Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Confusion in the dark

A note from my daughter:

The other night at the top of the lane on my way home I walked past a lady who was looking confused and wandering about. I thought she was lost, so I asked if she was ok - I thought she was looking for a road name or house number. She said ‘Yes I'm fine, just trying to work out which colour bin I need to put out - it's too dark to work out.’

 

24 Oct 2012 19:18:03 | Vignettes

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The one reason not to bother with lists about ‘community’ Kaid Benfield has written some good stuff, but this latest Atlantic piece – ‘What Are the 7 Keys to a Strong Community?’ - is perplexing. It’s based on this previous article by Scott Doyon. Not long ago I had a little dig at the ritual of offering lists, so no more on that theme now. But there’s something more serious I want to get at here, which Kaid’s piece has helped me think about. Without wanting to seem harsh, it comes across as naïve to start talking about ‘strong communities’ without acknowledging that the concept has, shall we say, negative aspects. You don’t have to spend time in Northern Ireland to appreciate that, I believe there are plenty of places in north America where the ‘communities’ are quite strong enough thank you. That has to be accommodated. And when we talk about ‘community,’ strong or otherwise, we have to recognise that some people don’t want it, whether they are deemed to need it or not. And many more don’t want it thrust down their throats by policy makers or practitioners or neighbours. That too has to be accommodated. The list offered in the article is curious in that, with the exception of the first item, it does not appear to have much to do with people: Good governance Walkable, connected, mixed-use character Parks and gardens Partnerships Programming Neighborhood-responsive schools Tree culture. Nor does it include anything about communication and information channels. Or people’s homes. Or disorder. Or traffic levels. (The answer may be that this is a placemaking approach to ‘community’ qua neighbourhood). The idea of coming up with ‘seven keys to a strong community’ – or three, or twelve, or whatever number takes your fancy – seems charmingly nostalgic, as if we could just ignore some of the fundamentals of living in a highly networked, car-dependent, dispersed mass consuming global economy. But the trick for the 21st century is to describe and buttress an appreciation of ‘community’ that takes account of networked individualism, ethnic diversity, class fissures, high rates of mobility and increasing proportions of older people. Which reminds me, I wrote something like that towards the end of Neighbouring and older people: ‘The task is to understand how the notion of an enfolding community might be possible in an age of personal social networks with the looming challenge of living with difference, when there is less need to be neighbourly and few of us really have to be more than superficially friendly with our neighbours.’ Over the years this blog has felt like a clumsy, perhaps unconvincing exercise in groping towards that understanding, based on an unsentimental belief in the importance and value of local social interaction and the informal communication that supports it. So without resorting to off-putting journalistic devices, perhaps what I should be doing is working out how far that project’s got.
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Against gentrification: the Siege of the Elephant Southwark Notes Archive Group are currently inviting folks to contribute to ‘The Siege of the Elephant,’ a one-day convergence against the gentrification of Elephant and Castle and surrounding area in London. The event aims to bring together local communities, activists, campaign and amenity group members and traders, as well as academics, students, researchers and members of campaign groups involved in similar regeneration/gentrification struggles in other areas of London. London, Saturday 17 November 2012 Further information Proposed themes for the day: How does gentrification work and what are its causes and effects in Elephant and Castle? How can we resist or alter the dynamics of gentrification? Southwark Notes Archive Group ‘have also been organising regular anti-gentrification walks, printing postcards, posters, maps and comics, and keeping active on within various groups and campaigns in the ongoing struggle whilst keeping an eye on the history (the mistakes and successes) and the big picture (globalisation, financialisation and all that!)’

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