Tuesday, 27 January 2015

Can anything be salvaged from this?

Apparently, the Wellington suburb of Tawa is the most "neighbourly" in New Zealand.

Over the life of this blog I’ve referred a few times (e.g.) to the notion of ‘league-tabling’ neighbourliness, usually with a sense of half-disguised disquiet – a concern justified I think by the managerialism of recent governments. Much less frequently, I may just have expressed suspicions, once or twice, about the integrity of top-down commercial online systems operating at neighbourhood level.

Let’s pop back to New Zealand, where it seems league-tabling has become a reality not through the insensitivities of target-obsessed ministers but as an expression of tacky commercial drive, through the online service Neighbourly. This is new to me, although I realise it may have been happening elsewhere around the world.

As far as I can tell from this article (in a source owned by the same un-embarrassable company that owns Neighbourly), the suburb of Tawa has got to the top of the leaderboard by virtue of having more than 1100 residents signed up to the online system. That’s it. That’s the measure of neighbourliness. Dang, simple, how come I didn’t think of that?

OK, I know, good stuff happens around online neighbourhood connections. And this isn’t ‘serious’ league-tabling; but it’s clear that some people take it seriously and think it has meaning. Which in turn makes it that bit easier for even a well-meaning government to follow suit in a determined manner.

 

27 Jan 2015 08:58:17 | Neighbourhood relations, networked neighbourhoods

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Concrete Heart Land If you happen to be in or around east London on Tuesday, you might find this interesting: Steven Ball and Laura Oldfield Ford will present their individual responses to the social cleansing of the Heygate Estate through the screening of Steven Ball and Rastko Novaković’s film ‘Concrete Heart Land’, and the presentation of drawings and a live reading of texts produced by Laura Oldfield Ford. 6pm on Tuesday 27 January 2015 Film and Drama Studio Arts 2 Building (first floor) Queen Mary University of London Mile End Road London E1 4NS Laura Oldfield Ford is a London-based artist and writer concerned with issues surrounding contemporary political protest, urbanism, architecture and memory. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2007 she has become well known for her politically active and poetic engagement with London as a site of social antagonism. She is the author of Savage Messiah. Concrete Heart Land, a film by Steven Ball and Rastko Novaković, exposes the social cleansing of the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, South London. It marks the moment that the estate was finally lost as social housing to make way for an unjust 'regeneration' scheme. (Via [email protected])
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Understanding digital exclusion: homeless people ‘I think for young people WiFi is almost a human right. You want us to succeed in the world and achieve our potential but nowadays that means accessing the internet for everything and we should be able to do this in a private and quiet space not just the communal area of a shared hostel.’ This comes from a new Lemos and Crane report on access, use and benefits of digital technology for homeless and ex-homeless people. The research uses two related samples – a questionnaire survey (the Lemos & Crane sample) and a survey conducted by Groundswell peer researchers. There are one or two striking findings. For instance: 73% of the Lemos & Crane participants said they used the internet to keep in touch with family and friends. That leaves a whopping 27 per cent who aren’t. 47% of the Groundswell participants agreed that the internet had information ‘which can make you paranoid’. This may be explained partly by the wording of the question, which seems slightly leading, but it’s still an indication of a sense of vulnerability. Participants typically felt confident using Facebook and other social media sites ‘but found office and word processing programmes difficult.’ ‘The majority learned by teaching themselves. Only 8% learned through training provided at services, typically older participants.’ ‘Problems included people posting unwanted pictures or comments on profiles, having profiles hacked and people finding them using Facebook with whom they no longer wanted contact. These specific concerns were mentioned by respondents across all age groups.’ Using an open question, the researchers found that participants expressed concerns about losing face-to-face contact with people: ‘There were two aspects of this concern: that loss of face-to-face contact would reduce levels of trust and connection between people, increasing isolation (67% of Groundswell respondents agreed that phones or computers stop people communicating properly) and that complex online systems would make accessing services more difficult.’ There’s a summary and a full report here (simple sign up required). (I recommend the full report as the summary shows signs of haste and lack of editing).

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