Scott Heiferman’s tweet led me to take a closer look at the work of recent Nobel Laureate (economics) Elinor Ostrom. She studies how cooperation works best in some cases… better than competition or regulation… our two dominant forms of organizing markets. From a Forbes article…
Garrett Hardin called his famous 1968 essay on shared resources “The Tragedy of the Commons.” He argued that a shared village grazing pasture would tend to get overused and eventually destroyed. But even Hardin later acknowledged that shared common resources did not inevitably have to end in destruction, saying that he should have called his essay “The Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.”
And from Fran Korton’s interview at Shareable…
Fran: It’s interesting that your research is about people learning to cooperate…
Elinor: I have a new book coming out in May entitled Working Together, written with Amy Poteete and Marco Janssen. It is on collective actions in the commons. What we’re talking about is how people work together. We’ve used an immense array of different methods to look at this question “case studies, including my own dissertation and Amy’s work, modeling, experiments, large-scale statistical work. We show how people use multiple methods to work together.
Fran: Many people associate “the commons” with Garrett Hardin’s famous essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.”… What’s the difference between your perspective and Hardin’s?
Elinor: Well, I don’t see the human as hopeless. There’s a general tendency to presume people just act for short-term profit. But anyone who knows about small-town businesses and how people in a community relate to one another realizes that many of those decisions are not just for profit and that humans do try to organize and solve problems.
If you are in a fishery or have a pasture and you know your family’s long-term benefit is that you don’t destroy it, and if you can talk with the other people who use that resource, then you may well figure out rules that fit that local setting and organize to enforce them. But if the community doesn’t have a good way of communicating with each other or the costs of self-organization are too high, then they won’t organize, and there will be failures.
Fran: So, are you saying that Hardin is sometimes right?
Elinor: Yes. People say I disproved him, and I come back and say “No, that’s not right. I’ve not disproved him. I’ve shown that his assertion that common property will always be degraded is wrong.” But he was addressing a problem of considerable significance that we need to take seriously. It’s just that he went too far. He said people could never manage the commons well.
At the Workshop we’ve done experiments where we create an artificial form of common property such as an imaginary fishery or pasture, and we bring people into a lab and have them make decisions about that property. When we don’t allow any communication among the players, then they overharvest [the commons]. But when people can communicate, particularly on a face-to-face basis, and say, “Well, gee, how about if we do this? How about we do that?” Then they can come to an agreement.
That last bit there about communication leading to better community decisions… love it. It’s so obvious. I guess that’s why it takes a non-economist Nobel Laureate in Economics to explain it to the economists of the world. And, for what it’s worth, her observation jibes with what we see at Front Porch Forum too. FPF leads to better communication among neighbors, more face-to-face conversation, and, in many cases, better community decisions.
Congratulations Dr. Ostrom!
Bill McKibben’s article in Yankee Magazine is leading to all sorts of interesting connections. We get lovely comments everyday, like this one from David in Vermont…
I just read that great article in Yankee by Bill McKibben. It brought tears to my eyes twice. I notice Randolph is not on your list yet so I’d like to be put on your waitlist.
And various new and traditional media are picking it up. Here are some. It all adds up to spotlighting widespread interest in building community at the local level.
The Orton Family Foundation just published a good article about building place-based community using online tools. Writer Rebecca Sanborn Stone touches on Front Porch Forum, Yelp, outside.in and LifeAt, and she focuses most of her piece on i-Neighbors, a website started by academic Keith Hampton several years ago.
The i-Neighbors team has done a great job spinning major corporate support of their research into a handy set of tools and North America-wide publicity. When trying to understand i-Neighbors years ago, I was told they had 10,000 subscribers across 5,000 of their “i-neighborhoods.” This new article states 73,000 subscribers (impressive!), but doesn’t mention how many groups/neighborhoods that total is divided across. I wonder what their average density is now, that is, the number of members divided by the total households in a given i-neighborhood? (The Washington Post reported 50,000 members in May 2009, but made no mention of density or number of i-neighborhoods either.)
Many observations that Professor Hampton makes in the article jibe with our years of experience running Front Porch Forum… and with some of his past research findings (e-neighbors study and a Pew study)…
… the real value of i-Neighbors might not emerge until there’s a local problem. “Having networks in place is really important,” Hampton says, “You need neighbors in an emergency.”… It’s much easier to bring neighbors together to discuss, resolve and act on an issue if they’ve already swapped recipes and developed a sense of common ground than if you start from scratch when the controversy hits.
The success of an online neighborhood community depends on a number of factors. i-Neighbors recommends keeping the neighborhood size to fewer than 500 households, and the site is more effective in areas with clear geographic boundaries… Interestingly, says Hampton, i-Neighbors doesn’t always work best in more affluent areas. He has seen major successes in typical middle class, suburban cul-de-sacs, and also in extremely disadvantaged inner-city neighborhoods where other communication channels are limited and existing social cohesion is frayed.
As easy as it is to click your way into i-Neighbors, the most important ingredients in a thriving online (and offline) community are old-fashioned hard work and organizing. “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply here; anyone starting an i-Neighbors group will need to advertise the site, work to engage members, and set ground rules for effective participation. i-Neighbors provides a poster template that users can print and hang around the neighborhood or bring door to door, but Hampton says the most successful groups usually have a committed individual or local organization behind them — someone who is concerned about a neighborhood issue, recognizes the value of the technology, and can spread the word and get others to start using the site.
Whether you’re ready to tackle a local legislative initiative or you just want to meet the folks across the picket fence, Hampton says the single most important thing is to just get started. After all, he says, “It only takes one person.” Start a site, tell a few friends, and soon you’ll have a few more. You may be surprised to find how much more you have in common than just a street address.
Pundit Seth Godin hit a homer yesterday with his blog post about the trade offs of pursuing the mindless masses of speed clickers vs. seeking small groups of folks who are really paying attention. Sayeth Seth…
The net has spawned two new ways to create and consume culture.
The first is the wide-open door for amateurs to create. This is blogging and online art, wikipedia and the maker movement. These guys get a lot of press, and deservedly so, because they’re changing everything.
The second, though, is distracting and ultimately a waste. We’re creating a culture of clickers, stumblers and jaded spectators who decide in the space of a moment whether to watch and participate (or not).
Imagine if people went to the theatre or the movies and stood up and walked out after the first six seconds. Imagine if people went to the senior prom and bailed on their date three seconds after the car pulled away from the curb…
If you create (or market) should you be chasing the people who click and leave? Or is it like trying to turn a cheetah into a house pet? Is manipulating the high-voltage attention stream of millions of caffeinated web surfers a viable long-term strategy?…
My fear is that the endless search for wow further coarsens our culture at the same time it encourages marketers to get ever more shallow. That’s where the first trend comes in… the artists, idea merchants and marketers that are having the most success are ignoring those that would rubberneck and drive on, focusing instead on cadres of fans that matter. Fans that will give permission, fans that will return tomorrow, fans that will spread the word to others that can also take action…
About 45% of Burlington households subscribe to Front Porch Forum now, which is amazing considering that about 85% have access to the internet. So, that leaves about 40% of the city who has access but has not subscribed to FPF yet. How might we lure in the remaining 40%? Must we go the flashy and shallow route described by Godin? That would be a poor approach… one that might attract, but wouldn’t likely retain, subscribers. Plus, as Godin points out, “coarsening of our culture” locally would not be far behind.
Carrie Leber writes on The Christian Science Monitor website about the challenges of living with difficult neighbors. Her bottom line…
Maybe Internet forums, not fences, are what make good neighbors.
After discussing her own hard-to-live-with neighbors, she says…
Ironically, rather than face-to-face discussions, it may be that the Internet is the best source of info about potentially exasperating neighbors. You can go to sites like RudeNeighbor.com, where people post items about loud parties and bad behavior.
Although researching online kvetching about your potential neighborhood is one option, I really like the notion of the Front Porch Forum.
Started by Michael Woods-Lewis and his wife, Valerie, about 10 years ago, Front Porch Forum is comprised of groupings of neighborhoods in Vermont, each of about 400 homes. People sign up and must clearly identify themselves (no anonymous ravings), and then post items of concern or interest to local neighbors.
To date, 17,000 households across 25 towns in that state interact and discuss what’s going on in their neck of the woods.
What’s key about FrontPorchForum is that it is a micro-community, not a giant group of users such as on Facebook or Twitter. And while the geography of the organization to date has been limited to the Vermont area, FPF will set up a forum in any area for a fee. Or you could start one of your own!
From a real estate perspective, this is a great option for giving insight to prospective buyers about the nature and zeitgeist of a neighborhood. Had there been a forum for my community in Connecticut, I most likely would have seen the many qualms others in the area have had with the infamous Mary and Jerry over the years (no, their ire has not just been focused on me).
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more