From neighbor Gregg Lavender, a re-post from LivableStreets.com:

Where are social networks created? The answers often embrace institutions such as work and school and today, a host of online communities, while the neighborhood block, a historically vibrant source of local relationships, has largely become a disconnected collection of houses and residents. For many communities, this trend of fewer informal links within a neighborhood has been associated with a heightened sense of risks that threaten the health and well being of neighborhood residents and their children. Furthermore, studies have shown that neighborliness influences perceptions of health and reinforces the local relationships enabling response to community concerns. When neighbors know one another, they know who belongs on the street and more likely to respond to suspicious activity. Barnes’ examination of the effects of family ties shows that respondents who know more families in their neighborhoods are more likely to engage in neighborhood improvement activities; block parties facilitate the creation of those relationships. She also found that poor neighborhoods were not as distinguishable from non-poor neighborhoods if the neighborhood ties variable was included; in other words, neighborhood ties could reduce the impact of typical neighborhood variables. Which begs the question, how do communities overcome the barriers to building neighbor to neighbor relationships?

The neighborhood block, defined as the dwellings fronting on a single street between two cross streets, serves as a reasonable point of entry for health promoters for a number of reasons. A few of the reasons are identified by Douglas Perkins, a leading researcher in social capital and community development.

First, the processes of informal control which empowers people operate more successfully in the face to face setting of the neighborhood block than in larger social units. Second, blocks are more homogenous and people are more likely to share similar concerns. And third, participation rates at the block level are found to be higher than at any other level.

Public spaces such as the street block remains understudied and underutilized in the effort to increase social capital. For decades, street blocks in cities such as Philadelphia have hosted a number of block parties and it can reasonably be argued that these annual or frequent social gatherings foster the ties necessary for a vibrant community life and that they can be developed to generate stronger social networks. Additionally, an indicator such as block parties, focuses on neighborhood resources rather than deficits (Kretzman and McKnight, 1993).

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Family / Kids, Get Involved!, Health and Wellness, NET/Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.