Sunday, 01 July 2012

Are you connected to your neighbours?

Here’s a little bit of data from Burlington, Vermont, in a recent city wide community engagement survey. As far as I can discover, the results have not been analysed into a report. Respondents were asked how connected they feel to their neighbours.

Connected to neighbors

Unfortunately a numbered scale was used, so it’s hard to turn it into a meaningful statement. But we can interpret the scale as:

Not at all connected

Not very connected

Neither connected nor disconnected

Fairly connected

Very connected

The survey’s authors can’t really claim this, but it suggests that 47 per cent of respondents feel connected to their neighbours, while 27 per cent don’t.

If we take the ‘indifferent’ 26 per cent in the middle, plus the 98 out of 588 overall respondents who skipped the question, then the proportion of people who responded to the questionnaire as a whole, who feel connected to their neighbours, is less than 40 per cent. Which seems a little underwhelming for a survey of this nature, in which the more civically and socially minded are more likely to respond.

Maybe it’s not surprising though. I can’t recall seeing the phrase ‘connected to your neighbours’ in a survey before, but it’s likely to be interpreted (certainly in the UK) as implying a closer degree of relationship to co-residents than most people are bothered about. It suggests a form of direct access that is different to just recognising who they are and which door you’d have to approach to find them.

Via Front Porch Forum.

1 Jul 2012 15:34:16 | Neighbourhood relations

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Kevin Harris

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