‘Want Calmer Cities? Build Socially Sustainable Communities’

The following is an excerpt from an article by Nicola Bacon (UK Guardian) titled;

‘Want Calmer cities? Build socially sustainable communities’

“Professionals involved in creating places don't spend enough time trying to understand the lived experience of residents”

Nicola Bacon was writing about the release of a new report from the Young Foundation titled 'Design for social sustainability: a framework for creating thriving new communities.'  After a summer of riots in the UK and one very well publicized riot in Vancouver, there are many who are examining the underlying causes. This is just one report..  Nicola Bacon goes on to say;

The report begins with a question: how can we create new communities in new housing developments that will flourish and succeed long into the future? This is not just a problem for the UK, or indeed the west. More than half of the planet's population now lives in cities. In Europe, 32 new towns are being created in 11 countries. In China 20 new cities – dubbed "ghost cities", as many remain unoccupied – are being built a year.


Half a century of experiments shows what does not work: from the projects in Paris suburbs, to Chicago's Cabrini-Green, and Park Hill in Sheffield, UK, ambitious new developments have, over time, become the housing of last resort for the most desperate. In all these examples, professionals from different perspectives genuinely believed that they had found the answer to building at scale, while creating lasting communities. We still find that the different professionals involved in creating places – from architects to house builders, to local government officials – are more comfortable thinking about what can be constructed than understanding the lived experience of residents.


We need to get a lot cleverer at finding ways to make places "socially sustainable". Environmental sustainability is now well recognised (if still difficult to put into practice). Social sustainability – finding ways to make places work for people, that are inclusive and cohesive, and adaptable in the face of changing circumstances – is a new challenge.


There is strong evidence about the relationship between the quality of our local social relationships – how many people we pass time with on the street, whether we can call on neighbours for help with childcare, taking in a delivery, or shopping when we are ill – and how happy we are with where we live. The work that is needed to support this is the small scale, often unglamorous effort of community development workers and local neighbourhood groups. This work is vulnerable to cuts in public spending. It is tempting to trim that added extra even when it provides the social glue that holds communities together. Corner cutting can have a stark long-term negative impact; the financial and social costs of neighbourhood failure are high and include raised levels of crime, unemployment and mental health problems.

It is easy to consider ourselves, in Cranbrook, removed from such problems as riots but there is obviously a segment of our population who feels disconnected from the community as a whole for the wanton destruction of assets to our community proves that. Both the very expensive loss of trees downtown and the demolition of a new and publicly funded kiosk in the Community Forest are upsetting examples. Even more disturbing maybe the reasons behind the behaviour. It stands to reason in these economic times that we cannot depend on public funding to cure these problems as is partly suggested by this article but maybe in a small community such as ours we can get to know our neighbours better by speaking to them and taking an interest in their lives as the article suggests.

To read the entire article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/23/calmer-cities-socially-sustainable-communities

http://www.youngfoundation.org/publications/paper/design-social-sustainability-a-framework-creating-thriving-communities