In more detail
A community is a group of people who share a common interest and a sense of identity. People who live in a neighbourhood may be part of a ‘neighbourhood community’. People who work at a particular workplace or profession may belong to workplace or professional communities. Communities can be made on the basis of ethnicity, age, faith, gender, sexuality, social class, politics, housing tenure etc. Communities can also form around schools, clubs, sports teams, music and even things like doctors’ surgeries, social landlords and bus routes. If you use a service (or might use a service) alongside others or feel you have a stake in something which is shared by other people, then you have the basis of a community.
Anyone can be a member of many communities. So communities overlap. It is this overlapping of communities (with individual people and families acting as the stitches between them) that makes up the fabric of our society. Communities can also have hard edges; they can be exclusive and not have many links with others and don’t fit in well with the rest of society. Some very internally strong communities behave like this – think of gangs for example. Finally, communities can underlap – which is another way of saying some – socially excluded – people aren’t in any or many communities.
Understanding Communities
There are some important points about communities that not everyone who talks about them (including a lot of professionals) know or properly appreciate:
People sometimes talk about ‘communities of interest’ as being all those communities which aren’t based on geography (and they might talk about ‘communities of place’ to describe those communities that are geographically based). It’s sometimes useful to distinguish between these two sorts of communities. Both are important in planning the future of places (although in different ways), but in fact all communities are ‘communities of interest’. Geographical communities simply share an interest in a place, rather than anything else.
Identity matters – which is to say that a community only exists when people identify and express our shared interest for ourselves. Communities don’t exist because a group of professionals says they ought to.
People often use the word ‘stakeholders’ in a very inclusive way. So everyone from the local police chief to the young people playing in the park is said to be a stakeholder in the neighbourhood. It’s true they all have an interest in improving a place; but the interest a paid professional has in a place is not the same as the interest residents and local businesses share. Professionals usually live outside the neighbourhood, maybe not even in the same city; next year they may be working to serve a different neighbourhood. When everyone else has gone, the residents and the businesses based in the area are what remains – their stake is significantly higher.
The video above is members of the public in Seattle interviewed about what they think of community.
The ‘Good old days’ – when everyone was friendly, you could leave your front door unbolted and communities were as strong as rocks – never existed. Neighbours have always quarrelled; there has always been some antisocial behaviour (though it’s true what we tolerate and how we deal with it has changed a lot); and it seems likely that communities, collectively, are no stronger or weaker than they ever were. A lot of individual communities – and neighbourhood and workplace communities in particular – have become weaker. At the same time, a lot of other communities have grown up: we have more diverse interests; we are, on average, members of many more communities used to be the case.
Communities change the same as everything else. So, when you think about a community, you need to bear the future in mind too. The community of people who might have an interest in the service provided by a hospital, or a library, isn’t just the people who use it now; it could include people who don’t use it, but are potential users. The community of your place includes young people and people who have only just arrived. Sometimes you might even want to consider people who haven’t yet been born as part of your community (think about how you might include their voice in community planning!) A key test in making places better to live and work in, after all, is whether you leave a better place to the next generation than you inherited from the last?
Channels of communication are what counts in holding communities together. It’s not necessary to know every other member of a community to be part of it or to talk to everyone in your community every day. But, the easier it is for members of a community to communicate with each other when we need to, the stronger our community is. Channels of community include face-to-face conversation and notices and newsletters; local radio and newspapers; and also websites and social media.
Community leaders – a much abused and sometimes maligned phrase. It often suits people who want to engage with communities to talk with some selected leaders because it makes them easier to deal with. There’s nothing wrong with that idea, but bear in mind: community leaders are people who help a group set and take a direction. They are not always the same people; in practice, leadership can flit around a group between its members; and they not always the people who make the loudest noise in a community group.
Communities work on the basis of participation. By-and-large things get done because people volunteer rather than anyone tells them they must. Participative democracy is not the same as representative democracy: in one everyone gets a chance to put up their hand to volunteer; in the other everyone gets a chance to put up their hand to vote. Sometimes professionals treat communities as if they were democratic organisations like the local council. They aren’t. Representing a community means using channels of communication to keep in touch with people, not winning a vote or being a ‘token’ represented by another organisation because you fit their idea of what your community looks like.
Conflict and compromise – communities don’t always agree. Just because you share an interest in a place and acknowledge a common identity, does not mean you agree with everything your neighbours think or say. Disagreement within and between communities is inevitable. It is how conflict is resolved which determines either whether it brings a place down, or can lead to a productive way forward. Resolving conflict is often, but not always, a matter of compromise. The best way forward is sometimes neither the most popular idea or the middle way between extremes. So, whilst compromise is very often better than voting, sometimes a good way forward only comes out of discussion, which can sometimes take time.
| Key Facts:
A community is a group of people who share a common interest and a sense of identity. We may all belong to very many communities. A neighbourhood community is particularly improtant because - at best - it acts as a 'community of communities' with an interest in a place. |
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BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT DEFINITION SHEET This sheet may be reproduced in paper or electromic or any other form but please mention it was made by Chamberlain Forum Limited for Birmingham City Council supported by Department for Communities and Local Government.
| created: 2016-07-25 10:30:56 | by: admin | status: f published |