A couple pieces today make the case that well-to-do neighborhoods have a reduced sense of community vis-a-vis more middle-class and low-income neighborhoods. True?
From a Wall Street Journal blog (see the comments)…
I’m always amazed at how the richest neighborhoods are also among the most empty.
And from Playborhood…
The fact is that, overall, the owners of these 2+ million dollar homes are not very “neighborly,” at least when they’re compared to owners in other neighborhoods with much less expensive homes.
Front Porch Forum is in the business of helping neighbors connect and build community within their neighborhood. Some folks ask me “that’s not a business… why didn’t you form FPF as a nonprofit?”
Fair enough. Front Porch Forum is mission driven, like all nonprofits. But it’s also competing in a new and vibrant sector that’s got huge potential and few players currently.
Bill McKibben in his excellent Deep Economy cites work by economist Richard Laynard (in his book Happiness)…
“Both income and companionship have declining marginal returns.” The evidence shows that “increases in income produce large hedonic gains in developing countries… and… negative gains in the United States.”
Community follows precisely the opposite pattern: increased companionship “yields more happiness in individualistic societies, where it is scarce, than in collective societies, where it is abundant.”
Put another way… North America is awash with stuff for people to own/use, but is short on community… so Americans are placing an increasing value on what is in short supply… feeling genuinely connected to the people and community around us. And that’s what Front Porch Forum provides.
Robert Putnam will speak at the University of Vermont on April 28, 2008, sharing a lecture titled “Civic Engagement in a Diverse and Changing America.”
Putnam’s Bowling Alone was a ground-breaker documenting the decline of many facets of American community life. Steve Yelvington writes about Putnam briefly this week… here.
Rich Gordon writes in more detail about Putnam’s more recent work, part of which Putnam summarizes as “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’ – that is, to pull in like a turtle.”
UPDATE: Just got the following details…
2008 Mark L. Rosen Memorial Lecture
Robert D. Putnam
‘E Pluribus Unum: Rebuilding Community in a Diverse and Changing America’
Monday, April 28, 7 PM – Free and Open to the Public
Silver Maple Ballroom, Dudley H. Davis Center
Reception immediately following
Co-Sponsored by UVM Political Science Department and the Vermont Humanities Council
Professor Putnam is Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. He has written a dozen books, translated into seventeen languages, including the best-selling Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, and more recently Better Together: Restoring the American Community, a study of promising new forms of social connectedness. His previous book, Making Democracy Work, was praised by the Economist as “a great work of social science, worthy to rank alongside de Tocqueville, Pareto and Weber.” Both Making Democracy work and Bowling Alone rank high among the most cited publications in the social sciences worldwide in the last several decades.
Various entrepreneurial gurus (Marc Andreessen, Paul ) point, when asked for the most important ingredient for a start-up, to the market. That is, it doesn’t matter how clever your technology is, or your marketing, or how brilliant your team is if there is no demand for what you provide. If you’re working in a market that does have a healthy amount of demand for what you deliver… success is more likely. The existing market is the most fundamental driver of all. So goes one view.
Front Porch Forum is in the business of helping people get to know their neighbors… and to enhance the sense of community within neighborhoods. Ample evidence points to a growing desire from people who want just that (which I’ll save for another post).
And here’s a new documentary from England on the subject…
My Street
After 14 years of living on the same road Sue knew practically none of her neighbours. Intrigued by what stories might lie on her own doorstep, she began knocking on the 116 doors on her street and meeting some of the 300 people who are her neighbours.What she found were remarkable stories, from millionaires living next door to people on benefits, to convicted drug smugglers and classical composers. Sue meets party animals and recluses, the very young and the very old, hears stories of success and tragedy and sees how illness and loneliness, hope and happiness have left their mark on the lives of her neighbours.
More from Kevin Harris about this.
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