Guest Author - Tracey-Kay Caldwell

This guide to creating community arises from the Project for Public Spaces. It provides simple success stories that you can do in your own community to make your neighborhood the kind place you want to live. Author Jay Walljasper contends that, “The neighborhood is the basic unit of human civilization…At their best, neighborhoods function as villages, in which resident’s lives overlap in positive ways. We look out for one another and share a public life in common. According to Walljasper, the success stories in the book have one thing in common; they were carried out by “zealous nuts”—meaning they are dedicated to making their communities better. These zealous nuts make sure the places we live are loved and cared for by first, becoming aware of a problem. Then they realize they can’t wait for the authorities in government to fix the problem, so they shape their own vision, sometimes launching a public campaign. They know that what makes a neighborhood a good place is that it promotes sociability, offers many things to do, is comfortable and attractive, and is accessible.

Beginning to make your neighborhood a community doesn’t have to be complicated. In Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, Dave Marcucci decided to make his house a gathering place for his neighbors. His home occupies a prime corner lot in the neighborhood. He tore down the fence at the corner of his front yard, started landscaping and building a bench. A bench, which did not face into his yard, but outward; a bench for his neighbors to use. When the bench was done he threw a block party and invited his neighbors to use their bench. In no time, older people would stop to rest on their walks, school kids sat there as they waited for the school bus. Families would use it for a breather on the walks. Marcucci exclaimed, “It’s worked out really well. I’ve met my neighbors and other people I’d never have met before. It added a really friendly atmosphere to the neighborhood. You sit on the bench, and as people walk by, they stop and talk to you!” Although, Marcucci now has some competition for his neighbor’s attention, a homeowner around the corner has built his own bench for the neighborhood to use.

This need to meet others is natural, English author and social visionary, Nicholas Albery, wrote that, “For most of human history we lived in small tribal groups of 50 to 250 people, and at an instinctual level we still crave bonds to people outside our immediate families.” He decided his own neighborhood lacked a tribal bond, what he called Vitamin T, so he threw a block party, which has become an annual event. He says this has increased their inclination to help each other out. He and friends came up with a list of questions to help you determine if your neighborhood needs more Vitamin T. Roughly how many local people have you chatted with in the last week? Roughly how many familiar people have you said ‘hi” or nodded to in passing on the street or in a public place? How many times did you engage in a neighborhood tribal ritual, like religious service, meal with neighbor, a drink at a local coffee bar or pub? If you were ill, how many people could you count on to help you? How many of your neighbors could you just drop in on without an invitation? How many people in your neighborhood would you be comfortable discussing personal matters? How many people in your neighborhood understand your life goals and are supporting you in achieving them? To what extent do you feel that you are part of a caring local community? Your community should be a place to get these needs met.

Making your neighborhood a pleasant place to be can be as simple as making it look better. One of the principles of creating great community spaces is to start with petunias. What do petunias have to do with making a neighborhood great? The presence of flowers not only brightens a spot, but their presence is a testament to that someone is committed to planting, watering, and weeding the flowerbed. That someone cares, and is taking care of this place. When a bridge was abandoned by a defunct rail line in 1928, the residents made the best of a bad situation. They planted flowers on the bridge. The Bridge of Flowers became a tourist attraction that draws thousands of tourists to the out of way town. New York’s Project Daffodil has volunteers planting more than three million daffodils across more than 1,300 sites, brightening the city. In San Francisco, wanting to draw attention to the fact that seventy percent of the public space is reserved for cars, the activist group Rebar engages in political theater. They feed the parking meter, and once they have leased the spot for four hours, they unfurl two hundred square feet of sod, set down a park bench, a tree in a planter, and a sign announcing the temporary park is open. The PARK(ing) exercise has inspired other activist in Trapani, Italy and Santa Monica, California.

Taking a walk through your neighborhood can be a good way to get to know your neighbors and your neighborhood. When you are walking you will notice things you never saw before. Take along a bag for gathering the trash you find, the empty soda cans, the flyer that has blown away. The residents of Urbana, Illinois decided to clean up the Boneyard Creek, which had been notoriously polluted for centuries. The cleanup campaign changed the way the town thought about the creek and the city began enforcing the anti-dumping laws that had been ignored for years. In Baltimore Maryland the Friends of Mount Vernon Place, set out to revitalize the inner city park. They began with a cleanup day, then they invited a flower market and book fair to the park. Soon city maintenance crews were paying more attention to the park. You know your neighborhood would look nicer with more trees, but did you know that it could be safer? A 2005 study in the Journal of American Planting Association states that, “There is a growing body of evidence that inclusion of trees and other streetscape features in the roadside environment may actually reduce crashes and injuries on urban roadways.” Drivers go three to fifteen miles an hour slower on roads with trees. Tree lined streets also attract more people and a greater level of upkeep, thereby reducing crime. Mature trees also provide protection from sun and wind. It can be as much as fifteen degrees cooler on a shaded street. In California they found that asphalt lasts forty to sixty percent longer when it is shaded. In Los Angeles, the activist group TreePeople have planted millions of trees and trained citizen foresters to care for the young trees.

Another way to describe the zealous nuts that take on neighborhood issues is Community Patriot. To be a community patriot you speak up when a crisis, injustice, or opportunity arises. You talk to your neighbors, circulate a petition, write a letter to the editor, call a local radio station, spread the word through your churches, synagogues, and mosques, tie a flyer to every door knob, talk to your politicians, city leaders and local businesses, and start a web site. But in addition to activist campaigns, participate long term in your community by joining the local town council or neighborhood board, become a community correspondent—chronicling local issues for the community newspaper, locally focused websites and radio stations. In Los Angeles, public transportation had a transportation corridor that consisted of a single pole with sign marking the bus stop, it was next to a vacant lot, two abandoned storefronts, and some run down businesses. Not really a place where you want to catch the bus. A meeting of local residents and the city about building a bus stop at the location, led to the residents requesting more than a bus stop. They got permission for street vendors to locate on the vacant lot and sell coffee and food. In the process of looking for street vendors, a restaurantor expressed interest in locating in the vacant store. He agreed to put sidewalk café on the vacant lot. The restaurant and sidewalk café were a success and this led to other business moving in to the area, additional landscaping and murals painted on blank walls, have led to a revitalization of the neighborhood.

You may have been told you can’t fight city hall, but the residents of Lyndale avenue in Minneapolis know differently. Several of the neighbors were having a potluck dinner together and started discussing the city plan to widen a nearby street. Their call to a local council member got them no support. They printed fliers, placing them on the doorsteps of everyone within three blocks of the proposed widening. Four hundred residents showed up for the community meeting. When the floor was opened for questions, a real estate agent stood up and explained the steep decline in property values that would result from the street widening. He was followed by the principal of the catholic elementary school, warning of kids being run over and killed. After several hours of the resident’s complaints, a city council member stood and announced there would be no widening of the street. You can make your neighborhood better by getting to know your neighbors and working together to make it the kind of place you want to live. Walljasper’s book has lots of great ideas for doing just that.