Tuesday, 13 July 2010

Why neighbouring matters

I just opened the Facebook pages for '50 Ways to Meet Your Neighbour' andNeighboursJoePublic I'm looking forward to seeing people's ideas and suggestions, whether or not they are lyrically consistent. I'm keen to see whether anyone can improve on Nick Buckley's 'Just take in a parcel, Marcel'...

Meanwhile, here's the wordy justification bit in the background:

Not everyone lives in a neighbourhood, but everyone has the right to try to improve their locality by improving relations with those around them. This principle is seldom acknowledged in policy. Yet mutually-supportive connections that generate trust between residents can make an enormous difference for a wide range of social policy measures.

Neighbouring is already subject to policy influence. Decisions affecting planning, local transport, local trade, schools, welfare, safety, parks and so on, all have an affect on whether or not people encounter their neighbours and have something in common which they feel able to talk about.

Of course, individual choices also have an affect. If you only ever get into a car when you leave your home, you’re less likely to recognise your neighbours and have a supportive relationship with them. If you don’t have – or don’t use – a local park, café, pub, post office or community centre, you’re less likely to meet other local people in a safe, neutral space. You’re also less likely to know the young people who share your neighbourhood – who almost certainly occupy it more than you do.

One way to persuade policy makers that neighbouring is worth taking seriously is to focus in on the sort of actions that make it easier to meet other neighbours. The idea behind ’50 Ways’ is to make a loud statement about why neighbouring matters and what can be done to stimulate it.

13 Jul 2010 07:07:26 | Information and communication, Neighbourhood relations, Social capital

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
'50 Ways to Meet Your Neighbour' Last night to a somewhat exploratory Big Society event - as Tim Davies has noted, 'a rather chaotic open space event packed into a small space in the DCLG offices' (pic by Paul Clarke). Lots of ideas spilling out, some specific, many at a high level of generality as we all experiment with this new syntax of not-quite-policy. Even I was surprised at some of the determined theoretical pondering and the persistence of conceptual bullet-pointing. I've been told I could conceptualise for Britain; but for once I came over all practical. Perhaps it was just that I'm still creaky and wembly from the weekend's flu-blast, perhaps partly it was the reassuring first half of Paul Twivy's introductory speech (the second drifted into social enterprise land and I lost the path, no matter). First, a general point. About five years ago there were some evangelical jamboree-style events around the new Labour notion of 'Together We Can'. They were characterised by a refreshing if puzzling sense of welcome suddenly offered to the community sector, without any relinquishing of the agenda by the centre. I was struck last night by the comparison. The language and issues have not really changed: the style, however, couldn't be much different. Whereas TWC events were anti-septic, anti-sceptic, and highly-orchestrated, last night's open session - albeit inevitably dominated by the London twitterati - was fluid, confusing, creative - and consciously, almost riskily, under-managed. I stood in a corner with Roxanne Persaud and Nick Buckley for a conversation about how neighbouring is a fundamental ingredient of Big Society, given the principles of local connection and involvement in issues of common interest. I asked how we overcome the shyness/privacy barriers that constrain people from making those initial connections that result in neighbourly behaviour. We seem to need more devices like street parties and clean-ups that will just get folk started; and I argue that for neighbouring to work, we don't need much more than basic recognition (but we do need fewer cars on our pavements). The forthcoming Gumtree research (to be launched next week, trailed here) makes the point that shyness is a big barrier and people don't like to impose themselves. Can Big Society help us raise awareness large-scale, and bring the inhibition bar down a notch or two? Nick came up with the phrase '50 Ways to Meet Your Neighbour' and we kicked things off with the first few... pavement freecycling, bench in the front garden, communal wheelie bins etc. And this from Roxanne - networked multi-user games in temporary public wifi spaces. Working on the idea later today.
PREVIOUS POST
Who's that knockin at the door? For those like me who feel that the plague of unwanted commercial callers slouching round the neighbourhood with their handouts and patter, is a contemporary problem, sparked partly by the privatisation of utilities (all those ridiculous salespeople trying to persuade you to switch supplier) and exacerbated by the recession, this article in yesterday's Guardian is enlightening. It's from the archive, published 80 years ago: 'You have either to jam the door on to the foot, or listen to the carefully composed and hundred-times rehearsed speech about the coal that will 'save' you a penny a bag on your present prices. It seems heartless to stop it, yet you can't make these men believe that they are wasting their own time as well as yours.' Plus ca change? Well, numbers of unwanted calls could well be similar, but I wouldn't be surprised if levels of polite receptiveness have declined. Given that far more of us now live alone, it might not be surprising to hear that a high proportion of people simply do not answer the door and the frequency and persistence of these calls is one of the reasons given. One more thing to be overcome if we are to help older people to age in place.

Kevin Harris

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments