Community, Our Most Important Infrastructure
“Our most important infrastructure is yet our most forgotten infrastructure” how Ed Everett, City Manager of Redwood, CA describes community. Ed led our session on the importance of community back in May. He stressed how it’s not just the physical aspects of a place that make it feel like home, it’s the involvement of the people who live there and their feelings towards that place.
Defining Community
“Community is about people so let’s get started,” Ed enthusiastically announced after giving guests a few minutes to introduce themselves to one another.
As Ed sees it, community is defined by 4 feelings:
BELONGING to anything
PRIDE Whether it’s in a sports club, a neighborhood association, a gardening club
INCLUSION People notice if you’re not there
NOT BEING ALONE “Knowing others in the community will help you, even if they don’t know you. It’s an understood contract that you have with the community and the community has with you.”
What’s Different Now Than Before?
After reviewing the 4 feelings that give us that “sense of community” Ed begins to answer a question so many of us have: What has happened over the years that has made us lose this sense of community?
He references a study done by Robert Putnam, who researched the history of community trends. In this study he found that on a national scale we’ve become far less involved with our neighbors of the years, steadily decreasing our interactions since the 1960s.
Specifically there’s been a decrease in several areas:
- Membership of service clubs, PTA’s, unions, national organizations, and church attendance
- Volunteer hours (which he states is starting to rise again with the younger population)
- Attending public meetings or school affairs
- Having friends over to your house for dinner or going to friends’ houses for dinner
- Belief that we can trust other people
In addition to these things, national surveys have found that most of us don’t know 50% of our neighbors.
However, on a positive note, this hasn’t gone unnoticed by the general public. Those same surveys found that:
- 75% of us think “breakdown in community” and “selfishness” are “serious” and “extremely serious” problems
- 80% of us believe that there should be more emphasis on community even if that puts more demands on us
Why Has Involvement Decreased?
Ed cites common reasons given for lack of community involvement are the pressures of time, money and two-career families. He then continues to say these reasons only account for 10% of the decrease. The two biggest factors for lack of community involvement are 1) Privatizing our leisure time and 2) The generational change.
Now exactly does he mean? “Privatizing of leisure time” is a clear example. It used to be that leisure time was spent talking to each other face-to-face, maybe the radio was on but you were still looking at one another. Next came the T.V. and that was fine, you were still together but now you were sitting next to each other looking at the screen and talking on occasion. Most recently, we now have the computers, iPods, etc where entertainment has become a solo activity.
The generational change is also an easy concept to explain. Putnam found in his study that people born around 1917 had the best sense of community. So your great grandmother, she passed down her community building skills to her kids but some of it was lost, and when your grandmother passed it on you her kids but again some of it was lost and so on.
After explaining this, Ed moves on to give his own history of the evolution of government and the public. It begins with active citizens who come together at town meetings to talk about and resolve issues. Over the years, elected officials get more popular and the public becomes less involved. Currently we’re in what Ed refers to as a “vending machine” type government in which we behave like customers, asking for exactly what we want and growing frustrated when it never comes back exactly how we want it. Government has become “customer oriented” and Citizens have lost their sense of responsibility and accountability for their community.
The Problems With Being a Customer
Maybe “The customer is always right” isn’t the best way to get things done.
“Customers” have several characteristics:
- Give away power
- Allow others to define their needs
- Consuming not creating
- Thinks in terms of “I”
- Feel entitled
So not only are we not taking charge of our destiny as a community, we’re allowing people to dictate what we need, and then passively complaining when the government doesn’t live up to our expectations.
“Customers don’t problem solve, they expect others to solve their problems.”
The Characteristics of Being a Citizen
So if we don’t want to be a “customer” what do we need to do? Become a citizen!
As opposed to customers, citizens have a more powerful stance in the community because they are involved in the decision making process. Citizen characteristics:
- Accountable for and Committed to the well-being of the whole
- Determines the future Active. Doesn’t wait for it, beg for it, or demand it.
- Exercises power Doesn’t give it away to others
- Acknowledges “Sustainable change only happens when citizens are involved and committed to that change”
Becoming a Citizen and Partner Within Your Community
Traditionally, community issues have been the burdens of local government. With the customer model, no one group has a stake in any issue, thus no motivation to help in resolving it. Government mistakenly puts itself at the hub and this gives everyone the impression they are to solve the problem. As you can see from the charts above, Ed supposed that we create another model for solving community issues. In this model, everyone has a stake, including the government, but in equal parts. In this model, everyone is responsible. The topic or issue goes in the hub and government is but one stakeholder.
Drawing Conclusions
In Ed’s session we learned about the growing distance of neighbors and the reasons we’ve let ourselves become uninvolved with the community around us. We recognized that many of us have been living as “customers” of our neighborhood, and what it will take for us to become “citizens” of our community. Why do we need a community, and why do we yearn for it so badly? To conclude Ed answered these questions quite simply, “Because when you’re driving home you want to believe and feel that you’re driving home.”
