How to build community here and now—because neighborhoods are more than houses in proximity.
posted Jun 14, 2012
Greenwood Avenue Cottages, Shoreline, Wash.
Community is not just for extroverts.
For thousands of years, our ancestors lived in barrios, hamlets,
neighborhoods, and villages. Yet in the time since our parents and
grandparents were young, privacy has become so valued that many
neighborhoods are not much more than houses in proximity.
Now, many activities take place behind locked doors and backyard
privacy fences. The street out front is not always safe for pedestrians,
and is often out of bounds for children. With families spread across
the country and friends living across town, a person who doesn’t know
their neighbors can feel isolated and insecure. And when the links among
neighbors are weak, security relies on locks, gates, and guns, rather
than a closely knit web of connections.
Building a community from scratch is daunting. But the good news is
that vibrant communities can grow over time from existing neighborhoods.
Right here, right now: Ten ways to build community.
Neighbors at N Street in Davis, Calif., joined their backyards.
1. Move your picnic table to the front yard. See what happens when
you eat supper out front. It’s likely you’ll strike up a conversation
with a neighbor, so invite them to bring a dish to share.
2. Plant a front yard vegetable garden. Don’t stop with the picnic
table. Build a raised bed for veggies and plant edible landscaping and
fruit trees. Break your boundaries by inviting your neighbors to share
your garden.
3. Build a room-sized front porch. The magic of a good porch comes
from both its private and public setting. It belongs to the household
while also being open to passersby. Its placement, size, relation to
the interior and the public space, and railing height are both an art
and a science. Make it more than a tiny covering under which you fumble
for your keys; make it big enough to be a veritable outdoor living room.
Front yard garden at Danielson Grove, Kirkland, Wash.
4. Add layers of privacy. Curiously, giving your personal space
more definition will foster connections with neighbors. A secure space
will be more comfortable and more often used, which will increase
chances for seeing your neighbors—even if only in a passing nod.
But rather than achieving privacy with a tall fence, consider an
approach with layers: a bed of perennial flowers in front of a low
fence, with a shade tree to further filter the view. These layers help
define personal boundaries, but are permeable at the same time.
5. Take down your backyard fence. Join with your
neighbors to create a shared safe play space for children, a community
garden, or a wood-fired pizza oven. In Davis, Calif., a group of
neighbors on N Street did just that. Twenty years later, nearly all the
neighbors around the block have joined in.
If that’s too radical, consider cutting your six-foot fence to four
feet to make chatting across the fence easier, or building a gate
between yards.
Layers of privacy at Greenwood Avenue Cottages in Shoreline, Wash.
6. Organize summer potluck street parties. Claim the
street, gather the lawn chairs, and fire up the hibachi! Take over the
otherwise off-limits street as a space to draw neighbors together.
7. Put up a book lending cupboard. Bring a book, take a book.
Collect your old reads and share them with passersby in a cupboard
mounted next to the sidewalk out front. Give it a roof, a door with
glass panes, and paint it to match the flowers below.
8. Build resilience together. Create a neighborhood survey of assets, skills, and
needs for times of crisis. Frame it around "emergency preparedness," but
watch how it cultivates community.
9. Create an online network for nearby neighbors.
Expand the survey into an active online resource and communication tool.
Find a new home for an outgrown bike. Ask for help keeping an eye out
for a lost dog. Organize a yard sale.
Take advantage of free neighbor-to-neighbor networking tools such as
Nextdoor to facilitate communications and build happier, safer neighborhoods.
10. Be a good neighbor. It’s easy to focus on your
own needs and concerns, but a slight shift in outlook can make a big
difference in the day-to-day lives in a neighborhood. Check in on your
elderly neighbor if her curtains aren’t raised in the morning. On a hot
summer day, put out a pitcher of ice lemonade for passersby, or a bowl
of cool water for dogs on walks.
To be sure, grievances among neighbors are common. But when a
neighborhood grows from a base of goodwill, little squabbles won’t
escalate into turf fights, and neighborhoods can become what they are
meant to be: places of support, security, and friendship.
-
Photo courtesy of Taunton Press.
Ross Chapin,
FAIA, wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media
organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Ross is
an architect based on Whidbey Island, Wash., and author of
Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small Scale Community in a Large Scale World
(Taunton Press). Over the last 15 years, Ross has designed and
partnered in developing six pocket neighborhoods in the Puget Sound
region—small groupings of homes around a shared commons—and has designed
dozens of communities for developers across the U.S., Canada and the
UK.
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