of a detailed literature review, Living green: evidence to support the provision of green space around social housing, carried out by Helen Woolley and Alison Somerset-Ward from the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield. At the time of writing I was not able to find it online.
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The other day I had the chance to tag along with what might have looked like just a bunch of loosely-supervised youngsters wandering about in the countryside. It happened to be one of the most impressive social inclusion projects I've ever seen.
On this particular day they were geocaching near the River Yare and finding out how the woodlands are managed, how the river is used, how lanes have changed over centuries, and so on.
There were half a dozen young people in care, aged between about 13 and 19 - at least one of them in a residential home, the others having varied histories with foster carers. Through the youth council and the museums service they were involved in a week-long programme of events exploring how the Norfolk countryside has changed as a consequence or cause of social change.
The project began last Monday with the participants viewing a series of dioramas at Norwich Museum, which represent recognisable Norfolk scenes. None of the dioramas features any human beings. One of them shows the wildlife on the marshland around the coast at Blakeney, a village which has grown around a number of cottages built from the local flint.
Visiting Blakeney themselves, the young people spent time reflecting on the kinds of people who would have lived there in the past, their livelihoods based on fishing; and on the kinds of people who live there now (the house prices are an indicator of the now-classic scenario in which less-affluent local people who have looked after their local environment for centuries are abruptly priced out of their area). I understand that there is little or no fishing based in Blakeney now, but there is a tourist industry based on seal-watching from nearby Blakeney Point. There are insights here about human involvement in the changing environment, which were readily absorbed and discussed by the young participants through the week.
Another of the dioramas features a 'loke', which is a regional term for a country lane enclosed on both sides by vegetation. Lokes would have been used heavily over the centuries, often marking parish boundaries, and might well have sunk gradually below the level of adjacent fields.
While I was there on Thursday, two or three geocaches were traced in lokes, and I was struck by the young people's appetite for knowledge about wildlife and landscape even while a series of treasure-hunting games was being played. When I was their age, me and my mates would have been relentless in our determination to disrupt the entire process, and I for one would have learned nothing.
All the same, I found the ease with which they mastered global positioning technology too much of a contrast with the difficulties these young people have faced and will continue to face in locating themselves. Unlike their settled peers, they are ceaselessly navigating through many uncertainties.
The subtle excellence of this project is worth dwelling on, at the start of national adoption week. They're still too rare, but you can find initiatives like this in the public sector - it might be through sports and leisure, museums, libraries, youth services or wherever - often with little recognition and against excessive management constraints. It takes exceptional people working in partnership with other committed individuals, all well beyond the call of duty, to bend those constraints and pull off this kind of programme. The benefits to the young people are almost tangible, but try telling that to the politicians and accountants.
As in previous work where I've been talking to young people looked after, I was struck by their easy readiness to talk among themselves (even though in most cases they had not met before) about the experience of being looked after. Much of the time they feel so different to other kids and cannot share that experience, so these occasions are particularly valuable, liked cached treasure.
It was enchanting to listen in on a conversation about globalisation and capitalism as we took our lunch on benches in a church porch (in modest reference to the protest outside St Paul's). And it's striking how sensitive they are to how others might be feeling. Mainly towards the other youngsters around them, but also to the adults. As soon as I joined them in the minibus I was offered sweets and as we wandered round I was twice asked by one lad I'd barely met 'You alright Kevin?' Yes, I most definitely was. I don't earn much doing what I do, but I have some extraordinary privileges.
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We know that neighbourhood characteristics influence health but we don't know quite how or how much. Here's a study which used a random lottery to give selected low income families a voucher to move to a less-impoverished neighbourhood. Apparently it shows that
'low-income women with children who move from high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhoods experience notable long-term improvements in some aspects of their health, namely reductions in diabetes and extreme obesity.'
Yes I think so too, it would be a good idea to start eradicating neighbourhoods characterised by extreme poverty in the first place. I can see how doing that might reduce poor health and therefore costs to the taxpayer.
It would be nice not to need studies like this, but in the meantime it's important to have the evidence. And I like the idea of the randomised study.
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Facebook fans amongst customers of a furniture store in Belgium are allowed exclusive use of a number of parking places at the company's stores. Will those who can't find a space go home and sign up, or go elsewhere for their stuff?
I guess the idea could become quite interesting if it gets generalised to local traders in a specific place; or if it were adopted in the public sector - a leisure centre for instance?
Right now, I'm curious to know whether the basic point is appreciated by all the prats who argued a few years ago that digital technologies meant the death of distance and that the local was no longer relevant.
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"CCTV usually achieves very little on its own, it needs to be part of more comprehensive security planning; it works much better in access-managed areas along with a guardianship presence, community support and a response capacity.
Policing, security and crime prevention are social relationships and if these are characterised mainly by division, mistrust and inequality, CCTV surveillance technologies are likely to exacerbate social problems and tensions."
Peter Squires, University of Brighton, in a European Urban Knowledge Network interview.
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'This particular interviewee explains in detail her love of running, and describes the geography of her neighbourhood, distinguished by a letterbox at the end of the road. Such are the gendered and social constraints imposed by other residents of the refugee camp, however, in a place where there is little privacy, that she is forced to run round and round the flat roof of her building instead of down the road, with her husband measuring out the distance in recognisable terms. 'Have I reached the post-box yet?' she reports herself asking, imagining that she is in fact running along the road outside her house, an activity forbidden to her because she is a woman.'
K.H.Adler, in 'Gendering histories of homes and homecomings', in this volume, referring to a video art project by Palestinian architect Sandi Hilal called Roofs: public private open spaces in the camp. According to this note the project was 'produced in a refugee camp in Hebron on the West Bank in cooperation with UNRWA [The United Nations Relief and Works Agency] and the University of Stuttgart.'
The image is from the Occupied Palestine blog.
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Nelson Street in Bristol recently hosted an international festival of street art, with some huge works which must have been stunning from street level.
I always wonder a little about the flows of assimilation in initiatives of this kind. But in this case it feels like there is an honest distance between street art and graffiti. I don't see that the fundamentally anarchic, challenging nature of graffiti is really compromised.
What strikes me though in the material I've looked at is the absence of the voice of the residents of Nelson Street itself.
Short film here.
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It's hard not to be pessimistic about the fate of new-built neighbourhoods, just as it's hard to believe that any good will come of this olympics folly; but let's hope those in the Olympic Park will start out unlabelled.
Five neighbourhoods covering about 8,000 new homes have now been named as Chobham Manor, East Wick, Marshgate Wharf, Sweetwater and Pudding Mill. Not bad I reckon. Curious that all the winning nominators were male.
Among the comments on the BBC article, I liked this one:
'The choice of names suggests a welcome confidence in who we are as Brits; frankly Dickensian, underwhelmed by "progress", oddly charming (or charmingly odd), and rooted in the history of ordinariness.'
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As our society's long-awaited public crisis of privacy finally sets the politicians' alarms off, here are some thoughts on how the mixing up of private and public can cause odd behaviour.
I was driving home from a conference this afternoon around 6pm, the roads busy of course, came up a hill in a single line of traffic and there was a car stopped on a corner near the top, drivers having to slow and take turns to pass. I stopped in front and got out, quickly learning what I have come to expect - the lady had been there for 'an hour' and no-one had stopped to help her.
I'm not the sort of person to be suspicious of the story I heard and had no reason to disbeleive it. Her father had died the night before, she'd panicked out of the house with an uncharged mobile phone and an empty petrol tank, and from the hospital was now on her way to see her mum
Two kids (and a hamster) in the back and no buggy, so although she had an empty petrol can, she couldn't walk to get it filled. I sorted that easily enough in less than fifteen minutes and they were on their away. So there I was a short while later back in the traffic now busier, with time to think about the possible stats.
Let's suppose the lady exaggerated how long she'd been stuck there, perhaps it was thirty minutes, not an hour. There had to be a minimum of 15 vehicles per minute going past in the direction of travel (and a comparable number in the opposite direction). Even if only a few contained more than one passenger, that's at the very least 500 hundred people - and probably coming on for 2,000 - who saw her, without stopping to help. I could have guessed it, but she told me and I witnessed one example - lots of drivers tooted their horns in annoyance and at least one shouted abuse. She was in their way and may have slowed them down slightly, and being very important people they had stuff to do.
Some human beings behave so oddly when they get in cars, I suppose because it's sharply defined private space in the public realm and that confuses relationships.
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When I was in France recently I was a bit shocked at the prevalence of private beaches, in a country which I had thought took liberté and égalité seriously.
Perhaps it will get as bad in the UK before long. I vaguely recall, but cannot find evidence of, an early Thatcher attempt or threat to sell stretches of the British coastline.
And I've been wondering, what will it take eventually to spark a serious debate about the nature of 'public' in this country?
The government's determined assault on what is public encompasses a scary disinterest in formal care services for vulnerable people; spiteful bullying contempt (especially from here) for local-elected bodies almost by definition; the washing of hands on policy for public libraries; the idea of selling off nature reserves; and the outrageous attempt to sell off publicly-owned woodland.
And we have a London borough apparently serious about charging children to use an adventure playground. That should get rid of the riff-raff. I daresay there are plenty of similar examples, as the Haves seek to drive home their advantage and accentuate what Geoff Mulgan described as the 'evident imbalance between private affluence and public poverty.'
The other day I was in a London square where I was told that you weren't allowed there if you were wearing overalls. Presumably if a worker is needed to fix something, he or she has to be brought in behind screens or under cover of darkness: the leisure of the wealthy should not be spoiled by the risk of catching sight of hoi-polloi. It was, presumably, pseudo-public space - privately owned, the developer having extracted from the local authority pretty much whatever they wanted in return for providing pavements and conditional access. Bless them, the London Assembly recently published a report which
'identifies a number of concerns relating to the shift in the ownership and management of public spaces from local authorities to developers, and recommends solutions.'
But last month's BBC programme about the street without services suggested to me that there is a lot to be done before people will join up the evidence of these various little skirmishes and recognise them as a war. How late is too late?
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A Berlin-based artist, Britta Lipka, has started a participation project to plant a mosaic 'tree of good neighborliness' in an urban public space. Don't be put off by the rhetoric of good intentions, I don't see why lots of people should not send pieces for the mosaic if they match Britta's design. It's not so much about neighbourliness as about widespread participation in prosocial symbols in the public realm, but why not? This project uses the internet and physical objects to involve potentially numerous contributors to public art. I look forward to seeing (evidence of) the results.
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This time last week I was wandering about a town in the south of France, prospecting for somewhere to run the next day. I crossed a likely-looking bit of scruffy, half-finished park and resilient wasteland outside a new estate.
Music grew louder. By a gap in a fence on a dusty track I came upon a lad standing astride his bike. The speakers were attached to the handlebar, impressively loud really. He wasn't peddling, then suddenly he was peddling and the music was replaced by a torrent of complaint from a woman with a leash and a dog.
My french is not adequate to have followed the detail of her argument, but I wasn't going to take issue. The boy had left an empty biscuit packet on the ground. I couldn't tell if this was a one-off or a routine scenario they went through, but I was fairly sure it was territorial. I took the litter to the bin (the stench when I lifted the lid nearly took me out) while she gave me to understand her determination to accost the young man should she track him down.
The woman's volume remained high as she set off in pursuit. I pottered on wondering unfairly about the likelihood that she cleans up after her dog.
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Having referenced Hugh Schofield's thoughts recently on 'the fact French and other European societies are more socially-minded,' I spent most of the past week in southern France. I'm just unpacking and found a few loose thoughts about public space. I'm certainly not in a position to imply any conclusions about cultural differences, these are just reflections.
When I first went to France, it must have been about 1967, I remember commenting on the constant background sound of emergency sirens in urban areas. I'd make the same observation now, it's so dominant. Who knows, there may just be some connection to the extraordinary French appetite for minor road collisions: there were four within metres of me at various times over four days.
So it's a relief to observe that the French seem far less likely than the English to use their mobile phones while driving. I saw only one instance. In terms of offensive behaviour in public space, using a mobile while driving displays stark disrespect: it says unambiguously, 'my conversation is more important than your safety'. That's one reason why it's depressing to be returning to the British public realm.
Public space in England is mcuh more information-intensive. In France there are fewer advertisements and signs - in train stations for instance, which can be remarkably dull - and on the trains and buses there are far fewer announcements. If you get on an inter-city train in the UK you are bombarded with announcements, about your ticket validity, destinations and bacons burgers, along with concerted attempts to catch you out and criminalise you. When you look out the window at a station, all sorts of information competes for your attention. Perhaps it mirrors the difference in food cultures. In France, the public realm doesn't rush you.
And the more restrained approach to information provision may have subtle social consequences. If you need to know something, you ask - that is to say, you engage with others around you. Perhaps we have here an instance of Kev's Automatic Door Principle, which notes that there are distinct advantages to using technology to open doors for us: especially for people who use wheelchairs, also of course if you are overloaded with luggage; but automatic doors do not have to be held open for the lady with the stick just behind you, or for that bloke with the buggy just approaching. This is technology confiscating tiny social interactions. Information overload in the UK could be doing something similar.
Uninvited encounters on the street seem far less frequent in France. If I walk through a town in England I know I will be accosted by people thrusting pieces of paper at me, people asking me for money or opinions or time. It could be argued that this is an acceptable part of the bustle of the urban public realm. I did note however that on the one occasion last week when I was offered a leaflet in the street, the lady said 'Bonjour m'sieur' as she held it out: that reflects a fundamentally more respectful attitude to the Other's retractable right to privacy in public.
What else? Smoking and dog shit. Smoking seems still to be far more prevalent than it is in England, a phenomenon that continues to surprise me. Given that it's a great way of trashing your taste buds, how explain its popularity in a nation of people who pride themselves on taking food seriously?
It seemed to me that there is far less obesity in France. If nothing else, that helps make sure there's enough public space for everyone. But then I wasn't always looking around me because it really is necessary to keep an eye on where you walk. The ubiquitous ladies with lapdogs, they're probably the experts at negotiating the pavements.
Just as we've taken a regulatory approach to smoking in the UK, we also use the law against dog-owners who allow mess. Apparently not in France. Maybe it's just another of many apparent contradictions in the French 'vive la similarité' love-hate relationship with regulation and universal standards.
But having been away from France for some years, what struck me afresh was the sense of generalised respect in the public realm. When you go into a shop, you say bonjour, and merci au'voir when you leave. When you sit down on a train or get into a lift, likewise you acknowledge the Other. This was emphasised with perfect clarity for me on the train home, as a loud party of Brits got on at Avignon, oblivious to the way they disrupted others' space. I'm inclined to agree with Schofield, the French really are more socially-minded, and there are things we should be thinking about.
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Hugh Flouch and I have been doing a routine for some time now talking about the way local online networks help residents to co-produce the quality of their local environment. Now here's a little gem of an example, from Harringay Online, the site which Hugh set up four years ago.
On April 18 at 14.13 Darrell Osbawn posted the following message:
'Fairlands Park is in a bit of a state. The Council knows about it and is organising some staff to come and empty the bins etc. However, there is a lot of small litter spread across the grass areas and rocks/sticks all over the play areas which the Council probably won't get. Is anyone interested in meeting at the park sometime in the next few days to spend an hour of so to help sweep the play areas and pick up the loose rubbish? If so, please send me a PM on here and we can organise a time to meet and clean.'
Less than two days later, thanks partly to the way social media helps people to organise informally, eight residents had turned out, filled ten bags of rubbish, notified the council to pick them up, and the job was done. Follow up is here.
Note the observation:
'We don't expect to have to do this on a regular basis. It was only necessary because the Council has/had not emptied the bins for 2 weeks.'
Subsequently it has been noted that due to recent public sector funding cuts the Parks Hygiene Team has been reduced from 15 to 5 persons; and the question raised:
'How can a borough be covered by 5 people, bins & litter picking?'
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For a long time, I've been saying that neighbourliness can be 'designed-out', and asking why it cannot more deliberately be 'designed-in'. The literarure is gradually starting to accumulate and this question gets a little extra feeding from some interesting research recently published in Environment and behavior (subscription, online first).
The researchers used measures of the physical environment in ten neighbourhoods in Portland, Oregon, and found
'a greater probability of higher levels of neighborliness as the total number of positive physical-environment characteristics increased.'
Judiciously they used the neighbourliness index from the 2003 social capital report on the General Household Survey.
Strikingly, the results were unchanged
'after controlling for race, self-reported health, perception of safety, years of neighborhood residence, age of house, market value of house, and proportion of homeowners in neighborhood.'
The authors point out that causality is not demonstrated: conceivably, people who are disposed to be neighbourly give rise to neighbourly environments. But it seems more likely that it is the other way round, don't it?
The picture I took some years ago in an area called The Roger in Joao Pessoa, Brasil. I've chosen it because it reminds us that there are probably quite a lot of features not solely to do with the physical environment, that influence neighbourhood interactions. Like for example: low volume of cars, favourable weather, people having stuff to do outdoors, dogs, children, impromptu seating arrangements contrived in community spaces and so on.
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Shelter reminds us that 'there is a drastic shortage of housing in England'. There are approximately 252,000 second homes in England, and 288,000 long term private empty homes. Second homes are largely concentrated in attractive rural and coastal locations (including Cornwall and the south west, Norfolk, and Cumbria) plus the City of London. Beyond this regional trend, they are very much localised, with properties clustered in particular villages or neighbourhoods.
Shelter have published a new policy briefing which notes that evidence is mixed as to the impact that second homes have on local communities and housing markets, but
'Local authorities have limited tools available to mitigate any negative impacts.'
The paper notes that private empty homes could make a contribution to meeting housing need:
However, they are not spatially concentrated in the areas of greatest housing need and local authorities face challenges both in getting empty homes back into use and preventing homes from falling empty.
Among the recommendations:
Hands up who expects this government to grab this one with all four hands?
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Over recent months I've been party to a few conversations about threats to the equalities and rights agenda posed by public service cuts and the coalition government's apparent enthusiasm for throwing out safeguards.
An example came up just the other day, with Children's Minister Tim Loughton quoted as saying that 'it is a "nonsense" that some carers have to get permission for everyday activities such as haircuts or sleepovers'. Yes but no. In many circumstances it's highly desirable that the parents of a child in care are encouraged to retain responsibility for precisely these kinds of decisions. As a foster carer there are definitely cases in which that is what I would want to happen, in the interests of the child, however awkward it may seem.
Only bureaucrats benefit from excessive regulation, but when you start looking at why some safeguards are in place there are usually minority interests at stake. It's depressing to have a minister of government showing such a nuance-free disregard for the rights and needs of parents.
I got onto this because I've been reflecting on the latest paper from the International Longevity Centre, on localism and neighbourhoods. Authors Dylan Kneale and David Sinclair argue that
'The Localism Bill should include greater safeguards to ensure that the rights of marginalised or minority populations to access a full range of amenities and services locally are protected.'
They go on to call for
'a joined-up approach among bodies representing minority and marginalised groups to research and lobby for changes in the way spending cuts affect marginalised populations.'
I didn't realise that it's well over four years since the ILC published their excellent paper on lifetime neighbourhoods - no less insightful or important now.
The present document is an update to that thinking, in a less sympathetic political context where for example we no longer have CABE to defend and promote good quality design of neighbourhoods, and instead we have the bizarre and nasty government fad of bashing planners and the planning system.
Dark age ahead, as Jane Jacobs foretold.
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Here's a sound idea neatly presented, the Streets Museum, tracing lost streets of Salford. Apparently over 1500 streets have been demolished in central Salford in the past fifty years. (Why?)
'We focus on our lost cultural and architectural heritage, which are intricately related. We gather together fragments of the past, placing them in active spaces of dialogue and encouraging social networking between fragmented families.'
Presumably what this could lead onto is a redefinition of 'lost' and some archiving of the way many streets have changed from being community places to spaces reserved for privatised mobility. And from there, hopefully, to more widespread recognition of the social damage caused by the loss of streets.
But don't expect much soon - remember we have a government that pretends, laughably, that there has been a 'war on motorists' which in brain-free populist mode it wants to 'end'.
Smuggled into the new year blur was this press release announcing the abolition of parking space limits for new homes and guidance encouraging higher parking charges. More evidence of rampant anti-social policy to put the charming rhetoric of big society into perspective.
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From the 'Designing Streets for People' list, a statistical note by Alasdair Massie referring to a crossing that he uses regularly:
If approaching “as traffic” on the road you generally have a green light – 87% of the time in fact. If you are unfortunate enough to hit a red, then you have at worst a 16 second wait before you can proceed. As with pretty much every junction / crossing except for large signalised roundabouts, you clear the crossing in one go.
If on the other hand, you approach the same crossing as a pedestrian, you almost ALWAYS meet a red light. At most, if there are people pressing the call button continuously, only 5% of the phase shows green to pedestrians. You then have to WAIT. Assuming that nobody has pressed the button before you, then that wait will be 40 seconds if there is traffic (which there is for most of the day). You then get 6 seconds of green time. Then, having got to the sheep pen in the middle of the road and struggled your way through the phalanx of people coming the other way, you have to go through the whole process again, admittedly with a shorter wait.
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The other day the Commission for Rural Communities published a report on 'the economic conditions for organisations contributing to the Big Society in rural England'. It tries to say nice things about Big Society, although the previous day the government had announced that the CRC is being abolished anyway. Can't have been easy finalising the text with that news looming.
The report makes clear that conditions in some marginalised rural localities are not expected to get any better in the foreseeable. Respondents in the study on which it is based said that, among other things, they would like
The government to understand that the Big Society, although cost efficient, is not cost free and that some communities do not have the capacity to get involved. Ongoing and long term funding as well as professional support is still needed to carry on delivering their services and taking on additional responsibilities.
Here's a sample comment from within the report illustrating how economices of scale could impact (from Remploy, another state-funded agency, whose future is apparently still 'under consideration'):
'As contracts are cancelled and niche programmes disappear the economics of high volume delivery do not lend themselves to specific delivery within the rural communities... Rural communities are deemed the areas of acceptable attrition as the funding cuts bite and providers are asked to deliver more volume outcomes for less.'
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Last week Planning resource offered a story by Graeme Bell about a man determined to build his home office entirely from samples and reclaimed materials. When it came to planning permission:
he submitted his application for a "plannertarium" faced with polychromatic brickwork.
His supporting statement proudly proclaimed reclaimed bricks, locally sourced. He was delighted to receive his notice of approval in due course but scanning down his eye came to condition six: "Samples of the brick and tile must be submitted."
This week's story, by Chris Shepley, is a quick fantasy on how crowdsourcing community involvement might have affected the plans of Kubla Khan. Even if you have to go back to your Coleridge, it's worth it: enjoy.
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Public sector funding cuts and the Big Society rhetoric, taken together as they must be, seem to be about weakening local government while strengthening citizen involvement and influence in the resulting vacuum.
Is it the expectation that most of the increased involvement and co-production will happen at local authority level rather than at neighbourhood level? I’m not sure we know enough about the differences, but it’s fair to say that a huge amount of informal co-production has always gone on at neighbourhood level, overlooked by and sometimes in spite of government policy.
Once within the local authority area, it’s curious how policy doesn’t seem to have much purchase, the closer it gets to your home. I’m referring to what I tend to call the neighbourhood (in my case just fourteen units): sometimes called the micro-neighbourhood, or in the seminal Shaping neighbourhoods by Hugh Barton and colleagues, the ‘home patch’ (population 20-200).
I have no idea whether that will change in the months and years after the forthcoming Localism Bill, but don’t be surprised if this is where a lot of harsh skirmishes get fought out and where the weak will be abandoned. As public services begin to wither, localities will start to vary enormously according to the amount of self-investment they manage to mobilise. This will be a real challenge for the ways in which we address inequalities.
There are no clues in the CLG ‘structural reform plan’ as to the varied nature of ‘local’. Under the objective ‘Make localism and the Big Society part of everyday life – by increasing accountability’ (para 4.5) the government plan mentions promoting power to ‘community groups’. But unfortunately the subheadings make no further mention of such groups. [Pity the busy officials, we don’t know how many, at their desks, drafting away. Dang, what did I do with those community groups? Dunno, they were there a moment ago. Oh well]. Community groups tend to take their justification from the larger neighbourhood or district, and have impact at the most local level, so it maybe matters that they are kept in the equation.
Traditionally of course, policy works at a scale where its impact is at the wider area level – through transport, policing, planning, health services, environmental services and so on. These services are then expected to reach down into the neighbourhood, and of course some do, to great effect, or they interact with community sector agencies which do so. But often they fail to get near. Will the new localism manage to get closer?
Some of the language can be deceptive. Take ‘safer neighbourhood teams’, part of the extended happy family of policing. While the officers are active in various neighbourhoods they may not come from any of them, and have to work at establishing connections with residents. Or take the misnomer of ‘primary care’. I think it was Marilyn Waring who countered that most primary care is delivered by mothers in the home. I would argue that most primary care is delivered by individuals to themselves or their families. For sure, there is a consistently identifiable level of health care – including community nursing - which comes before the level where we travel 2.5 miles to the nearest clinic.
So the new politics of Small State requires a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes the local. We could start with a better appreciation of the levels and kinds of co-production that take place within the micro-neighbourhood, the better to be able to compensate for the partial disintegration of wider ‘neighbourhood’ services.
As an aside concerning what happens at the most local level, where residents construct much of the narrative of their everyday lives - I’ve just read an interesting paper by John Hipp (Social networks, 32, 2010) on how social distance between residents in the nearest ten units affects perceptions of disorder. His study suggests that
‘it is micro-neighborhoods with two cohesive subgroups containing minimal social distance within them and a large amount of social distance between them [that] have the lowest level of commonly perceived social disorder.’
If nothing else, this highlights the fact that not only are neighbourhoods not as cohesive as policy would like them to be, they probably function better not being too cohesive (residents being better equipped to foster weak ties with the broader neighbourhood). Policy needs to get away from the lazy equation of ‘community’ with local authority area or sub-district: the Localism Bill would seem to be a good time to do some of the necessary thinking.
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Today's Telegraph has a piece about embarrassing or stigmatised street names. Changing the name of a street is an expensive and lengthy process, as the article points out, and risks washing away some valued nuggets of local history. Often these are not just rows of houses, but places with an accumulated shared history. Whatever is wrong with 'Brewery Street'? Let's take a closer look.
Apparently the inhabitants of Butt Hole Road
had to put up with coach loads of US tourists visiting to have their pictures taken near the road sign...
- so I can certainly understand the motivation there, as in circumstances which involve nothing more complicated than confirming one's address over the phone to a tedious tittering office twat.
But where we English excel is in our unfailing adherence to the tradition of snobbery, and some street name changes can only be accounted for in terms of collective snobbery. Like these examples cited:
Residents of Whiteway Avenue, near Bath, changed their street to the more picturesque Englishcombe Rise, because of the "negative connotations" of sharing a name with a nearby suburb called Whiteway.
In Walsall, part of Beddows Road was renamed Lavender Grove because the old name had become associated with a high crime rate and anti social behaviour.
...In Bournemouth, Derby Road was changed to Garden Views because the new name was "perceived to have more desirable connotations".
The real interest now could be in what effect, if any, these changes have had. 'Beddows' may smell as sweet as 'Lavender' but do people there and in surrounding streets genuinely perceive a difference that is measurable not solely in house prices?
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Congratulations to Chris Gittins of Streets Alive for this breakthrough, he's been pushing for it for years - CLG have just published a leaflet confronting the inconsistencies and paperwork involved in council regulation of street parties and other outdoor neighbourhood events.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles wrote to local authorities:
‘From now on, instead of organisers being met with endless, confusing guidelines on food licences, road closures and insurance, councils can ask street party organisers to complete one simple form.’
The form and guidance are here. Press release.
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Spiegel Online has an article, 'The challenge of making HafenCity feel neighborly', about a large new city centre development for 12,000 residents in Hamburg.
It's a very protracted initiative with an emphasis on social mix, and on residents and other stakeholders having an input into the ongoing project. The sociologist involved in the development, Marcus Menzl, says:
'You cannot build a neighborly feeling. But I think that architecture can help certain processes and hinder others.'
The pic is from their photo gallery.
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Following Wednesday's government announcement about the destructive withdrawal of funding for community playground schemes across England, here's a letter in today's Guardian by Liz Kessler, (in turn responding to George Monbiot's article about common space, play and trees on housing estates):
Many of these estates are surrounded by large areas of bleak open space, all too often dominated by cars. By redesigning these spaces, planting them with trees and flowers, providing allotments, minimising the impact of vehicles, and integrating opportunities for play, they can indeed be transformed. I recently worked on such an estate and when the re-landscaping was completed an elderly resident said: "It's like a cork bursting out of a bottle. I had no idea there were so many children cooped up in these flats."
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This is good stuff, making use of an interim urban space, sharing plants, and bringing people together. It must be replicable on a smaller scale.
'The site of 100 Union Street in SE1 has been transformed into an urban orchard and community garden. Designed by Heather Ring of the Wayward Plant Registry for The Architecture Foundation and built with the help of Bankside Open Spaces Trust and an array of other helpful volunteers the garden will regenerate a disused site in Bankside and create a place for exchange between local residents and visitors to the [London Festival of Architecture]... In September the garden will be dismantled and all the trees will be given to local estates and other community gardens.'
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OK, back on public transport yesterday and today, but I've had enough of vacuous announcements in the public realm which interrupt conversations and stop us thinking our own thoughts.
My submission for the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square is a rudely-shaped loudspeaker broadcasting a continuous loop as follows:
'Please keep your language with you at all times. If you hear anything specious, repeat it to a mumbler of stuff.'
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The English tradition of common land is a physical representation of collective interest that defies exclusive and privatising practices.
'People may not know what a common is, but they have some sense of its survival through history, perhaps that the land once belonged to the people, and they want to keep it that way.'
This comes from new guidance for assessing the community value of common land, prepared by Kate Ashbrook and Nicola Hodgson for The Open Spaces Society.
It's full of fascinating insight and some individual reflections like this:
'Zoar Common is the link between my home and the high moorland and is welcoming, familiar, territory where I‟m most likely to meet near neighbours coming and going, exchanging a few friendly words and keeping in touch with local matters.'
The guidance is intended
to identify mechanisms to recognise and take account of local community interests on commons, hence complementing established criteria used in assessing national importance of land for interests such as nature con-servation and landscape. The intention is not that community interests should be graded or weighed and balanced against national interests, but rather that they should be given proper recognition and attention when considering man-agement on a common, seeking to integrate local and national aspirations within management frameworks. Specifically, the purpose of the commission was to provide information to enable the user or practitioner to:
i be aware of issues relating to the community interests of common land,
ii assess the importance of common land to local neighbourhoods,
iii engage with communities and understand their perspectives,
iv incorporate community concerns in any scheme examining the future and management of commons.
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The village of Grassington, previously tipped for the prize, has now been 'chosen' for the tv programme in which twelve outsiders
“move into a house in a beautiful rural village and the residents decide who they think is the right person to become a permanent member of their community and win the house”.
Villagers have dwelt on their fate. Will it all end in tears?
Mr Isaacs, who is the studio’s creative director, said his team was looking for a handful of strong local characters who would act as mentors to introduce people to the village.
He said he would like to get as many people as possible involved in voting people off the show, but had yet to “nail down” how it would work.
“We’ll always be available to engage people before, during and after production. We want our relationship to continue,” he said. “We do care about your community, but we also want to make exciting, grabby television.”
That's 'grabby' spelled with an 'a', I checked.
I can see there are understandable views on either side of the debate, but what's striking is where the power lies. Presumably residents did not proactively invite the tv company in, at least not collectively. Now that they have apparently accepted their nomination, I imagine residents are going to find themselves with less and less influence over what happens.
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Neighbor Chalk is an international public art project that encourages people to create sidewalk chalk art in front of their homes and around their neighborhood to create a welcoming environment for their neighbors and passers by.
I hope they're aware of the fact that this apparently attractive and harmless practice is held to be antisocial and even criminal in some quarters:
'If it can be washed away, it's not graffiti. But'
Pavement chalking epidemic?
Footnote on pavement chalking
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One hopes that the arguments for the social value of local pubs have been accepted, but of course in a time of economic recession it's not so easy to protect them. The complexity of factors, like the availability of inexpensive drinks through supermarkets, the dominance of pubcos, restrictive covenants on sites and so on, mean some rapid joining up of planning, taxation and social policies could be needed if the decline is to be halted.
I blogged Rick Muir's ippr work on community pubs last year. Now here's a handy update article by Mark Smulian in Planning, which includes this example of an appeal:
'A proposal to change a pub in a Wiltshire village to residential use was rejected by an inspector. The applicants argued that the pub was not viable because it had lost £40,000 in the previous year. But the inspector found that the only other nearby pub mostly sold beer and lacked family facilities or potential to offer an extensive range of food.
'He concluded that the loss of the pub would be detrimental to the community and that the applicants appeared to have paid more than the business was worth based on its turnover. Letters from residents suggested that the premises had developed an unfriendly environment and the inspector accepted that the pub would be viable if it met local demands.'
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