Friday, 28 April 2006

Just have a word

You know how it is, you sit down at a meeting in a community centre or a school or somewhere, and the kids outside are doing a bit of attention-seeking / boundary-testing provocation, kicking balls against the windows, and it's hard to hear. Committee_2 There we were last night in the community shop on Havelock, so young Wasim says quietly, would you like me to go and speak to them? Up he gets, we all know he doesn't need anyone to go with him. They carry on for a minute or so just to show they don't have to take any notice of him.

How lucky, I think, as the noise stops and the kids move off, for a community group to have someone to just do that: too many simply don't, I suspect, and can't cover it when they need to. The mood in the meeting, for the next two and a half hours, is confident and assured.

28 Apr 2006 08:25:34 | Neighbourhood relations, Vignettes

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Time to scrap a few parks Driving near home this evening I had to brake slightly because some kids had let their ball run into the street. I noticed that they were playing cricket on a patch of grass about half the size of a parliamentary committee room, lacking alternative space in their neighbourhood. Safely home to find this: "Speaking at a public accounts committee hearing on urban green space, ODPM permanent secretary Peter Housden said cash-strapped local authorities should rethink their attitude to parks and gardens whose upkeep they could not afford." (From New Start magazine). Thinks, that's odd. Would this be the same government that so strongly and laudably emphasised green spaces as a key feature of liveability? (Of what? Of liveability. Oh right.) And would this be the same Thatcherite government, not known for its generosity towards local government, that now is less sure, shall we say, of the economic value of the public realm? We should not pass over the irony of these comments being recorded on the day we heard the news of the death of Jane Jacobs. She was fiercely, and rather more astutely, critical of bad parks, which she thought could exaggerate "the dullness, the danger, the emptiness" of unattractive neighbourhoods. But she understood their complexity in a way that most local authorities do I think, but which may be a little too subtle for our central public space policy-makers. Time to dig out Ken Worpole's Park life for a reassuring flick-through. (Thanks Martin.)
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Blokland on casual encounters I'm indebted once again to Jan Steyaert who has sent me this note about Talja Blokland's inaugural speech, which she gave in February for her professorship in Rotterdam. Key elements are: We're focusing too much on strong ties, on solid social cohesion. For feeling at ease in the city, it's the very short contacts that are critical. Casual meetings on the subway, waiting in line at the shop - that used to be an area where we at least had familiarity with the others because we saw the same people each day or met them at other places as well. That familiarity is gone, these casual meetings are now anonymous. Moreover, there is a 'creation of home in the public domain' when people start calling on their mobile or when two people in that subway start having a conversation in a foreign language. That's a private claim on the public domain which is a threat to the other uses of that public domain. Jan adds that there's not much in there in terms of policy advice, only promise that these issues will feature high on her research agenda. I ought to pay tribute here to Talja's excellent Urban bonds, which has lots of useful insights into neighbourhoods and notions of local community.

Kevin Harris

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