So far in this blog I've written a lot about the benefits of localizing many of our structures and the things we depend on. And on some level, it's hard to argue with the claim that, for instance, local, shared ownership in trust of an area's land can increase access to affordable housing. But you may be asking yourself how a city or town can ever hope to get there. Just how does a location becomes a community? I ask myself some version of this question daily, and one response that consistently comes up for me is this: So much of how we live isolates us. In order to build a community and encourage local enterprise, we must first connect with one another. We must find ways to create ties that can lead to meaningful change.I recently moved to a new house and I have yet to have a conversation with either of my neighbors. I'm not proud of that fact. I'm actually somewhat mortified. I also suspect that I'm not alone. When was the last time you had a conversation with someone on your street, meaningful or no?
I happen to believe that the structure of commerce and societal institutions conspire (perhaps without meaning to, or perhaps with intent) to keep us isolated. We are confronted with incredible inertia when we consider breaking routine or convention. For starters, many of us work too much and we're tired. But that fact isn't exactly to the point. What I want to make clear is that I believe building community and reducing personal isolation will take some doing.
So, where do we begin? The City Repair Project (http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php/about), based in Portland, OR, started with the assumption that the problem of isolation is literally "built" into our lives by the use of the grid as an organizational principal. Because of this, efficient movement of individuals from place to place is prioritized at the expense of truly public use of space. City Repair aims to actually "build" culture by creating places and therefore opportunities for public gathering. Through their "intersection repair" projects they have helped bring neighborhoods together to create lasting public spaces that truly belong to their respective neighborhoods. City Repair calls this transforming "spaces into places." Many intersection repair participants report some measure of transformation in their relationships with neighbors, and the activities themselves have apparently had a transformational impact on Portland's bureaucratic structure. This is because prior to the first intersection repair it was illegal to claim an urban space by painting it or installing a gazebo (or whatever, you get the idea). But the unified actions of that first neighborhood led to a city ordinance that allows these "repairs" to take place.
There is an interesting video about the history of the City Repair Project at the aforementioned URL. Information about current repair projects is also listed. I encourage you to check it out. And I will be interested to see what other kinds of community enterprises may be developed as a result of the City Repair Projects efforts to reconnect people and create shared space.
Happy Wednesday!
4 comments:
I'm all for choosing to locate where you already know people. We were fortunate enough to buy a home next door to a relative, who lived near friends, who also lived near friends, etc. Now we know neighbors well 3 houses down on the same side of the street in one direction and 1 down on the other (minus the curmudgeonly lady directly adjacent to us on one side). Mind you we're on Friendly St. (ok, that's just a coincidental name), but still, we're amazed at how we walk the dog and run into numerous neighbors bidding us a good evening or just asking after ourselves and the dog. I think this has a lot to do with what neighborhood you're in...
I was thinking about your own neighborhood and how I would imagine that in the vast apartment complexes nearby many people must learn to befriend one another, or if they haven't, how a societal breakdown of some kind might provoke this...
In a similar vein, I'd generally promote intentional communities (a term to replace "communes") for learning about your own predispositions and barriers to truly socializing deeply with your fellow humans. It can suck and it can be great, in a nutshell. In living in a truly tight (70-100) community where we mostly (I'd guess 75%) ate all at the same time/place, among other things, it became evident that: a. some people could not live anywhere but in such a place and could not function outside of commune, and b. some people were fleeing from larger world and could not function in it. Who would've thought. For myself, I sought the place out, as for others, I'm sure many washed ashore there in between other failed adventures. I could write a book on the shit I saw there, truth be told... :-)
I can certainly see a few clear advantages to locating amongst existing friends and/or relatives. Perhaps the most prominent of these being the physical and emotional energy saved by not needing to build connections from scratch and not having to work to develop trust (something that usually takes some time and experience to establish). This approach is the most comfortable and probably requires that we change very little.
While stepping into the familiar welcome of known others surely feels pretty good, I can't help but think that some things are lost in this arrangement. While friends who have known each other for years are not expressly prevented from building and developing new ways of being with one another, they are probably less inclined to do so. On the other hand, committing to doing the work of overcoming barriers to communication, understanding and values can not only result in net gains for the community, it can result in a lot of personal growth as well.
I don't know. I guess I'm a creature of habit and would ideally like to just create a community of people I already know and trust. I'm just not convinced that that would be best. As my personal circumstances would have it, locating near friends will probably never be a financial option, anyway.
I do appreciate this thread, though. I haven't given it much thought before now.
Thanks psignosis.
I take your point that there may be less of a personal challenge in making new friends/contacts by choosing to physically locate your living space near to those whom you already know.
However, as much as we're trying to build community, I find it ironic that we already all have our own micro-communities in the sum of our own personal relationships. You talk about how energy is saved by not having to develop trust etc. which maybe true, and again, I take your critique that this approach could be called tribal and in some manner perhaps reactionary. But think of the energy wasted by having to just coordinate the physical meetings with those whom you most desire to network with (I mean, you just want to get things done at the end of the day! Whether it's activist work or just gardening), not to mention the energy wasted in actually transporting yourself to their location or vice versa. What more could be accomplished by having immediately available other people who can help you act upon a moment of spontaneous & inspired activity of whatever sort (and vice versa)!
Getting together and forming a collective living arrangement with those of a like mind whom you already know doesn't mean that you will become an elitist or less open to meeting and expanding your circle of friends. A good party just attracts and wants more good fun and participation after all.
As for not being able to afford it, I'm not suggesting that everyone has to buy/build right next door to one another - but I'd like to see physical proximity to one's personal relationships given a greater priority when people chose where to live - why consider whether it's close to one's work place or shopping over whether it's close to those whose company you most enjoy or with whom you'd like to collaborate on whatever project? People talk about urban sprawl, but what about the sprawl of our own extended community of friends?
Well I've been away for a little while, but I'm back!
I'm intrigued by the idea that the grid design is inherently conducive to isolation.
Just musing here, but the neighborhood I lived in for the last five years (up until about 6 months ago) was the first I've ever been in that really became community-like. And, big surprise, it wasn't set up in a grid, but rather a lazy figure-8 (no thru-traffic). Maybe not so much of a coincidence.
There were other factors. It had a homeowner's association, and we were on the board of that. So that started some people talking together during the meetings and so forth. But those were only about twice a year, and a lot more friendships developed than that would seem to account for. At the time, I credited most of that to interactions of the children. The kids played together and the parents naturally interacted over the kid-friendships that developed. If it had been in a grid setup, the kids would not have been able to play together as easily.
When I think of other neighborhoods where I've observed a community-feeling develop, it seems that they're all cul-de-sacs, or on curving streets that dead-end, and/or where there's a playground or some sort of park nearby. I can't think of encountering one in a typical grid-blocks pattern.
I followed the link to the City Repair site and didn't find too much about the "grid-is-bad" theory (other than the video). Is there much research into this theory? Any real studies to lend it some weight, or is it just something that seems to feel correct? It sure does feel correct to me, but I'd love to see some evidence backing up the intuition.
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