Hey, Eric! bcWORKSHOP did a similar neighborhood mapping project in Dallas about a decade ago (https://www.bcworkshop.org/pop-city-map). I'm working on belonging and community measurement work within a neighborhood in southwest Houston and would be interested in helping! I've also been beating my head against the administrative boundaries constraining our ability to meet needs and advance people's capabilities in their neighborhoods. I'm just wrapping up some graduate work on impact assessment and measuring long-term outcomes throughout infrastructure development life-cycles.
Insightful article Eric. There's great value in asking these more meaningful questions, like "What do you call the place where you live?" In my experience, community building efforts focused on neighborhood wide initiatives are still to broad and wide of a scale to create positive impacts in most residents' lives. If you ask me, my answer would be I live on the 300 block of MYSTREET. I believe that hundred level block of any given street is a more practical and effective description of nearby neighbors' shared attachment to a place. Within an average neighborhood their could be thousands, if not tens of thousands of people that live out vastly different experiences based on where within those neighborhoods they do live.
More specifically, I would point to the nearest corner intersection/cross-street as a more realistic geographic description of where I live. Practically speaking, I would hypothesize that there's about a 200 foot radius from most traditional single/multi-family residential home addresses that is really the place where we live. That includes all of the adjacent properties 360 degrees around our own home, and probably an additional ring of the next property or even two. This encompasses the line of sight from most front and back doors. Try visualizing looking out your 2nd floor windows or down the adjacent row of front porches/stoops. In the neighboring space, there's an exercise called the 8-Front Door Challenge that encourages residents to test themselves to see how many people they know that live in the nearest 8 front doors to theirs, try it. It's a great litmus test and starting point for where you are today, and an invitation to learn names going forward.
This is where we actually live most days. But more importantly, these are the people that we're most likely to regularly interact, cross-paths with, and see coming and going during most of our everyday lives. These hyper-local subsets (pods, clusters) are where the real magic of community building happens. And it's the strength of the relationships with those geographically closest to us that can and will most often make the biggest difference.
For most neighbors, the vast majority of us CAN (we have both the capacity/bandwidth and willingness) be one of the best real-world, social, support and safety networks for each other. If/when we take the time to do any/some of the things that connected neighbors do, including: introduce ourselves, learn/remember names, exchange contact information to open up a line of communication, extend invitations, spend more time outside and/or in shared/common spaces, ask for a helping hand, and be curiously inquisitive. When we do this, we're going to discover we have so much more in common with the folks that are actually, physically right next door. And within any given block I'd bet there's a critical mass of people
that would love to join a card night, chess club, walking group, book club, parent group, dog/cat group, video game group, etc... the list could go on almost infinitely.
When we start down this neighboring path, we're going to surely strengthen those nearby relationships and slowly build trust. And that's when the positive ripples that I often refer to as "neighbor magic" start to compound. There's a beauty and a simplicity on this scale as their are no real transportation or time costs to walk across the street, down the block or around the corner. That convenience can greatly increases the value of those nearby connections. When residents have established and started to build on those foundational connections, those households are happier, healthier, safer, more resilient, wealthier and the list goes on.
The US Chamber of Connection, the University of Missouri and others have done a fantastic job of outlining many of the positive impacts of strengthening this hyperlocal social fabric. Trusted, known neighbors are going to look out for your best interests whether you're asleep, on vacation, at work, or just not yet aware of a situation. They're going to be unofficial stewards of your property, caretaker's of your kids when they're down the block, and be the unsung heroes to chase down and return your pets when they run off after a wild animal. Neighbors are the best go-to problem-solvers and fix-it guys/gals to secure an important valuable package on your front porch, or to water your beautiful flowers during a drought when you're out of town. They're the life-savers when your mower dies before you host a big event, and they happily let you borrow theirs to finish the job. They are overjoyed when you can borrow an underutilized asset, like a second crockpot, or a wheelbarrow or a dolly. Every house on the block doesn't need their own power washer or snowblower or extension ladder. In fact, simple acts of sharing/borrowing are the basic exercises that strengthen those neighborly muscles.
When my wife bakes a coffee cake, we usually drop off some extra slices to our closest neighbors as they've done the same so many times before. When new neighbors move to the block, I pop-in some easy-bake, pre-made cookie dough (if I haven't already eaten most of the squares) and deliver a hand-written welcome note with my name and number. My daily walk around the block with our pup is honestly my favorite ritual as it so often leads to countless unexpected, heart-warming and encouraging interactions with nearby neighbors.
We should and could be investing in more of the community organizing initiatives that brings people together around the US Chamber of Connection's Six Points of Connection, such as Communities of Play, Communities of Service, Third Places, and Neighbor Connections. This is the ounce of prevention that is worth well more than a pound of cure. More of our cities' neighborhoods would be better off long-term if/when they focused on sparking stronger connections between nearby neighbors.
Ok, holy moses, end rant. Where's the Tylenol? Let's chat more.
Eric, I think there is something here, we continue to be frustrated by the irrelevance of standard small-ish geographies (blocks, block groups) and there are definitely tools out there now to re-interpret some of the census and other data to a better/finer geography. I like the fuzzy edges of the NYT effort and your map, which I think reflects something closer to reality. Another thought is that these definitions may change. Portland has been struggling with the codified neighborhood system (which always seems to me to be on the edge of being a NIMBY focused department of No, where projects mandated to ask the community what they think go to die).
As for collecting data, that is where my work might be helpful, we have used a number of participatory GIS platforms and have even asked similar questions as a part of city-wide planning. As an example, one page out of a survey we did in Santa Rosa CA https://app.maptionnaire.com/q/7sg3khu8v369?utm_source=test&startPage=6 We were able to get 800 or so respondents to show us the heart of their neighborhood and a little under 600 to draw boundaries (which is a bit more complicated of an ask).
I'd be super curious about your mock up for Columbia City and what analysis you needed after the data came in.
Hey, Eric! bcWORKSHOP did a similar neighborhood mapping project in Dallas about a decade ago (https://www.bcworkshop.org/pop-city-map). I'm working on belonging and community measurement work within a neighborhood in southwest Houston and would be interested in helping! I've also been beating my head against the administrative boundaries constraining our ability to meet needs and advance people's capabilities in their neighborhoods. I'm just wrapping up some graduate work on impact assessment and measuring long-term outcomes throughout infrastructure development life-cycles.
Thanks Collin! I just sent you a message.
Insightful article Eric. There's great value in asking these more meaningful questions, like "What do you call the place where you live?" In my experience, community building efforts focused on neighborhood wide initiatives are still to broad and wide of a scale to create positive impacts in most residents' lives. If you ask me, my answer would be I live on the 300 block of MYSTREET. I believe that hundred level block of any given street is a more practical and effective description of nearby neighbors' shared attachment to a place. Within an average neighborhood their could be thousands, if not tens of thousands of people that live out vastly different experiences based on where within those neighborhoods they do live.
More specifically, I would point to the nearest corner intersection/cross-street as a more realistic geographic description of where I live. Practically speaking, I would hypothesize that there's about a 200 foot radius from most traditional single/multi-family residential home addresses that is really the place where we live. That includes all of the adjacent properties 360 degrees around our own home, and probably an additional ring of the next property or even two. This encompasses the line of sight from most front and back doors. Try visualizing looking out your 2nd floor windows or down the adjacent row of front porches/stoops. In the neighboring space, there's an exercise called the 8-Front Door Challenge that encourages residents to test themselves to see how many people they know that live in the nearest 8 front doors to theirs, try it. It's a great litmus test and starting point for where you are today, and an invitation to learn names going forward.
This is where we actually live most days. But more importantly, these are the people that we're most likely to regularly interact, cross-paths with, and see coming and going during most of our everyday lives. These hyper-local subsets (pods, clusters) are where the real magic of community building happens. And it's the strength of the relationships with those geographically closest to us that can and will most often make the biggest difference.
For most neighbors, the vast majority of us CAN (we have both the capacity/bandwidth and willingness) be one of the best real-world, social, support and safety networks for each other. If/when we take the time to do any/some of the things that connected neighbors do, including: introduce ourselves, learn/remember names, exchange contact information to open up a line of communication, extend invitations, spend more time outside and/or in shared/common spaces, ask for a helping hand, and be curiously inquisitive. When we do this, we're going to discover we have so much more in common with the folks that are actually, physically right next door. And within any given block I'd bet there's a critical mass of people
that would love to join a card night, chess club, walking group, book club, parent group, dog/cat group, video game group, etc... the list could go on almost infinitely.
When we start down this neighboring path, we're going to surely strengthen those nearby relationships and slowly build trust. And that's when the positive ripples that I often refer to as "neighbor magic" start to compound. There's a beauty and a simplicity on this scale as their are no real transportation or time costs to walk across the street, down the block or around the corner. That convenience can greatly increases the value of those nearby connections. When residents have established and started to build on those foundational connections, those households are happier, healthier, safer, more resilient, wealthier and the list goes on.
The US Chamber of Connection, the University of Missouri and others have done a fantastic job of outlining many of the positive impacts of strengthening this hyperlocal social fabric. Trusted, known neighbors are going to look out for your best interests whether you're asleep, on vacation, at work, or just not yet aware of a situation. They're going to be unofficial stewards of your property, caretaker's of your kids when they're down the block, and be the unsung heroes to chase down and return your pets when they run off after a wild animal. Neighbors are the best go-to problem-solvers and fix-it guys/gals to secure an important valuable package on your front porch, or to water your beautiful flowers during a drought when you're out of town. They're the life-savers when your mower dies before you host a big event, and they happily let you borrow theirs to finish the job. They are overjoyed when you can borrow an underutilized asset, like a second crockpot, or a wheelbarrow or a dolly. Every house on the block doesn't need their own power washer or snowblower or extension ladder. In fact, simple acts of sharing/borrowing are the basic exercises that strengthen those neighborly muscles.
When my wife bakes a coffee cake, we usually drop off some extra slices to our closest neighbors as they've done the same so many times before. When new neighbors move to the block, I pop-in some easy-bake, pre-made cookie dough (if I haven't already eaten most of the squares) and deliver a hand-written welcome note with my name and number. My daily walk around the block with our pup is honestly my favorite ritual as it so often leads to countless unexpected, heart-warming and encouraging interactions with nearby neighbors.
We should and could be investing in more of the community organizing initiatives that brings people together around the US Chamber of Connection's Six Points of Connection, such as Communities of Play, Communities of Service, Third Places, and Neighbor Connections. This is the ounce of prevention that is worth well more than a pound of cure. More of our cities' neighborhoods would be better off long-term if/when they focused on sparking stronger connections between nearby neighbors.
Ok, holy moses, end rant. Where's the Tylenol? Let's chat more.
Eric, I think there is something here, we continue to be frustrated by the irrelevance of standard small-ish geographies (blocks, block groups) and there are definitely tools out there now to re-interpret some of the census and other data to a better/finer geography. I like the fuzzy edges of the NYT effort and your map, which I think reflects something closer to reality. Another thought is that these definitions may change. Portland has been struggling with the codified neighborhood system (which always seems to me to be on the edge of being a NIMBY focused department of No, where projects mandated to ask the community what they think go to die).
As for collecting data, that is where my work might be helpful, we have used a number of participatory GIS platforms and have even asked similar questions as a part of city-wide planning. As an example, one page out of a survey we did in Santa Rosa CA https://app.maptionnaire.com/q/7sg3khu8v369?utm_source=test&startPage=6 We were able to get 800 or so respondents to show us the heart of their neighborhood and a little under 600 to draw boundaries (which is a bit more complicated of an ask).
I'd be super curious about your mock up for Columbia City and what analysis you needed after the data came in.