Neighbourhood social cohesion has gotten some recent media attention in Toronto.
Presenting recently at 2009 Canadian Association of Geographers, Ryerson professor Sarah Thompson caught the attention of the National Post.
Co-author with Professor Rosemary Gartner, they have been able to map out “The spatial distribution of homicide in Toronto’s neighborhoods, 1988 – 2003” and to do some preliminary analysis on the difference between high homicide and low homicide neighbourhoods.
“Measures of neighborhood-level socio-economic disadvantage and the proportion of residents who were young males were the most consistent correlates of neighbourhood-level homicide counts,” according to their research.
At this point, more analysis is needed, however speculation on other reasons for the differences includes the level of community services available locally and the social cohesion in the neighbourhood. It’s an exciting start.
United Ways Toronto and Peel are also bringing some attention to the issue of social cohesion. They’ve invited Garland Yates, a Senior Associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, to speak at their Annual General Meetings. He has been working with the United Way Toronto’s resident engagement project, Action for Neighbourhood Change, for the past three years.
CBC Metro Morning’s Andy Barrie interviewed him this week while he was in town. (The man does not mind getting up early when he travels, three mornings in a row.)
When pushed by Barry to move past the platitudes of “facilitating” and “enabling” and to explain what could be done to strengthen social networks, Yates rose to the challenge, explaining the messy and unorganized ways that social networks function and social cohesion builds:
“First of all…social networks are pretty organic…I remember when growing up my mother and others would do things for each other, like each other’s hair.
“I don’t think it is necessarily about creating [social networks], and we have to be careful, as well, not to overprofessionalize them.
“Where there are natural tendencies of people to relate and interact with each other…that relate to welfare and improvement of the neighbourhood, we ought to just encourage them.
“A kind of simplistic way of putting it is, is that if we have resources we should invest those resources in activities that get people to interact and not necessarily in a program structure.”
–CBC Metro Morning, June 3, 2009
Upon reflection, the implications of both these presentations call for further exploration of the role of community agencies in the strengthening of neighbourhoods. Community service agencies formalize the supports that used to have to be provided by social networks, yet, in our complex, densely-populated communities, neither can replace the other.
And speaking of the The National Post, it’s doing some great Toronto-focused profiles of the city:
- A series since the beginning of May, Peter Kuitenbrouwer’s Walk Across Toronto has focused on the wide range of neighbourhoods outside the downtown (and predictable, as he terms it) city core.
- A weekly series called Toronto, A to Z, profiling interesting corners of the city. They are up to the letter M now.
- 95 (and counting) separate profiles entitled My Toronto by “famous” sons and daughters of the city.
More
Social Networks
The Riches that Social Networks Provide
Five reasons why mixed neighbourhoods are important
Crime
Key factors associated with youth delinquency
Crime: Targetting the few “bad apples”
Toronto Police Services Board ordered to release crime data
Belonging Community 
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