Here’s an easy way to improve your health: trust your neighbors.  A 2011 study from the University of Missouri showed that increasing trust in neighbors is associated with better self-reported health. “I examined the idea of ‘relative position,’ or where one fits into the income distribution in their local community, as it applies to both trust of neighbors and self-rated health,” said Eileen Bjornstrom, an assistant professor of sociology at Mizzou in 2011 .  “Because human beings engage in interpersonal comparisons in order to gauge individual characteristics, it has been suggested that a low relative position, or feeling that you are below another person financially, leads to stress and negative emotions such as shame, hostility and distrust, and that health suffers as a consequence. While most people aren’t aware of how trust impacts them, results indicated that trust was a factor in a person’s overall health.” In the study, Bjornstrom examined the 2001 Los An...

  Every team member gets a medal at the end of the season for participating in most youth sports leagues. The medal merely recognizes participation. In real life, adults do not get participation medals. What matters for most organizations, businesses and even families, is impact. Impact goes beyond just participation. Impact means results or a strong effect on someone or something that creates a solution or result. In both the adult and business worlds, simply showing up to participate might get you an hourly paycheck but creating a positive impact will get you promoted. We teach children to participate in life, including school activities, clubs, and sports. Most times, just “showing up” is all that is expected to be able to say they are participating. As adults, we also often end up measuring participation. We recount how many meetings or activities we attended.  If participation is the standard, then we have set the bar for success very low. Part of the reason for focusing ...

It may be as easy to remember as ABCD, but practicing asset-based community development does not come naturally for adults. Adults have a well-tuned and well-developed negative eye. Our natural tendency is to see problems and challenges of all types. We easily spot the weeds in our neighbor's yards, homes that are not maintained or the anti-social family. Often we spot those problems before we spot our own! When it comes to using ABCD in neighborhoods, we must remember to look for what is strong, not what is wrong.  University of Missouri Extension’s Engaged Neighbor Program recommends the Hopeful Neighborhood lab approach as the first step toward learning and practicing asset-based community development in neighborhoods. Hopeful Neighborhood Labs require a minimum of two hours of time and at least 12 participants from a single neighborhood. But sessions can start getting neighbors more connected and more involved in pursuing the common good. THE START OF ABCD John McKnight and Joh...

  Kurt Kaiser's song "Pass It On" has stuck with me since childhood. That song includes the phrase, “It only takes a spark to get a fire going.” I've always believed that one of my purposes in life is to be a spark – to light the fire that inspires others – and that theme runs through much of what I do. The idea of passing it on or being a spark has been applied to many other topics. More recently, for me, the spark applies to neighboring. In 2022, the Greene County MU Extension Council agreed to provide mini-grants for neighborhood events in order to provide a spark. We were trying to jumpstart a local neighboring movement. Ultimately, the council provided $5,000 for 18 different neighborhood projects. I checked in with some of those projects recently to see if the spark has helped to light other embers and what inspiration the work has provided for others. DOWNTOWN SPARK “The whole experience has been quite magical. Crazy what a bunch of sunflowers in downtown can d...

  The publication of "Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time" marks the end of years of work by Dr. Seth D. Kaplan.  Dr. Kaplan. He is a leading expert on fragile states and a lecturer in School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is also a consultant to multilateral organizations like the World Bank and the U.S. State Department. His new book is an urgent exploration of why American society is in trouble, and how to fix it, starting with the places we call home. While a guest on my Neighboring 101 monthly class, Kaplan explained why he wrote the book. " After being asked repeatedly by people who knew my professional specialty is fragile states whether America was a fragile state too, I felt a need to learn for myself. I spent years reading dozens of books, traveling around the country, asking loads of questions, and exploring how those working on the frontline – in places such as Detroit, Appalachia, Kentu...

  Since 2020, Neighbor has recognized and honored the 25 Most Neighborly Cities in America (see  2020 ,  2021  and  2022  rankings), based on factors such as charitable donations, volunteer work, and low crime rates. This year, our factors also include population changes and voter turnouts to account for citizen engagement and investment in their communities. The cities that top these rankings reflect the core values of unity and neighborliness that make a community great. In addition to identifying the 25 Most Neighborly Cities, Neighbor surveyed 1,000 Americans, inquiring about their neighborly habits, their relationships with their neighbors and what they think makes a community most neighborly. Findings reveal: Planting roots.  85% of Americans plan to stay in their current residence for the long term—45% say that it’s permanent. Encouraging them to be more involved in their community and make it a better place.   Embracing community even...

  There is something powerful about hearing someone call you by name, especially when you did not expect that person to remember it. Think about the last time you returned to a restaurant, attended a meeting, or encountered someone you had met only briefly, and that person greeted you by name. Chances are, you felt recognized. Perhaps you even felt a little more welcome. Now consider the opposite experience. You meet someone, exchange names, and five minutes later realize you cannot remember what the person told you. I suspect most of us have experienced both situations. That is what makes Benjamin Levy's Remember Every Name Every Time an interesting book. Levy approaches name recognition as a learnable skill rather than a mysterious talent possessed by a fortunate few. For those of us interested in building stronger neighborhoods, that is an encouraging starting point. Remembering names is not simply a matter of having a good memory. It begins with deciding that the person standi...

We live in a world where everyone wants our attention, and almost nobody wants us to sit quietly on the front porch. Social media platforms want us scrolling. Employers want us producing. Advertisers want us buying. Our phones buzz, our calendars fill, and our minds are constantly pulled toward something other than the people and places immediately around us. Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy offers a thoughtful and sometimes challenging response to this modern condition. Her central argument is not that we should literally do nothing. Rather, she invites us to reconsider what deserves our attention and whether the constant demand to be productive is keeping us from experiencing the richness of everyday life. For anyone interested in building stronger neighborhoods and communities, this is a particularly relevant book. The Problem Isn't Just Technology. It's Attention. Odell argues that our attention has become a commodity. Technology compani...

Some books require hundreds of pages to make their point. Others can change the way you think in just a few minutes. Charles E. Hummel's Tyranny of the Urgent belongs in the second category. Originally published in 1967, this little booklet is one of the most powerful things I have encountered on the subject of priorities, time management, and intentional living. Nearly 60 years later, its message may be more relevant than ever. The central argument is remarkably simple: The greatest danger in managing our time is allowing urgent things to crowd out important things. That distinction sounds obvious. But understanding it and living according to it are two very different things. And I would argue that this little booklet has something important to teach us about neighboring, relationships, and the communities we are creating. The Urgent Always Makes More Noise Think about the demands competing for your attention on any given day. Emails need responses. Phones ring. Text messages arr...

Humans often invent stories or narratives about people they see but do not know. Every cranky neighbor must be a serial killer, and every house with drawn curtains must be hiding something. This tendency is excellent fodder for movies. Just in time for Halloween, here is my list of the top ten movies that will make you scared of your neighbors! If you did not already think horror was behind the picket fence, you will after these movies! Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock: This movie features a man who is housebound due to a leg injury, and he observes his neighbors from his back window. He might even witness a murder. The ‘Burbs (1989): Ray Peterson and a few of his neighbors become suspicious of the Klopeks, the new family on the block, when their long-time neighbor, Walter, goes missing. The Woman in the Window (2021): Anna Fox observes the Russell family move in across the street. After befriending Jane Russell, Anna witnesses her murder and suspects her husband. Lakeview Ter...