These days, just about everything we need to be champion consumers is delivered right to our homes – except of course the money to buy it all; and the ethics and values to make sense of it.
I believe that neighborhoods and communities offer the best counterweight to the corporate dominance that takes away our voices. Whether or not we realize it yet, the grassroots power we collectively wield in our communities can tilt civilization in a more sensible, peaceful, democratic direction. Neighborhoods can be places where Americans make the transition from “me” to “we,” getting our priorities straight and becoming citizens again.
We use the question, “Where do you live?” automatically, without really thinking about it. Sometimes the question just means, “How far do I have to drive to get there, and how long will it take?” Too often “where you live” means where you park your car, consume energy, watch three or four hours of TV a day, generate four pounds of trash, and argue with your spouse. Hopefully, in your case, it means something far more magnificent: where you have your best relationships, and your most creative ideas. Where you feel the most content and energized. Where you come to life.
If we think about what we need to be happy, great neighborhoods can provide many of those needs directly. We need a sense of belonging and participation; a sense of security and safety; we need healthy food; connection with the no-worries feelings that nature bestows; and activities that we enjoy, to name just a few. Think of the places you’ve lived, and how they met or failed to meet needs like these.
“The 20th Century was about getting around. The 21st Century will be about staying in a place worth staying in.” James Kunstler
I lived in a rural mountain town for twenty years and rarely interacted with my neighbors, who were scattered throughout the valley in cabins. But when a blizzard hit, our vehicles would get stuck in snowdrifts, and we relied on each other to dig them out. Sometimes the power also went out, and in each little house, families were sitting around woodstoves telling stories the way humans always have. In our little cabin, we always had piles of firewood cut and split, and we’d get out the candles and pop popcorn on the stove. By the end of the storm, we became a closer family in a more supportive community. It felt great.
The question is, why did it take blizzards and power outages to strengthen natural bonds between people? In many of America’s neighborhoods, we’ve become strangers on our own streets. What can we do to bring those streets back to life? The process of reinventing a neighborhood might begin when you walk out your front door and just say hello to someone you’ve seen before, but never met. After preliminary conversation, the topic of neighborhood security comes up, and maybe you comment how valuable it would be to compile a list of the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of everyone on the block. “That way, if someone gets hurt or just needs help moving a dresser, he can call one of us,” you say. Your neighbor, whose name is Shawn, agrees, adding, “Maybe we could set up a neighborhood e-mail listserv, to provide a forum for news and opinion, and a digital bulletin board for babysitting exchanges, discussion groups, and carpooling…”
Coincidentally, while the two of you are talking about homeland security at the neighborhood scale, another neighbor – Marion — comes by with her own idea for getting neighbors together—a community picnic in her large backyard. She prepares a homemade flyer and takes it door-to-door to 44 houses on the block, explaining to those who are home that her intention is to help create a friendlier, livelier neighborhood. All but a few neighbors seem interested, and many of them show up at the barbecue, which includes musical talent from the neighborhood, humorous nametags, and locally grown food.
The next day you notice neighbors knocking on each other’s doors, following up on conversations, dropping off recipes, and arranging help with lawn watering or pet-sitting while people are on vacation. In the months that follow, a discussion group, book club, a few carpools, and a food co-op form. Matt, a sociology professor, uses the new e-mail listserv to suggest a work-share program enabling neighbors to trade skills like dry walling and landscaping to save money and continue building community. Sarah, the young woman with the German shepherd, joins him to help coordinate the project, and she also spearheads a community cleanup of the vacant lot at the end of the street. While they pick up McDonald’s wrappers and newspapers, she has an idea: maybe the absentee owner of the lot would let them have a community garden there. After all, the lot’s been vacant for the last 15 years…
These first few neighborhood-building efforts result in a new way of thinking about your neighborhood. You begin to think outside the boxes of your houses to envision a more productive and useful community. With a handful of successes behind you, you organize a meeting at the elementary school one evening to talk about visions for the neighborhood. This is an important step because it formalizes neighbors’ intentions to co-create a place that is supportive and strives to be sustainable. You stand up and report, “Since our first community picnic, I’ve watched less TV, saved time and money by carpooling with Frank, and helped remodel Jerry’s garage, where he will park an old pick-up truck that’s available for any of us to borrow. Aren’t these the kind of things that good neighborhoods should be about?” One young adult, Liz, decides to return to the neighborhood to live near her family and friends. The elderly widow, Nancy, rents her the apartment that her late husband created by remodeling the garage into a cottage. So Nadine can afford to stay in the neighborhood—and so can Liz.
Gradually, your neighborhood gets a well-deserved reputation for being a great place to live. Crime is almost non-existent, property values go up, and turnover goes down. At a barbecue near the community garden one evening, Marion comments, “It’s funny – when we focus just on ourselves, the world shrinks and our problems seem huge. But when we learn to focus on other people, the world expands and our own problems seem smaller. As our world expands, so does our capacity to care.”
Cultural Assets of a great neighborhood
Great neighborhoods have active residents; newsletters and email listservs for sharing tools, tickets, civic information, and good-hearted jokes. They have discussion groups; community projects like park cleanup or creek restoration; potluck dinners; volleyball games and skiing parties. (The neighbors of Elgin, Illinois have a four-foot tall, wooden Blue Tulip that makes monthly rounds from one yard to another. When the Tulip appears on your front lawn, it’s your turn to host a Friday night neighborhood party.)
Skill sharing, tool sharing, mentoring of the young by the elderly, job referrals, day care, dog care, neighborhood rosters with telephone numbers and emails; bulletin boards – these kinds of activities and tools encourage the creation of “neighbornets.” (In Seattle, famous for its distinctive neighborhoods, Phinney Eco-Village – an existing neighborhood — has a Home Alone group, a natural health group, a peace group, and other networks. It has recently begun taking pledges from neighbors to fight global warming by driving less, not using dryers, using compact fluorescent bulbs, etc.)
Free entertainment, like twilight conversations in the park; wine tasting parties in someone’s backyard; or spontaneous, no-pressure bike rides to a landmark in the town (like an overlook, favorite bar, or ice cream parlor). Sharing of life’s ups and downs. (If I let you vent your frustrations as we each get home from work, I know I have a listener when I need to vent. If you show me your family album, I’ll show you mine.)
Neighbors who live in their house for years, creating neighborhood history and neighborhood stewards. (Studies show that hometowns are the most popular places to retire, despite all the literature about “where to retire.” Of the 35 million people 65 and older who lived in the U.S. between 1995 and 2000, only 22% left their homes and neighborhoods.
Physical Assets
Community gardens on vacant lots, utility rights-of-way, and land donated/lent for tax write-offs. Also, the trading of garden produce and recipes from private gardens and kitchens; and neighborhood contracts with local growers (community-supported agriculture).
Transportation by proximity: location, location, location, and planning, planning, planning. Great neighborhoods need stores, parks, pathways, bike trails, and access to public transit (Some banks offer lower interest rates and down payments – often called location-efficient mortgages and green mortgages — to homebuyers).
Slow, safe streets. Working with city governments, many neighborhoods have requested and received traffic circles, narrower streets, etc. Studies have shown that the speed and volume of traffic often determine the number of friends and acquaintances neighbors have, with fast, high volume streets reducing that number by a factor of ten. In about 20 states “Safe Routes to School” has won public funding to improve and safeguard sidewalks, crosswalks and bike paths that link children and their families to schools.
A gathering place in the neighborhood: a community center or possibly an HOA-owned, formerly private residence with meeting, dining, office, and guest room space. Or at least a familiar space at a library, school, or church near the neighborhood.
Ten Basic Design Principles for Remodeling Neighborhoods
- Human Scale. There are basic spatial relationships that can create resonance in a neighborhood, including focal points, a sense of transition, and a sense of enclosure in key places. Four hundred and fifty feet might be an ideal length for a neighborhood with its own sense of community, because at that distance it’s still possible to recognize individuals. Cohousing research indicates that an optimum neighborhood scale might include 30 to 40 houses, because that number could successfully share a common building and get to know each other well.
- Resource Responsibility. A neighborhood that develops an everyday ethic that includes efficient household resource use, recycling, community gardening, shared transportation, energy generation at the neighborhood level, also stands a better chance of being economically and socially viable. Individual efforts to be sustainable can be greatly augmented by cooperation within the neighborhood.
- Walkability. We’ve got legs, we just need good sidewalks, bikepaths, parks, and shops to use them. The five-minute walk is considered a good measurement of “walkability.” What destinations should lie within five minutes of the typical suburban front door?
- Open Spaces. Whether in common backyards, on vacant lots, or in areas reclaimed
from the car, open spaces can be used for picnics, community gardens, and places for conversation, reading and relaxation.
- Public facilities. A neighborhood that becomes a “we” rather than a string of “me’s” will probably want to create a place where the neighborhood can gather. It could be in a neighborhood church or school, or it could be in a cooperatively purchased home that becomes a common building.
- Streetscapes. By working with the city or county, neighborhoods can create public areas in and around streets that are well landscaped and people-friendly. The best time to plant a shade tree is fifteen years ago. The second best time is now.
- Variety. Landscaping and house decoration have typically been the only tools for creating variety in subdivision neighborhoods. At Fox Run, featured in the next three chapters, variation and neighborhood color are created by adapting garages, planting a community garden and orchard, taking out driveways, creating gardens and pathways, and taking down fences.
- Mixed Uses. Home businesses are becoming a large sector of the American economy. In Superbia, shops and neighborhood enterprises like composting, energy generation and daycare will begin to make suburban neighborhoods more lively and productive.
- Coordination. This term means “architectural style,” including walls and fences, streetscapes, colors and materials. A neighborhood should co-design features to create a sense of harmony and resonance.
- Maintenance. Public features should be designed with the future in mind, by using materials, technologies and plant species that won’t require large amounts of capital or time for maintenance.
Superbia: 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Communities, New Society Press
More at
https://www.terrain.org/articles/13/superbia.htm
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1248
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200507/interview.asp
