Building community in the city

What have folks done in their communities that has worked as a community-building tool (but avoids gentrification)?

I love my city. It's in the high desert and has one of the highest crime rates in the country. It's rough and grimy and has a lot of unhoused or underhoused people but I love my city.

One of the things I've learned about crime, however, is that it has a tendency to make neighbors suspicious of one another. In the short term, if someone's house gets broken into or they get robbed or carjacked, people will come together, but in the long term it makes people more standoffish as they don't know who to trust.

As a brief soapbox, I think humans are happier and heathier when they're in a community. I think self-reliance is a myth, as it's nearly impossible to meet one's physical needs alone and certainly impossible to meet one's mental and emotional needs alone. I also don't think building community requires one to find people who are like minded: I think it's possible to do it anywhere, with anyone, if you approach it correctly.

Anyway, back to the problem at hand: My neighborhood used to be pretty close-knit (before I moved there) but as people's kids have gotten older and moved away and the crime increased folks stopped talking as much and keep to themselves. So I'm hoping I can help knit everyone back together again.

Some of the stuff I've done that has worked well includes:
- Bringing fresh eggs to everyone. People seem to like that.
- Chatting with neighbors that I see out and about.
- Inviting people over for meals (so far only our next-door neighbors have taken us up on that but we've become great friends with them).

Some of the stuff I'm considering and hoping to get feedback on includes:
- Organizing a block party
- setting up front-yard stuff like a seed library or food pantry (the latter would be more for our unhoused neighbors, of which there are quite a few.) Ideally I would hope this would serve as an invitation for conversation and connection with neighbors, though ideally I'd want to have close enough relationships that if folks wanted seeds or food they would know they could just knock on my door).

One thing that I think about a lot with this is that I'm young and white and my neighborhood is mostly older and Hispanic. I'm well aware that I have a gentrifying influence but I'm hoping that I can use that postively- reinforcing the community that's already there rather than colonizing it. Would love to hear thoughts or discussion on this!

It is amazing how just one neighbor being connected to each of the other neighbors tends to weave the whole neighborhood more cohesively. Just by you having connected with each one them, things are not just 150% better, but more like 1000%, in my opinion. You will be able to connect neighborhood people and make introductions of your own now, not just learn people's names and faces and have them learn about you. Good for you!

I've met many of my neighbors just by walking around for the last few years. I haven't had social events to invite them into my house or life, but I talk with them when out with my daughter. One neighbor is a pediatric dentist, so I knew which one to take her to when the time came, which was nice! And all the stories and perspectives of the people living around here (we're mostly all transplants from farther north, too!) make every walk down these streets more meaningful since I know some of the stories in the houses that I pass.

That's a great suggestion, thanks Rachel! I don't walk that much so perhaps I'll start doing that more, it seems like a great chance for more casual conversations.

Last year I gave away bags of veggie and flower seeds,  and later in the spring I put out a free seedlings table,  and then gave away extra fresh herb bundles!   I put out a table/sign but also posted on NextDoor site to my local neighborhoods :)   I just found a shelter for young moms looking for a gardening volunteer to come teach some basic food growing as a life skills topic, pretty excited about that!

I keep thinking and thinking (one of my character flaws, ha!) about building a permaculture-esque community in my city. Today in my 6x6' urban garden I thought about trying to help people change, which generally people don't want to do, even if they need to, even if we all need them to.

I would love to help my neighbors improve their daily choices to embrace the natural order instead of...destroying it. (I live very near subdivisions on a golf course with a country club, so fill in all those non-eco-friendly details here.) At the other end of the street from the country club folks at our small yard, we basically stopped mowing our lawn, and have got wildflowers growing here, and are often planting more shrubs that my dear mother-in-law has propagated from her own plants. Yay!

But the lovely folks in the big Mcmansions most likely curl their lips at my countercultural choices; hopefully, though, they at least nod and smile. Anyway, I don't think that their seeing what I do will influence them much. But if I were a member of some group in this area, perhaps my ideas and small actions would have a greater weight with the folks I actually knew.

Right now, the culture of most of my country and my region is set up to have the deck greatly stacked against Permaculture. In my part of the world, high social status and popularity come from perceived affluence, and unfortunately affluence here means consumption.  Society is totally rigged against my Permaculture efforts! I get so frustrated! But...

In such a fragile societal system as we have here, all of this consumption = the good life will sooner or later come crashing down. So the thing to do is to be ready to share knowledge and resources and opportunities with neighbors when their way of life is tried and found wanting in a disaster scenario. Perhaps the time is not yet, but I have to be ready for the time to come. Anyone who is already reaching out with seeds and homecooked foods is way ahead of me on that score. Clearly I need to not only greet people as I walk, but have something specific to say, and something to give to show the way.  

 

I think it depends a lot on the physical architecture of your community.
I live in a development of row houses, so our houses are very close together. Creating a seating area in our front yard, helped a lot--we are visible to all passersby and can say hi.
We also adopted one of the neighborhood´s designated "green spaces" and built a tree house for the local kids, inviting other parents to contribute labor or materials. That helped us to get to know a few of the people with younger kids that we didn't really know yet.

Melissa Ferrin wrote:I think it depends a lot on the physical architecture of your community.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree.  Our area here is clearly built for cars to pass through, not humans.  Although I could walk to the grocery store in about a half hour, it's really dangerous to walk on the busy road (no sidewalks to speak of) where people constantly speed, and there are blind spots galore. Grrrr...

But, *stop*, no, what can I do? That's much more constructive and useful thinking than complaining.

I can probably join a city zoning committee or something, to at least nudge things towards a better direction. I wonder if I couldn't do some guerilla wildflower planting in neglected/abandoned areas of town. Definitely I could talk to other parents at the local playgrounds about improving the town for all our kids!

That's a great observation, Melissa, thanks for sharing it!

Rachel, I totally get where you're coming from, though I personally don't have any designs to get my neighbors to adopt "permaculture"/ gardening/ sustainability habits. So many of them are just barely scraping by, who's to say that I know the "right" way to do anything, and I certainly don't know what they've got going on personally that might be motivating their behaviour. I personally try to approach relationship-building with an open mind and zero presumptions about what someone should or shouldn't be doing. I've learned some incredible things that way too! One of my elderly neighbors has some incredibly healthy fruit trees hidden away in her backyard, and as a result of approaching her with an open mind I've learned some really valuable techniques for maintaining vigor and fruit production in our harsh environment. Her methods aren't ecologically "perfect", IE she uses some synthetic fertilizers (mostly because they're inexpensive and have a low labor input, given that she's 90), waters with municipal water rather than greywater or rainwater, and she maintains a manicured lawn in a desert. but if I came in trying to "fix" the way she did things our relationship would have quickly fallen apart. As things stand now, I have a beautiful young peach tree planted from the seeds of one of her trees and a great relationship with a neighbor. Maybe at some point she'll ask about compost tea or thick mulch or greywater or rainwater collection or one of the other techniques I've started using in which case I'd be happy to share them, but I'd consider that a happy byproduct rather than the outcome of building relationships.
Just some notes that I thought I'd share. We all have a different way, but I've often found a softer touch to be more personally rewarding.