Monday, 11 June 2012

Neighbourliness research needs to take account of personality

Few people will pay much attention to a piece of master’s research on neighbourly interactions with just 22 survey respondents and nine interviews. You’re not going to get headline quantitative findings.

But what you sometimes get – as here in work by Connie Lussier on ‘factors affecting neighbourliness’ in a neighbourhood in Edmonton Alberta - is a little unassuming granularity, because the author has let people’s voices through. Like this for instance:

Irene says that she shovels half the neighbour’s walk if she is out first, and the neighbour does half hers if he is out first “and it’s such a nice thing… because I feel guilty if I haven’t done my sidewalk before I go to work.”

This is described as an urban neighbourhood and it doesn’t sound unusual. Most of the residents ‘tend to be acquainted with just one or two immediate neighbours’ and ‘do not appear to know the neighbours further down the street’. Nor do they seem worked up about that.

Lussier explores factors affecting frequency of neighbouring, and comes up with this diagram.

Lussier
I don’t mind that it’s rather ungainly, what struck me was that she gives a degree of significance to ‘personality’ and ‘social skills’, which is very rare in my experience. The point is not developed in the thesis. But it reminds me that most of the literature on neighbouring (and all of the policy attempts to increase it) simply treats us as if we are all equally sociable and outgoing in our personalities. 

 

11 Jun 2012 20:08:17 | Neighbourhood relations

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Neighbourhood shopping parades Localism is beginning to take account of the plight of many local economies, and at last we have a policy paper on the subject of ‘neighbourhood shopping parades,’ backed up by research carried out by GENECON. Let’s at least give credit to this government for putting some energy into this, and hope it contributes to a genuine holistic commitment to neighbourhoods. Both documents offer definitions, but basically it’s about between five and 40 shops in one or more continuous rows, with a mainly local customer base and a high proportion of independent small or micro-businesses. Mercifully, we're spared the rhetoric about such shopping parades being 'the heart of the community' (a claim routinely made for pubs, churches, libraries, post offices, parks etc etc). Local shops tend to be flexible and adaptable, and generate loyalty as part of or in addition to their social role - which itself is gradually and begrudgingly being recognised in policy: if policy had been more enlightened in this respect in recent years we might not have had all that nonsense over post offices). Julian Dobson reports that Mary Portas popped into a meeting he helped organise recently about the future of high streets, asserting that 'social capital creates economic capital'. No, it may not be news to anyone (Jane Jacobs hammered the point 50 years ago) but it does often matter to have people in positions of influence restating such points to build momentum. Local shops offer opportunities for entrepreneurs and new businesses, and for ‘interesting and innovative use’ of empty shops. And they provide opportunities ‘for other businesses to locate in parades that might normally be expected to be elsewhere, but are drawn to local parades for the convenience, the sense of a business community and attractive rents.’ In both papers, happily, it’s recognised that there isn’t necessarily any contradiction between a parade of thriving local shops and the increasing amount of time most of us spend online. Indeed as my colleague Hugh Flouch has been arguing for some time, the potential integration of local online with neighbourhood trade is rich and there to be developed. At the same time, it’s important not to overlook the agonies that some local traders cause for residents sometimes. I remember a work colleague, years ago, wretchedly suffering interrupted nights and threats because of an anti-social taxi company. Smelly food, noisy crack-of-dawn deliveries, penetrating bright flashing lights, car oil or trash on the pavements – there may be lots of reasons why it makes sense to ensure community involvement in the management of neighbourhood shopping parades as entities. In the strategy paper, there’s a section on councils working collectively with local traders in their interests and, by extension in most cases, those of local people. To be fair, I know many officers have always tried to do so, but may have been overwhelmed by powerful forces working in the opposite direction. Hopefully, that’s what might be changing now.
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Locally grown Local food webs are networks of links between people who buy, sell, produce and supply food in an area. ‘Local’ in this context refers to food grown or produced within 30 miles of where it was bought. The CPRE has been working on a 5-year project England-wide and has come up with a purposeful, thorough and very readable report, with a range of case studies and guidance. The report considers the scale and economic importance of local food webs in terms of jobs supported, turnover of outlets and supply chain businesses, and also their social and environmental importance. The social consequences of local food provision are not given a great deal of treatment although they can be tracked elsewhere (e.g.). There’s a section on ‘Informal support to the community’ which notes, for example, the importance of deliveries as an extension of other local support provided by suppliers: ‘[We] often provide informal support, help out regular customers with problems, sometimes home visits, help carry heavy shopping. [We] serve as the hub of the community in many ways and offer first aid.’ The point is that someone has taken an authoritative approach to collecting the evidence, making the role of these food networks visible, and nudging policy-makers nationally and locally ‘to put in place the right framework so they can be nurtured and expand.’

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