Friday, 01 November 2013

That's nothing, I had sick thrown at me by an unknown neighbour

There are some neat vignettes in Guardian writers’ accounts of purposely meeting neighbours, illustrating for example that someone who has known the people next door for 30 years might not know their names; how you can assume yourself reasonably connected and suddenly realise that neighbourhood networks are partial and fractured, so that a neighbour will know plenty of others but not those known to you; and - echoing some of the history reported by Emily Cockayne in Cheek by jowl - that some architectural quirks mean you can have intimate relationships with people you don't actually know.

People mistakenly assume neighbourhood cohesion in much the same way they assume consensus, and probably for the same reasons to do with reassurance. Collectively, what these articles confirm is that the artificiality of a manufactured occasion (‘I’ve got to write 300 words on meeting a neighbour, can you help me?’) is easily overcome and can help to establish a relationship or even inclusion in a whole new network; but you need to have the occasion in the first place.

Like Hallowe’en, by way of example. The whole spectacle encapsulates the process of confronting the fear of neighbour. We get our children to do the ice-breaking, and complicate it by insisting that disguise is de rigueur.

Last night there were only two pairs of young children who came to our door, and one of the individuals I could not recognise. On this occasion, radically for me, I opted for a trick. OK, she said, throwing something like a small card frisbee at me.

‘What was that?’ I asked.

‘Sick,’ she said, taking it back, for re-use presumably in case any of the other residents was foolish enough to take them on.

To me there's also something seasonally symbolic about the adoption of disguise for Hallowe'en: with winter coming on, the children won't be playing out in the street for several months, after which I sometimes find it hard to recognise them again. Then next I'll be told they're back from university or running a major company or something...

 

1 Nov 2013 08:27:47 | Neighbourhood relations

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Another point about the weather So a storm hit part of southern England yesterday and was widely reported as affecting Britain, which tells you plenty about the mediafolk's mental maps. I was also struck by what got left out of the warnings and updates. There were plenty of messages about the rail services and the road network - including occasional warnings of danger for high-sided vehicles; but no information about bus services. I suppose ordinary people who have to use buses don't matter so much and they can just wait.
PREVIOUS POST
Minimum standards for neighbourhoods? ‘Neighbourhood pressures are building once again,’ says this new report by Ed Cox and colleagues at Ippr North. The subject is neighbourhood change in Britain (by which, as far as I can tell, they mean England). The report argues that the objectives for neighbourhood policy should be: to ensure that all neighbourhoods are able to generate jobs and wealth themselves, or are connected to economic opportunities in the wider area; to ameliorate the worst effects of wider economic trends, and ensure minimum standards of neighbourhood quality and service provision; to bring about the radical transformation of those neighbourhoods that have become caught in costly spirals of decline. The last one is as important as it ever was, and more urgent now. The first objective has of course been hideously and pointlessly made harder and more complex by the systematic weakening of local government. The second objective, concerning minimum standards, is to be welcomed in my view, if we can stop politicians slipping gleefully into the grotesque folly of League Table Mentalities and Target Obsession Disorder. Curiously, there is no reference to the lifetime neighbourhoods movement, although in supporting that, the ILC-UK put forward the argument that poor design of neighbourhoods should be grounds for rejection at the planning stage. Pioneering work on ‘minimum acceptable place standards’, is apparently, imminent. Meanwhile, the ippr report calls for a regular ‘state of the neighbourhoods report’ combining statistical data with information 'uploaded by neighbourhoods themselves'. I think I first started peddling this idea in 2005, at a time when there was a sympathetic government which could have afforded to try it: so don’t hold your breath. The report argues that the principal means of narrowing the gaps between neighbourhoods is through ‘economic growth combined with measures to ensure that the proceeds of growth are better shared.’ I can’t be the only one wishing the word ‘stability’ was used here instead of ‘growth’. This is going to be a very useful report in terms of documenting knowledge, with a discussion of objective measures of the pressures on neighbourhoods, and summaries of the recent history of neighbourhood policy and theories of neighbourhood change. It includes a fascinating comparative table on ‘old versus new neighbourhoods approaches’. But I can’t find that little extra something that would make the report stand out. There are several mentions of ‘social innovation’ – but these feel under-informed and would benefit hugely from an appreciation of the movement encapsulated in the Compendium of the Civic Economy. For example – given the acknowledged point that the nature of the private rented sector is a nasty cause of problems at the neighbourhood level - how about a call for a social entrepreneurial approach to re-inventing that sector?

Kevin Harris

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments