Tuesday, 08 December 2009

Older and young people relate differently to neighbours: shock news

Survey research commissioned by the housing provider Circle Anglia and published last week focuses on the difference in neighbourhood connections between young people (18-24) and older people (over-65). As reports on these sorts of surveys go, this is refreshingly informative.

The claim is that 92 percent of the over-65s say they know the name of their neighbours (which ones?). This compares with 66% of young people - which I'd have said was pretty encouraging. Older people tend to have lived in the same place for longer than younger people, especially if you subtract the first few years of a young person's life when they're less likely to be that sharp with names.

Also I'm surely not the only to have noticed that young people don't tend to place a great deal of demand on informal social care locally, so somehow I wouldn't expect them to be getting into lots of conversation with neighbours. And since their neighbourhoods got covered with cars owned by adults, they're hardly inspired to hang about in the street, so we wouldn't expect much relaxed interaction with adult neighbours to be generated on a day-to-day basis.

The report notes that 56 per cent of older people enjoy spending time with their neighbours. For me, this is the worrying statistic, if it means that means 44 per cent don't or are indifferent.

The encouraging statistic is that 47 per cent of 18-24 year olds agree that living in a diverse neighbourhood is a good thing.

Via the Beeb's coverage.

8 Dec 2009 20:02:36 | Neighbourhood relations

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