What makes a vital community?

What makes a vital community? Community vitality is all about whether or not a community is flourishing or merely functioning. A vital community is a community that has elements such as innovation, enthusiasm, flexibility, resiliency, adaptability, growth, and balance. People within the community feel happy, satisfied and connected to each other. Six main elements function as indicators of community vitality: accessibility, connectivity, diversity, social capital, dead space, and vital space.

Community accessibility means that people have access to nature, animals, companionship, affordable housing, culture, community, art, clean air, clean water, and healthy food among other things.

Connectivity goes hand in hand with accessibility. It is the ability of the community to facilitate connections between an individual and his or her community, nature, commerce, and food sources, to name a few. Connectivity could also apply to the structure of a city, and the connectedness between its streets, lanes, housing, public vital spaces, and services. For example, downtown Victoria may score high in terms of connectivity, as there is good connectivity between living spaces, amenities, recreational spaces, art, culture, food, and community. Whereas, a neighbourhood in Gordon Head may score low in terms of connectivity to these things, as housing is generally located in a suburban style sprawl, with many cul-de-sacs, and relatively long distances between housing and amenities, art, culture, food, and community.

Diversity is an important part of a vital community, because resiliency is directly related to diversity. Diversity applies to religions, cultural heritages, political beliefs, family sizes, and housing styles, among other things.

Social capital, as discussed in my previous post, is an incorporation of people, networks, and connectedness between individuals within a community. It includes facets such as bonding, bridging and vertical capital between individuals, organizations and governance bodies. It also includes shared sets of community norms, social networks, and nodes which facilitate the exchange of knowledge, and ideas. Studies have shown that as social capital increases, all aspects of human welfare increase, such as good healthcare, educational systems and employment.

Dead space is a negative indicator, in that the more dead space a community has, the less vital it will be. Dead spaces are places which do not encourage or support community, or the meeting of people with other people, nature, and commerce. Dead spaces often serve a single function, and are places where people do not like to be. An example is the back of a shopping mall. Often, the back of a shopping mall consists of a flat brick wall, with no windows or shop fronts. It may contain a door or receiving bay, but the public does not hang out there. It has a single function. It does not encourage the coming together of people. Nobody wants to spend time there. It is dead space.

Vital space is the polar opposite of dead space. It is space that encourages the coming together of people, nature, and commerce. It incorporates functionality with meeting places for people, and has places for people to connect with nature and reflect. Downtown Victoria has many examples of vital space. For example, the Inner Harbour Victoria functions as a dock for sail boats and other small vessels; is a scenic walking space; is a location to view wildlife, such as sea otters, harbour seals and seagulls; is within sight of several historical buildings, such as the Empress hotel, and the BC Parliament buildings; and is a popular venue for buskers, such as musicians, artists, crafters and performance artists. No matter how grey the day, there are always people milling about the Inner Harbour.

How do we measure community vitality? Measuring community vitality is not as simple as measuring one thing, but rather requires a holistic assessment of a community, incorporating all facets of the community in order to gain an overall picture. Therefore, many tools must be used to measure vitality. I have already used the walk-score calculator in a previous post, to determine how walkable my neighbourhood is. This could contribute to an assessment of community vitality, in that it shows how accessible and connected my community is, and may even help indicate the amount of vital space and dead space in my neighbourhood. Another tool I tried out was the Rate Your Community Vitality Tool, available through the Community Research Connections Sustainable Community Development website. If you want to check it out, it is available here: http://www.crcresearch.org/vitality/rate-your-community-0

This tool assesses your community’s vitality, using the six vitality indicators mentioned above, and uses your answers to rate how vital you believe your community to be. In this way it is very subjective, and the results are not quantitative. However, they are a good way to compare your community to Provincial averages, and therefore get a general idea of how well your community is doing. Although this program is in the beta testing stages, it looks to be a valuable tool when it gets all of the kinks ironed out. It uses a series of 21 questions to evaluate your view of your community’s vitality, ranked on a scale of six options from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

 When I assessed Victoria’s vitality (according to my perceptions), my community’s vitality was very high. It consistently ranked far higher than the BC regional averages, sometimes being 100X higher or more. I wonder about the accuracy of this style of tool; however, because it is based upon perception, and most of the questions are rather subjective. For example, number 19. “Many people in my community do volunteer work”, I ranked this as ‘Agree’ because I volunteer, my mother volunteers, and I have known several friends who also volunteer. If I was from a family or group of friends who never volunteered, my answer could perhaps be ‘Disagree’, because I might assume that others are like me. Because humans have the tendency to assume that others think and act in similar ways to themselves, many of these answers will be highly biased. In addition, words such as many, few, rarely, and often are all subject to different interpretations, unless they are specifically defined, which in this case they are not.

Other tools, such as the Happy Planet Index, and the Human Development Index use overall happiness, and access to services such as good healthcare and education in order to rank communities based on these aspects of community vitality.

Vitality is directly linked with sustainability. For example, a vital community has high connectivity, vital space, and accessibility. Connectivity could include the ability for people to walk, or ride a bicycle to vital spaces, and accessibility could relate to an individual to easily access the things that he or she needs. Therefore, a community based on vitality will incorporate many vital spaces: spaces which serve many functions and are attractive to people. A vital space may be a city square which includes a street front shops, restaurants, and grocers above which exist offices, studios and apartments, a park in the center square where people may rest, play, walk their dogs, and otherwise congregate. The space may also incorporate some community artwork and greenery. A space like this would be highly sustainable, as people living there would likely have smaller eco footprints, as they could work, live, shop, and play in one central location. It would be highly resilient in that it would have a high diversity of people, and if a strong community bond developed – as would be likely in this situation – social capital would be high and a shared community vision could be created.

Photo taken from http://www.toeuropewithkids.com/2010/11/smallest-one-was-madeline.html

My networks and Social Capital

Social capital is a concept that is intriguing to me. It is not only a mode of interconnectedness between an individual and his or her community, but it has broad spanning implications for the overall sustainability of a community. When social capital increases, social utility (or happiness) increases, people feel connected to their neighbours and to their society, people gain a sense of place or belonging, and they become able to build a shared vision for their community. If this concept is connected with sustainable development, you have the potential for the creation of sustainable communities.

I am fairly connected to the community that I live in. I am not involved in local government, by attending town hall meetings, or such civic events. However, I do vote in Federal and Provincial elections, I have worked for Election’s Canada on several instances, and I do on occasion, write to my MP to voice my opinions and concerns about Canadian policy. In these ways I am vertically connected to my municipal, Provincial and Federal governments. In addition, I have several friends who work in government, and so remain connected through them. So, these friendships contain both bonding and bridging capital.

In terms of connectedness to my neighbourhood, I know quite a few of my neighbours. This leads to a feeling of safety, as I know that my neighbours are looking out for me as I am for them. When issues arise in our neighbourhood, I know that I will be informed and have a say in how we deal with them. Relationships with my neighbours fall in the bonding category, as they lead to a sense of trust and security within my neighbourhood. Although I do not know my neighbours well, we have a sense of community and often members will help each other out. For example, one neighbour might mow another’s lawn, allow another to store something on their property, help another to mend their fence, or allow another to pick fruit off of their trees. These exchanges help to foster a sense of connectedness and closeness.

At university, I am connected to students, and faculty. These relationships have bonding, bridging, and vertical characteristics. By bridging the gap between the university and outside organizations, faculty facilitate the exchange of knowledge and create connectedness. This is especially true of our major project work with outside organizations within the greater Victoria community. In turn, these outside organizations may provide bridging between themselves and regional, Provincial, and Federal governments, as well as other organizations. Some of the connections between the university and outside organizations may be vertical, if the organizations are a part of the government. My cohort students have bonding characteristics - as close friendships are developed between us - but may also provide bridging between ourselves and other networks of their friends and organizations that they are involved in. The university also provides bridging between the students and outside clubs, such as Toastmasters, which is an international club containing members from a multitude of walks of life, again expanding the possibility of creating bonding and bridging relationships between these people and their networks.

I am involved in a knitting group that I helped to found in 2006. This group attracts many different types of individuals. Friendships form, which increase bonding capital. Some of the members work in government, or other outside organizations, leading to bridging capital.

My networks illustrate all of the components of social capital in that they contain shared norms, networks and nodes.

Norms: Norms are the shared standards of any community. They represent what people consider to be socially acceptable, or “normal”. My networks follow norms, as they are primarily located in Canada, so there is a shared standard of normal relating to how we interact with each other: what we consider to be polite (in speech, gestures, personal space, etc.) and what we consider to be rude. Because we share these norms, we are able to communicate with each other and understand the other’s intentions. A large portion of my network is located in Victoria, which makes connecting with each other easy. We have a shared set of norms, specific to Victoria, some of which are unique to this city. Some of these include phrases, or colloquialisms which have distinct meaning in Victoria that are meaningless or have different meaning elsewhere. Norms in Victoria also include a casual style of dress, which is appropriate for the workplace here, but may not be the case in other cities in Canada or elsewhere in the world.

Networks: In terms of my social network, I am very connected. The diagram below illustrates my social network. It does not show the complete connectedness between the members and nodes within my network, because the diagram would be too large!

Nodes: Some of the nodes present in my social capital are the organizations and groups that I am a part of, which connect me to other networks and nodes, and allow an exchange of ideas, knowledge and communication. They also provide connectedness between me and other individuals and organizations.

For example, I am a university student. At university I am in contact with professors, who not only directly exchange ideas and knowledge with me, but also work with outside organizations or have research which is separate from their teaching. Through them, I am connected to those outside organizations, and the potential to connect to those nodes exists.

I am also a member of a Toastmasters club. Through this club, I am connected to other local members: individuals from many diverse careers. They are all part of their own networks, which I may tap into and become connected to. Through Toastmasters, I am also connected to an international network of individuals who are also a part of this organization.

 My networks increase my sustainability. For example, through my university I have friends that I carpool to school with. So, my ecological footprint is decreased and my sustainability increased. Likewise, my university is providing me with an education in environmental science, so that I may make a career out of environmental sustainability. Through friends from school and the university, I am learning about various methods of becoming more sustainable, such as how to compost. I can take this information away with me and use it in my own life or share it with friends and neighbours. By maintaining an intricate network of friends, my personal resiliency is high. I know I will always have a roof over my head and food to eat, because of these connections. Likewise, these people know that I will help them if the need arises.

 Connectedness fosters personal sustainability, in that it allows people to go places together - saving on carbon emissions, in the case of my carpool - to share knowledge and experience through trusting relationships. It allows people to connect to outside organizations and policy makers which in turn allows their voices to be heard. By fostering diverse networks, I can form relationships built on trust, wherein I may be able to share my knowledge and passion for sustainability and perhaps influence their opinions and actions.

When I leave university and begin my career in the environmental sector, these connections may help me to garner support from my community for sustainability initiatives. My connections with people working in government and other community organizations may allow me to voice my opinions and have my ideas shared, perhaps with tangible change being generated. By fostering relationships with my neighbours, they may trust me enough to listen when I suggest neighbourhood initiatives, such as community gardening or shared organic composting. Overall, the creation of a sustainable community does not take only one person, it takes a community. By creating social capital networks between people and organizations within a community you begin to foster engagement between members of that community, build trusting relationships, gain co-operation and participation between members, form new norms relating to environmental sustainability, enable the exchange of knowledge, and create a shared vision for a more sustainable community.

Top Image Retrieved from http://www.canada.com/technology/Census+Victoria+population+growth+lags+western+trend/6119744/story.html