Monday, 16 January 2006

Front gardens

Children_behind_gate When Toby Gale and I talked to people in Manchester as part of the neighbourliness review we did a couple of years ago, we came across a man living in a semidetached house in a relatively affluent area, who had only spoken once to his next-door neighbour in 15 years, and that was on the day he moved in.

He put this down in part to the layout of the long front garden, with cars parked at the top near the house. And whatever the length of the garden, hard standing for cars outside the front door is a surefire way of minimising contact with neighbours.

But making roads out of front gardens has other implications as well, and in Ealing they're taking it seriously. The Ealing Front Gardens project has just set up a website with a couple of reports and a tabular presentation of detrimental effects.

Apart from the implications of loss of vegetation, there are various other concerns such as the reduced amount of rainwater percolating through soil, detrimental effects on water quality and on wildlife, 'heat island' effects, and reduction in gardening activity. Among other negative implications listed are: "Reduction in community cohesion" due to changed appearance/aesthetics; and "Adverse effect on neighbour relations" due to loss of demarcation.

Via Local Sustainability UK.

16 Jan 2006 08:56:47 | Neighbourhood relations, Space and place

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Dissing kids Good Will Davies asked me the other day what was my take on the government's Respect agenda, and I hesitantly admitted to having mixed views. It's obviously right to be trying systematically and thoroughly to confront issues which blight many people's lives in unacceptable ways; and it's fascinating to watch an overtly moral government stance being adopted with the explicit intention of changing behaviour. But I still want to know how two key questions affecting young people are to be answered. First, where are kids in low income neighbourhoods expected to go, and what are they expected to do, when they're not welcome at home? The argument has been made often enough that they do not have sufficient places where they can get inexpensive food and drink, and can sit around chatting without feeling they are being judged by adults all the time. Perhaps the reason the arguments haven't been heard is because middle class kids don't have such difficulties and middle class parents often know nothing about them. So what do we get? A much trumpeted youth volunteering scheme. Secondly, what attempts are being made to deal with our widespread negative stereotypical images of young people? That's a massive social problem in my view: so this past week we've had ministers feeding bucketsful to the media to help them stoke the stereotype, rather than stifle it. Now, happily, here's Richard Sennett in a Guardian interview with Stuart Jeffries, noting that there is a tipping point with a lot of young people, between acceptable and anti-social behaviour, and policy needs to recognise that. Referring to his own past experience: "What kept kids out of trouble was giving them something to do. We're not talking about hardened msicreants now but people who could go one way or the other." He also puts his cellist's finger on another key point, to do with the limitations of using muscular criminal measures to address extremes of anti-social behaviour without addressing the sensitive issues of uncivil behaviour - unchallenged insolence and rudeness in the street and so on. And with apologies for the repeated publicity - but I could hardly be expected not to mention again this chance to learn more about these issues in a London seminar on Wednesday, to be chaired by Richard Sennett. We'll be hearing about two fascinating pieces of research which explore informal social control, with presentations by Liz Richardson from LSE and Jacqueline Barnes from Birkbeck.
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Warm spikes The Young Foundation have just launched their first publication under their new name. It's a collection of mini-studies and essays on 'the pleasures and pains of living together in modern Britain.' Note the word 'together' in the sub-title, because that's the theme of the collection and of course it is rightly and proudly conscientious about the foundation's intellectual inheritance from the Institute of Community Studies. The book is called Porcupines in winter and you can find out why, and more, here. A quick skim-through hints at some real delights to come, when I get the time - tales and snapshots from local everyday life that help us accumulate a rich picture of how we live. There are contributions from Paul Barker, Kate Gavron, Stephen Marshall, Tom Steinberg, Ray Pahl, Malcolm Dean, Peter Hall, Paul Hilder and numerous others. It's a treasure (especially after the discomfort of the launch, in the shiny glamour of London's Guildhall, watching some of the rich and famous swigging wine and listening to speakers talk about 'the poor' in their absence. Yes, I know why).

Kevin Harris

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