Strong Neighborhoods Need Both Good Neighbors and Good Places

When we talk about strengthening neighborhoods, we sometimes focus on people: getting neighbors to meet one another, encouraging volunteerism, developing local leaders, welcoming newcomers, checking on older adults, or simply learning the names of the people who live nearby.

Other times, we focus on place: improving parks, adding sidewalks, addressing abandoned properties, creating gathering spaces, improving lighting, planting trees, or making streets safer.

But perhaps the most important lesson from community development is that we shouldn't choose between the two. Strong neighborhoods require both connected people and places designed to help those connections happen.

A Great Park Doesn't Automatically Create Community

Imagine a neighborhood receives funding for a beautiful new park.

There are walking paths, benches, a playground, shade trees and perhaps even a pavilion. Those are worthwhile investments. They improve the physical environment and create something everyone in the neighborhood can enjoy.

But there is no guarantee neighbors will actually get to know one another there.

People can walk the same trail every morning without ever learning each other's names. Parents can sit beside one another at the playground while looking at their phones. Families can live across the street from a beautiful park and still feel lonely.

Building a gathering place isn't the same thing as building relationships.

The physical space creates an opportunity. People still have to turn that opportunity into connection.

Good Neighboring Can't Fix Everything Either

The opposite is also true.

We can encourage residents to be engaged neighbors. We can organize block parties, neighborhood cleanups and driveway gatherings. We can challenge people to learn the names of their eight closest neighbors.

Those relationships can transform a neighborhood.

But good neighbors cannot personally repair a dangerous intersection, replace a deteriorating bridge, build a public park or solve inadequate infrastructure.

There are problems that require investment in place, just as there are problems that require investment in people.

That distinction matters.

Think About the Neighborhood Sidewalk

A sidewalk is a simple example.

From a place-based perspective, a sidewalk is infrastructure. It provides mobility, improves pedestrian safety and connects homes with schools, parks and businesses.

But look at that sidewalk through the lens of neighboring.

A sidewalk also creates opportunities for what researchers sometimes call repeated casual interaction.

You see the same person walking their dog every morning.

Children pass the same houses on their way to school.

Someone working in their yard waves to a neighbor walking past.

Eventually, a wave becomes "good morning." "Good morning" becomes a conversation. A conversation becomes knowing someone's name. And knowing someone's name can eventually become trust.

The sidewalk didn't create the relationship. It created conditions where the relationship was more likely to develop.

That is the intersection of people and place.

The Same Principle Applies Across a Neighborhood

A front porch is architecture, but it can also be an invitation to conversation.

A neighborhood park is public infrastructure, but it can become the location of an annual picnic.

A community garden produces vegetables, but it can also produce friendships.

A library provides books and information, but it can also function as a third place where people repeatedly encounter one another.

A cul-de-sac is simply a street design until neighbors pull out lawn chairs and turn it into a gathering place.

Even a driveway can become community infrastructure when someone sets out coffee, donuts or homemade ice cream and invites the neighbors over.

Places create possibilities. People create relationships.

We Need to Ask a Better Question

Instead of asking whether communities should invest in people or places, perhaps neighborhood leaders should ask: What kind of neighborhood are we trying to create, and what combination of relationships and physical spaces will help us create it?

If residents don't know one another, another construction project alone may not solve the problem.

If residents desperately want to gather but have no safe or welcoming place to do it, another neighboring campaign may not be enough either.

The strongest approach connects the two.

Build the park — and organize something that brings neighbors into it.

Install the sidewalk — and encourage walking groups.

Improve the neighborhood entrance — and involve residents in the project.

Create the community garden — and make working together part of its purpose.

Build the pavilion — and give neighbors reasons to gather underneath it.

Invest in the physical neighborhood while also investing in the social relationships that give the neighborhood life.

The Neighborhood Is More Than a Location

We sometimes use neighborhood simply to describe geography: a collection of houses within certain boundaries.

But a healthy neighborhood is much more than that. It is both place and people.

It is sidewalks, streets, parks, houses and gathering spaces. But it is also conversations, friendships, trust, shared experiences and people willing to look out for one another.

A beautiful neighborhood where nobody knows anybody is missing something.

A deeply connected group of neighbors living in a neglected or unsafe environment faces serious limitations too.

Our goal should be neighborhoods where the physical environment makes connection easier and neighbors intentionally turn those opportunities into relationships.

Because thriving people need thriving places. And thriving places need engaged neighbors.

WRITTEN BY

David L. Burton

For more information, visit the Engaged Neighbor website. Take our pledge and become part of a movement! Or subscribe to our newsletter. Access some of the research documents written by David Burton, the author of this blog. Or better yet, purchase one of his books off Amazon. Contact David L. Burton via email at dburton541@yahoo.