Posts tagged ‘Community’

  |   Newer Entries »
April 2, 2009

Urban or Suburban: Physical activities differ by kind, not amount

I have the daily pleasure of walking, to work, to shop, to visit my neighbours. In fact, at least once a week one of my neighbours and I will head out for an evening march, just to avoid too many evenings in front of a screen. I fit the profile of a central urban resident, as released in a Stats Can study looking at the physical activity levels of urban and suburban residents, Life in Metropolitan Areas.

My extended family live in less dense neighbourhoods, further out from the city core, with big lawns, wide streets, and impossibly long walks to a hardware store or a restaurant. The study shows however that their physical activity levels are still likely on par with mine because they do more outdoor yard work (much more!) and they are also more likely to engage in an active leisure activity.

So, the study’s analysis of daily activitity shows, however we do it, urban and suburban dwellers tend to spend about the same amount of time engaged in daily physical activities. (If you’re interested in some of the other demographic characteristics of active people, see a previous Statistics Canada study, Who participates in active leisure?)

There were, however, two exceptions to the comparable physical activity levels amongst urban and suburban residents.

Suburban dwellers who were less physically active were those who:

  • work or go to school more than 9 hours a day, and/or
  • live in the tall residential apartments and condominiums that sprinkle most of Toronto’s suburbs, those that live in the tall towers, far from easy transit or commercial activities. 

While New Urbanism (see also CBC’s video clips on the topic) addresses some of the issues of built form and more compact and walkable communities, targeted intitiatives, such as the Mayor’s Tower Renewal project, are more likely to make a difference to those who are not physically active. Introducing such things as commmunity gardens and mixed commercial activity, the Tower Renewal Project changes the landscape surrounding tall buildings, thereby providing further opportunties for local residents to be physically active, whether through walking to do their errands or yard work.

Today’s Stats Can study simply underscores how landscape offers different opportunities to be physically active.

 

 

Posted in Daily Life, Neighbourhoods | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , , , , ,
March 16, 2009

A New Community Crisis Response Model: Changing the impulse for fight-or-flight towards tend-n-befriend

Everyone knows about the impulse, when cornered, to fight or flight. However a UCLA psychoneuroimmunological research team has developed a theory which says that some of us, mainly women, react to stress with a response they call “tend and befriend.” That is our first impulse is to protect the vulnerable and then to gather with others in protective and supportive clusters until the danger has passed. The research team, headed by Dr. Shelley Taylor, has tied this to levels of oxytocin and other hormones which effect our response.

When we feel threatened, rather than retreating into our homes, and locking the doors (or moving straight out of the neighbourhood), instead, we can gather together and build community amongst ourselves.  These more pro-social actions, linking ourselves to each other, are a positive and, according to Taylor and her colleagues, natural response to threat.

The power of this idea lies in how it can be applied to community development and the provision of an alternate model for community organizers in their response to crime, fear and disorder in a neighbourhood. Their work should turn to strengthening of the social ties between neighbourhood residents.

Taylor’s theory underscores Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earl’s ideas on collective efficacy: the ability and belief  of a community to bring about positive change. But more about their ideas another day.

Posted in Blog menu, Daily Life, Neighbourhoods, Social Capital | 3 Comments »

Tags: , , , , ,
March 7, 2009

Jane's Walk, May 2 & 3, 2009

The first time I went on a Jane’s Walk I learned that there was a graveyard , filled in the 1800s with dozens of people, under the houses a few streets from my home. The homes were built right over it. On another walk, in Parkdale, I learned the architectural technique of spotting a building erected in the 1840s through its double chimneys. (“Of course!” said a historian who lives near me.)

The next year I went on a Jane’s Walk, I was trying to learn more about my new workplace, a local community agency, and issues in the area. I wasn’t disappointed; the woman who led the walk raved about the agency and highlighted key local issues. So I introduced myself and began a friendship.

Another neighbour and I have also lead walks through the “Gerrard Street Bazaar,” where I have lived for 17 years. A local restaurant, the Mahar, always supplies samosas and hot tea, a welcome treat to the thirty of us drenched by heavy rains last year.

Jane’s Walk, in honour of urban theorist Jane Jacobs, is scheduled again this year, led by the Centre for City Ecology with support from the Metcalf Foundation, the Toronto Community Foundation, Avana, and other progressive funders.

Sign up to host a walk, become a supporter, or join others for a neighbourhood stroll through the city, on the first week-end of May this year. See you on the streets!

Posted in Daily Life, Neighbourhoods | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
March 5, 2009

Are hospital visitors targeted for parking violations, or are we just negligent roadhogs?

My parents go to the hospital so frequently that the last time I escorted them, they carefully coached me in how to avoid getting a parking ticket. It’s energy well-spent, given the frequency with which parking tickets are handed out around hospitals from York region, to Ottawa, from Newfoundland to Australia.

Whether you are visiting, attending a doctor’s appointment, or rushing there for an emergency, parking tickets are a common part of the hospital experience, along with high parking fees, shortages of spots, and meters which expire in short intervals.

A recent piece in the Toronto Star highlighted how frequently hospitals visitors are stung by the green hornets here in Toronto. The streets around hospital made up half of the top ten sites for parking tickets in 2007. The Ottawa Citizen found similar patterns in their examination of the issue in 2007. The Vancouver Sun also found the same, to a lesser degree.

It’s the sort of thing that drives people crazy, filling Bulletin Boards and other blogs (see here for a hilarious list of the ten worst parking tickets ever issued).

Some places in the world are trying to find a solution. Scotland now offers free parking at most of its hospitals, and Wales is considering the same, while recognizing the complexity of such an endeavor, and wondering how to discourage “freeloaders” without setting up another expensive bureaucratic layer.

Some argue, perhaps fairly, that if you own a car, you need to take responsibility for it. Residents who live near hospitals have to put up with slackers on a daily basis. It must grow tiresome.

However, hospitals are one of the likeliest places in the city where some administrative discretion should be used. People attending hospitals are often ill, or escorting those who are, and they have little control over the sorts of delays they may face once inside.

I have my bias in answer to the question: I remember a sweet and random act of parking kindness  I received at my local hospital once, when I raced, daughter in my arms, son at my side, into the emergency room. When we left, all safe a few hours later, I realized that I had parked by the entrance and not even noticed the meter by my car. But there sat my car ticket-less.

Someone had put some money into the meter.

read more »

Posted in Blog menu, Daily Life, Daily Life, Mapping, Neighbourhoods | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
February 1, 2009

Local school reviews: the problem of declining enrollment, pt. 2

So, if school enrollments are dropping across the country, what are some of the emerging solutions?

As I mentioned in my last post, our local grade school, one which has stood in the east end of the city for more than one hundred years, is facing an accommodation review. As its enrollment has been dropping over the past decade, like the majority of Canadian school, it’s not much of a surprise. (For more on this trend of declining enrollments, see People for Education’s special report published last spring. Full disclosure: I worked with this great group of parent activists for years.)

However, what’s different now, compared to the panic of ten years ago, is that the school board review is not simply about how to close this neighbourhood school. The proposed solutions are far more creative:

First, recognizing the trend a few years ago, the school began to hunt for magnet programs, which could boost enrollment. French Immersion was rejected as an option (on account of the perhaps-stereotypical image of idling SUVs ferrying children from nearby wealthy neighbourhoods), but the school council has recently been exploring housing an alternative school.

Second, the school board has agreed, through the accommodation review, that students  attending the local school can stay at the school until grade 8, thereby increasing the number of students inside its walls.

A cynic (or someone with a long memory) will rightly point out that this is only an option because Design & Tech  and Home Ec. programs have essentially been eradicated from Senior Schools (grades 7/8).  Dedicated, specialized classroom space was de-funded during the Harris years, and most schools cut these programs. Ergo, grade 7/8 schooling can now be delivered in any general classroom. In sum, there is no longer any reason to ship kids away to bigger, more specialized schools at the end of grade 6. So why do it?

There is a real upside to this decision though; that is, that it minimizes the number of shifts students face within a short scope of years (at the ends of grades 6 and 8). Keeping students at their local schools means they can maintain the social relations they have built over years.

One of the best studies to demonstrate the importance of strong relationships in building the resiliency of children and youth was done two years ago by Resiliency Canada, Toronto Public Health and Doorsteps Neighbourhood Services, called A Community Fit for Children and Youth. Children and youth in this age group who felt connected to their families, their schools and their communities were the least likely to participate in risky behaviour. Yet at the age of twelve or thirteen (just as they were leaving grade six and entering grade seven), they were also beginning to  feel disconnected from these same supports. Part of the challenge from the reports’ recommendations was to families, educators and communities was to examine how to maintain these important connections.

I learned this on a deeply personal level,  one day, when my son was still in grade school, he and I began to talk about the people that he knew in our neighbourhood. It began as an idle question, but soon, gifted souls that we are, we began to make a list of everyone he knew. By the time we got to one hundred people, we stopped, exhausted and awed at the strength of these visible ties he had to our community. Those sorts of social connections need to fostered, and our local school review may just provide the opportunity to do that.


Posted in Demographics, Neighbourhoods, Public Education, Social Capital, Youth | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , ,
January 26, 2009

Local school reviews: The problem of declining enrollment, pt. 1

Our local school is undergoing a Local Accommodation Review, one of those bureaucratic phrases which raises the specter of school closings. It’s the sort of thing, not long ago, during the Harris years, which would have brought parents out in swarms.  It passed nearly unnoticed last week at a school board sub-committee meeting.

Of course, there are fewer of us to notice now. When my high-school-aged daughter started school there, enrollment was twice what it is now.

Neighbourhood demographics have shifted, and homes which housed one or more families in apartments now house singles, childless couples or smaller families. Babies are still being born into the neighbourhood, however our homes are now considered “starter” homes, with a large homes in the neighbourhood have three bedrooms. By the time the babies are ready for school, new siblings have arrived, and families move away.

Most schools around the province are seeing declining enrollments. Birthrates are down everywhere. The only schools left with portables are “receiver” communities, where Canadian newcomers are settling or where new (and bigger) housing is being built.

Declining enrollment continues to hurt the idea of neighbourhood schools. The Liberals have yet to substantially change the funding formula, which is still driven by the number of students enrolled in a school board.

Year over year,  school boards have had to continue to cut back as their revenues dropped, even while some of their costs remained the same or grown: fixed costs such as a full-time secretary or janitor or rising costs such as energy and maintenance of older buildings. And it has meant that school are undergoing Local Accommodation Reviews.

What this calls for is creativity and the willingness to look at new ways of managing these resources which sit at the centre of every city neighbourhood. But perhaps what it also means is that government, school boards and communities will demonstrate a willingness to take some risks to preserve the idea of local schools.

More on these solutions to come….

Posted in Demographics, Neighbourhoods, Public Education | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
November 24, 2008

"Broken Window theory" boosted in Science magazine findings

Disorder brings disorder, says the “Broken Windows” theory. Developed in the 1970’s by James Wilson and George Kelling, the theory maintains that once visible forms of social disorder have invaded a community, more disorder is sure to follow. And with more disorder, communities fall into disrepair, disinvesment, and decline.

An example of the theory, you may remember, is the anti-litter ad campaign the TTC ran a few years ago, urging people not to be the first to throw their trash on the ground as surely then “everyone” would follow. That campaign was premised on the idea of the “Broken Windows theory.” .

The theory had many weaknesses on broad social and political levels. Broken Windows doesn’t account for the larger social structures which create disorder, poverty and inequity. Nor does it account, as Sampson, Raudenbush & Earls do with their idea of collective efficacy, for the micro-level neighbourhood interactions which can mitigate against community disorder.

However, the Broken Windows theory gained political force because it offers a simplicity of solution. It also offers a cachet which appeals to middle-class electorate’s sensibilities. Promulgated by many big-city American mayors through the 1980s and 90s, Malcolm Gladwell re-popularized the theory in his book, The Tipping Point. It became a topic of debate between Gladwell and the authors of Freakonomics. See Gladwell’s blog for a sample.

So, into this environment, a recent study in Science shows that the theory does have some demonstrated effect. One of the best summaries of the article (pictures included) is posted as follows:

Not Exactly Rocket Science : The spread of disorder – can graffiti promote littering and theft?

Posted using ShareThis

It seems, after all, there is something to the old chestnut, “Monkey see, Monkey do, Monkey get in trouble, too.”

Posted in Blog menu, Daily Life, Gentrification, Neighbourhoods | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
September 21, 2008

The importance of front porches

I live in a neighbourhood where houses are either 12.5 feet wide, or the bigger ones are 16 feet wide.  It means we sit on top of each other. Literally. Taking your recycling out or having a drink on the porch means invariably being drawn into a conversation with someone else who has had a similar idea.

Because of this level of street activity, some folks spend entire seasons on their front porch. And those are the people whom we all get to know, the people that pull us out of our self-absorbed musings to remind us that the first of the month has arrived and so cars must be moved for parking authorities or that recyclables, rather than garbage, will be collected the next day. They become the glue to our community, exchanging tidbits about our lives to others so that by the time we meet, we already know something of each other.

The porch sitters serve the same function that small children or dogs do. They give us a reason to talk to each other, to build bridges between us, to visit for a moment or two.

These casual interactions are shaped by the architecture of the places where we live and how we move through our communities. It speaks to a number of design issues: the scale of our homes, the use of “third place” (not home, not work), the development of weak social bonds, the trust we have in each other (collective efficacy). The social networks which exist in our neighbourhoods are entwined with the structures of our neighbourhoods.

This blog will explore all these dynamics and how we can build places where we belong, one and all.

Posted in Daily Life, Neighbourhoods, Social Capital | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
  |   Newer Entries »