| What follows is the presentation addressing
the issue with Sustainable Tucson on June 9th 2014. We will
report whatever progress we make in our effort to form community
with our neighbors here from time to time.
Building Community
Tucson Tortolita Eco Village (TTEV) is engaged in developing
an on the ground set of communities that will serve as places
from which sustainable, resilient and self reliant practices
can be show-cased and serve as models to be replicated. The
term we sometimes apply is self reliance incubator.
A past presentation to Sustainable Tucson focused on factors
that contributed to success or failure of community preparedness.
With some of these factors in mind we concluded that we need
to involve the neighbors first in whatever way would actually
make them neighbors as opposed to strangers.
TTEV is situated within a neighborhood called Rancho Tierra
Blanca in Avra Valley. There are more than 40 families in
the subdivision of which we know perhaps a dozen slightly.
We realized that the eco-village was only 50% of the community
we needed to form. We need to reach out to the wider community
around us and make them a part of us.
In trying to answer the question "How to build community"
I did two searches with various results. The first search
was https://www.google.com/#q=building+successful+community+study
(building successful community study) The goal of this search
was to find well researched papers and website links bearing
on the problem of building a community with folks sharing
a geography (neighborhood for example) and little else. Most
of the references are appropriate for large groups like districts,
towns and cities. Finding material for neighborhood actions
has been spotty, still some emerged.
Two promising website have quite a lot of information to
review. It is however beyond the scope of this brief talk
to go into detail so they are included here for reference.
Making Communities More Viable: Four Essential Factors
for Successful Community Leadership http://www.joe.org/joe/2009april/iw2.php
28 Factors for Successful Community Building
(very promising) http://www.fieldstonealliance.org/client/tools_you_can_use/04-06-06_cmty_bldg_wmiw.cfm
Gives definitions for terms often misunderstood. I ordered
the book on Amazon
A few of the many reports / studies found on-line to delve
into for more depth:
- CommunityCollaborativeToolbox.pdf
"The Council has developed this Community Collaboratives
Toolbox to guide communities in creating or improving their
own needle-moving collaboratives." Good info, research
focused on problems faced / addressed by existing communities
such as cities or school districts not much about forming
community.
- Making-a-Difference-in-Your-Neighborhood.pdf
"Across the country, communities are working towards
a common vision: to ensure that neighborhoods become places
where all families thrive and have access to the supports,
services and opportunities they need to ensure their children
succeed." Focused on social change (liberal agenda)
they do have useful advice about how to get started and
be more strategic. They suggest beginning by choosing a
result or outcome to focus effort rather than jumping into
problem solving.
- Building-Successful-Neighborhoods.pdf
"In our view, effectively addressing the problem of
concentrated poverty and neighborhood distress requires
moving beyond either inward-looking approaches or mass departure."
Low income neighborhood relocation / infusion
- Building
Collaborative Capacity in Community Coalitions
"This article presents the results of a qualitative
analysis of 80 articles, chapters, and practitioners’ guides
focused on collaboration and coalition functioning. The
purpose of this review was to develop an integrative framework
that captures the core competencies and processes needed
within collaborative bodies to facilitate their success."
As you can see it is a very scholarly review of existing
literature which may have application to some of your efforts
- Motivation
and barriers to participation in virtual knowledge-sharing
communities of practice Mostly focused on roadblocks
to sharing professionally gathered knowledge (IE Intellectual
Property)
The above results offer some insight into the challenges
of building community.
Idea 1: Previous discussions of ideas like
establishing a neighborhood watch, property owner's association
(POA), or similar all seemed unlikely. We already have a POA
/ well committee that gets very little traction. The last
association meeting for elections was attended by less than
1/4 of the families on the well system.
While talking over our lack of progress in deciding on where
to start the idea emerged to start a community garden everyone
could use. We are developing three greenhouse dome systems
that have at least some application as a garden. Why not open
our greenhouses to the entire neighborhood to be shared by
all those who participate. Brilliant idea and the subsequent
search makes it clear how powerful this idea is. how
a garden can unite a community yields many solid looking
titles to explore. So now we have a good "excuse"
to contact our neighbors.
Idea 2: A little known resource you may
find in any neighborhood is a real estate broker. Brokers
have access to tax and association information that can be
used for mailing lists and newsletters. Your neighborhood
can enlist the local broker to provide the listing and if
approached properly pay for the printing / postage. Why should
he or she spend time and money... it may result in listing
and buyer commissions from the community.
Idea 3: There have been some fairly successful
attempts to organize neighborhoods around various themes.
We will look at a few of the most successful and see how they
apply to what we are doing.
Use theme searches:
Many more topical / theme searches are possible and reveal
many paths to follow.
The 3 Cs of community
The basis of community can be summed up with 3 simple concepts:
- Commitment - making common cause
- Contribution - investing time or money (buy-in)
- Comity - mutual courtesy / civility
Keeping these concepts in mind when approaching your neighbors
will help to keep focus. Especially the last point being civility.
We need to get along with them however we find them. The lack
of any of the above is sure to greatly detract from your mutual
efforts. If you achieve nothing else, you are well ahead of
the game!
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