On the Park Bench interviewed Seth Kaplan, author of Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time. In Fragile Neighborhoods, “fragile states” expert Seth D. Kaplan offers a bold new vision for addressing social decline in America. By rethinking physical landscapes and revitalizing local institutions, we can help make every neighborhood a place where people and families can thrive. Robert Steuteville was the moderator.
We belong to these institutions that overlap and they supported our social life. And they supported our well-being in various forms. What we have now for the most part is we live in networks. And this is very dynamic. It's certainly helps us economically. I think it's made the country. More fair to a lot of people, the extent that place-based structures might have constrained some people being able to rise up and do well in school and have an opportunity and travel to where that opportunity is has been tremendously helpful for people that were left behind. Individuals and it's surely made the country very dynamic and I think for those that are on the whole Good at navigating networks or that get into the right institutions, think of the right university, think of the right jobs, think of the right associations, and think of the networks that people create or bring to these places and carry on from these places. Those people are doing very well. But I want us to think about those who live in places that have bad networks or people who are living in places or maybe individually they have limited or known networks. What this means, whereas people used to have place-based institutions that for the most part in compass everybody in a place. Now we have networks that leave a lot of people behind. They're in the wrong network. They're in a place that have marginalized networks or their whole place is marginalized and this means that a lot of individuals and a lot of places are being left behind. And I think what we see is that for many Americans, this may not be true in Washington, this might not be true in New York, but it's only true for many Americans is we're feeling more anxious, we're feeling more vulnerable, we're feeling more alienated, we're feeling more mistrustful, we're not practicing good relationships, we're not working with other people. We're too much alone. We're too isolated. And if we live in places that are distressed and being left behind, we're probably angry. One of my chapters is on eastern Kentucky, eastern Kentucky. It's hard to go there and see the families and see the state of the of the county seats. So basically the only towns and see what the landscape looks like because it's very depressing. It's more depression than many cities. I also have a chapter on Detroit just to drive around Detroit and see what Detroit is like. I mean, imagine all the people who have been left behind in Detroit, whole neighborhoods have disappeared and literally these are places where people ought to be mistrustful ought to be alienated and ought to be unhappy because of where they live. The best way to see how our chains landscape and our changed environment is affecting Americans is in the lifespan. Lifespan is not a perfect number to see, but the simply it's it's a good proxy for what we're seeing in terms of the well-being of Americans and our lifespan. Besides the fact that it's done awful in the last couple of years because of COVID, look back over 40 years and how it's diverged from comparable countries. I mean, this is the best. Indicator of the problems people are experiencing in their lives in society. This is huge and it's enormously different than what is happening in most other developed countries. And this is not affecting our whole population. It's especially affecting particular places that involve people who are in particular less educated, but I would say it it has an impact on on other people as well. And just to give you an indicator, there's over a 40 year gap in terms of your lifespan based upon where you live. And I'm gonna get back to that in a second. We also have this recent report on loneliness and isolation. I think it's very important that this has been elevated as a topic. I think what's missing from this conversation is a larger focus on place, a larger focus on place in place based institutions and I will get to that right now. So for me, what matters most here if we're trying to think about what we can do about these problems is that place matters. There's a great difference in outcomes as I just mentioned. I mentioned the lifespan differences, but you can look at the lifespan differences, but you can look at social mobility differences but you can look at social mobility, you look in education, you can look at security mobility, you look in education, you can look at security, you can look at many, many, many social indicators and they are very place based. And but I want to also point and I'll talk about it in a second is that this is not only a problem of poor people, you look at the drug overdoses in this country, that is not affecting just poor neighborhoods. That's also affecting many middle class neighborhoods. So something is happening in poor neighborhoods and something is happening in middle-class neighborhoods that's holding people back or causing lots of bad social outcomes. I mean this slide. From the Center on Developing Child at Harvard. Is very, it really explains it. This would be the same framework that I use in the book. Is that relationships matter first and foremost and around that you have the built in natural environment. So when seeing you people think about the built environment, they really need to be thinking not just about the built environment, but how the built environment affects the social institutions. That that basically wrap each individual in some sort of support structure. Think of a child. I mean, this is the most extreme case. The more love, I mean, I have children and you can just see every day, the more love they have, the more safe they feel. The more they feel supported every day, the more likely they're going to flourish or they're gonna thrive and they're gonna grow up to be to be a successful person and that social environment is affected by the built environment and by larger policies and culture. But first and foremost, it's a relational issue that depends on institutions. The neighborhood effect is this goes back over 40 years is a well-known effect. And of course, many people here will know rides, Chetty's work, about how neighborhoods have great impact on people's outcomes. I want to tell you that social poverty also affects the well-off. It's very important. Here's a quote from Naomi Safer Riley. Who works on some of these issues, but you can also hear from David Brooks. You can hear from quite a number of How public intellectuals talking about the rise in anxiety. And basically this inability to want this desire to look good to others, meaning that you're unwilling to burden yourself to others, you're unwilling to show vulnerability to others and the end result of this is that people are more, I would say more anxious, more vulnerable, and they're basically less capable of dealing with major crises because they've left themselves alone. And when you don't have strong networks and family and neighbors of support, you're much more at risk. So, neighborhoods have a huge impact on society, individual well-being, many of our social ill sit downstream from neighborhoods. We all live in a place and yet we have built a placeless society that maximizes isolation and vulnerability. I think many at seeing you will know that something wrong with our physical landscape, but when we ask ourselves what we can do about it, I want to emphasize it's not just about density and it's not just about walkability, which I believe are core paradigms of C and you, members. I want to talk about the fact is we need to, if you want to create environments that nurture strong relationships and strong ties between people we need to think of bounded neighborhoods they have a clear identity they have a clear beginning and end. They have local institutions, community schools, they have businesses, they have a center, they have associations. The more you have this abundance of institutional, this is not just walking, this is not just places to meet, which I think are hugely important. It's not just shopping. It's about literally associations and activities that bring people together on a recurring basis and creates a lot of spontaneous interaction in my neighborhood. My neighborhood is like that. I walk down the street and I know most people behind the doors. I know what goes on in their houses to some extent. I've been in their houses. I may not have a lot of friends in my neighborhood, but I have hundreds of people I know in my neighborhood. If I go to a shop or a supermarket near here, I will recognize faces. I will say hi. I will say hi to people on the street. If there's an emergency and I'll give you one quick story. My daughter dropped her younger brother some years ago on the front cement. He was about 2 years old, a big emergency was bleeding at the chin. It looked awful. Everybody was in fright. What to do about it? My wife, without asking anyone without even telling me, picked them up and ran down the street. Why did she run down the street? I discovered later she went to the nearest nurse. She knew where the nearest nurse was 3 blocks away and was there in 5 min and it was a weekend and they were home and we got a media attention to the problem. It had to go to urgent care and so on and so forth. And we know all the nurses more or less in our neighborhood and ask what would happen to you if you had an emergency like that. That is a neighborhood where you know a lot of people and it only happens if there's lots of institutions and activities and it needs a unique identity. These are the types of institutions that exist in neighborhoods. A supportive landscape is what CNU people work on, but I want to emphasize. We need to we need to build the landscape to encourage institutional that bring people together or it will be a lot of people who don't know each other walking down the street. By themselves and that is not creating a more socially interdependent society, which is really what we need. We need social structure, social interdependency, a willingness of desire to know people and be part of people and be like number I'm at 9 1,900, and 3. She goes out once a week and she knocks on doors of people who live alone a week and she knocks on doors of people who live alone partly because I think her mother lives alone in my neighborhood and I think her mother lives alone in my neighborhood and I just watch her every week, because I think her mother lives alone in my neighborhood and I just watch her every week walking the streets visiting these people. The more our neighbors are every week walking the streets, visiting these people, the more our neighbors are, are just doing that spontaneously, these people, the more our neighbors are, these people, the more our neighbors are people are just doing that spontaneously, the more we will be successful. So what can strengthen, the more we will be successful. So what can strengthen, the more we will be successful. So what can strengthen, the more we will be successful. So what can strengthen, the more we will be successful. So what can strengthen neighborhood relationships scale? I'm just gonna go a quick story here. Instead of giving grants to lots of organizations to said he was a real estate developer who was going to work on one neighborhood. He chose East Lake in Atlanta, which everything was awful on the street. People were doing, it was called Little Vietnam. It was a pretty awful situation and they have a three-part approach. It's not only the physical, it's the education, community school, and a lot of wellness. So it's basically lots of local businesses, local shopping, like little gyms, parks. It's three-dimensional. And again, the second and third part of that is very much about institutions. And they set up what's called a neighborhood or community quarterback. And so I think if you just build a neighborhood and you don't have mechanisms, it doesn't have to be a neighbor quarterback, but it's got to be something that that that it could be a series of institutions that already exist. It could be something you nurture, it could be something to establish, something that nurtures the relationship nature of neighborhoods. We always risk building a landscape and people are closer to each other, but they're just walking past each other. These are some questions I won't go through this. Feel free to look at this. It's described in more detail. I this is part of my research. It's what I look at and I look at a lot more detail around these questions but I wanted to put them here because people probably asked them ask these questions in your work. I mean, just to bring this together, a flourishing society needs to be built on flourishing neighborhoods. We have a lot of big problems in our country, but as Dream of Gentry who is the focus in her work in Eastern Kentucky, Partners for Education says our big problems are best addressed through smaller local solutions and what can you do? And so my message to seeing you people is these are my 4 messages that I chose specifically for this audience. We need bounded neighborhoods, clear identities, clear boundaries, and they need to be unique. Think about it Italian cities. Every place has a unique architecture. Has a center, it has a uniqueness that people know that I'm in this neighborhood and this is places I go to meet people in my neighborhood and this is places I go to meet people in my neighborhood and I understand what's special about it. And I understand what's special about it. It should have its own schools, it should have its own schools, parks, main streets, special about it. It should have its own schools, parks, main streets, meeting places. You do need a diverse range of housing, parks, main streets, meeting places. You do need a diverse range of housing and a, amenities to ensure a diverse population. And the Sharek process, which is important part of work, should not be one-offs. There's to be something, it may not be called the Sheriff process, but this would be an ongoing way. To involve residents and have institutions that are built that nurture collective capacity and collective input into how a neighbor will evolve. And that will help bring people together. And so this is my book and I look forward to our conversation and the questions that follow. Thank you. So much. Thank you, Seth. That was a, a really provocative, presentation. And I want to remind people to use the QA function of zoom, and I think it's questions that you want to ask. But in the meantime, I wanna start off by asking a basic question. People have a different idea of what a neighborhood is. Lots of people think of it differently and there's many different definitions. And you're urbanists have their own ideas. So what are your, what do you think of or what are you talking about when you say neighborhood? So I have 10. I have 10 factors. It's not in the it's not listed, but I would say neighborhood cannot be too large. I would say it's in the thousands. Could be 2,500 people. It could be 5,000 people. Probably could be 10,000 people. It's not a hundred 1,000 people. So we should be clear about the size. Most Americans do not live in neighborhoods. And if you read and I hear I'm going to promote another book, if you read Emily Taylor's book on neighborhoods. Which is quite academic, but quite thorough and, and, and she is one of many people and she's not the only one who talks about how most of America is built. Denying the importance of neighborhood. So I would say a good neighborhood has has an identity. As a beginning and end has a reasonable size, has a center. Has a set of its own institutions. Ideally it should have a community school. I think it's very underrated how important community schools are. I mean that I won't talk about who runs the school, but I do think in my experience community schools are very important to incubate relationships because if people kids walk to school and the parents are involved in this school and there's associations around parents and schools. It's an incredibly good incubator of relationships. So I would say that's that, I would say it's only meeting places, third places could be restaurants and my neighborhood we have 3 restaurants. We have a supermarket. These are places people can meet. There's parks, but the key thing is it could be libraries, it could be other things. It should, it should, if it doesn't have an identity and it doesn't have a center and it doesn't have a beginning and end and it doesn't have institutions and activities that people can gather. It's probably not a neighborhood. If you just have a lot of very nice houses line up and down the streets, which is typical in American suburbia. And there's no place to meet. I mean, I know neighborhoods 10 min from here. Houses look nice. There's a lot of green areas. There's trails. There's no place to meet and because the county is huge. There's no town, there's no level of government. An ideal neighborhood should have some civic association and Ially there should be something about government that's place-based, which is not something we think about, but why not have government have place-based teams instead of just functions. All those things make for stronger neighborhoods in my opinion. So a neighborhood really it's mixed use. It's got a mixture of people in it. It's not got all the same kind of people. It's really got a whole range of society. Yes, yes. Yes. It's got quick places. It's got third places to meet. These are all things that, I think that people who are urbanist planners all think about when they think about the neighborhood. These are physical neighborhoods. I mean, it's the place where you live and it's in its place is connected to that. So why are physical neighborhoods so essential for the well-being of people living there? I think the key thing to understand in our society today is we built the landscape to isolate us. We've also built institutions to isolate us. If you read to Tocqueville, and I'm not sure how many people here have read the Tocqueville and you look at what he writes about America. This is almost 200 years ago. But he's certainly focused on the abundance of local institutions. If you read more recent work like Bob Putnam, Robert Putnam's books. Other people like him, they will talk about the abundance of local institutions. You can read, Alan Earnhardt's. The lost city which describes 19 fifties in the 19 nineties Chicago so people lived in an abundance of formal and informal institutions and the only way that happens on a level that affects and incorporates I mean, people is if it's local, our nonprofit sector is much more regional and national. It doesn't depend upon local volunteers. It doesn't depend upon local resources, our governments are often distant. So whereas people used to be embedded in lots of activities institutions with their neighbors and there was a sense of fraternity. That we are a member of some organization or multiple organizations or multiple networks and we had a stake in our place and we had a sense of agency that we could improve. The place and fast improve our lives and also improve the country. That sense of agency that people had in their neighborhoods, today there's like a void. There's the government, there are companies, you drive to shop. You might get served by nonprofit. And government is far away and what is local people have lost the sense of agency they've lost a sense of ownership in society and the country and I believe the only way to bring people together. And make people feel they have a stake. In our country is to make neighborhoods central. And that will give lots of institutions to for people to participate in feel that they can contribute to and that will increase relationships but also will completely change the way they view. Where are country is going and what they think of our country. And I think that will not only reduce social problems, it will reduce polarization and mistrust on the larger level. In your book you identify 3 kinds of neighborhoods. I'm resilient, fragile, and what you call middle neighborhoods. Can you tell me about these types and why they're important? First, I did not invent the term middle neighborhoods. Allen, Mailick or some I know Alan Malek has written a lot about that. So I don't take credit for that. I'm using the term and this relates to my work when I deal with fragile states I like to work on this continuum. And then I like to talk about the characteristics on this on the spectrum and the goal of my work is basically to help places shift from fragile to robust or resilient. And the middle is in between. So a robust strong neighborhood has lots of institutions have lots of social connectiveness have have basically lots of places where people gather. In the greater Washington area, the I think the most obvious place that that symbolizes is a place like Chevy Chase. I yesterday was in Tacoma, which is another neighbor and not many people might know this, but it's a place with lots of individuals that are volunteering and and involved with government they start a co-OP they're trying to make this change they're trying to make that change so a strong neighborhood may not have everybody activated but has a lot of people activated has an abundance of ways for people to feel belonging to participate. It attracts people to want to move there and there's a lot going on and you have no shortage of opportunities to feel good about your place contribute to your place and be involved if you go to a fragile neighborhood people are tend to be mistrustful with each other. Their social relationships are weak. They may be much more transactional. People may be, there may be people taking advantage of each other. If you're in a wealthy neighborhood, people just are isolating. They don't want to talk to, they want to hide behind their doors. They they do not want to interact and therefore you're isolated you may be in a wealthy neighbor with a lot of nice houses but you might as well just be living on an island, an island because no one's there to help you. No one's there to support you. And that's not a very good feeling. That's fragile. Middle neighborhood would be a place in between. Maybe not so stressful, maybe not so isolating, but on one hand but not as supportive with lots of institutions and ways for you to belong and contribute and the middle neighborhoods is where the best opportunity is to improve places because a few strategic initiatives could shift that neighborhood more to the robust or strong neighborhood, a very fragile neighborhood is certainly going to have a longer time horizon for change. We're gonna get to questions. We've got a lot of them, but, I'm gonna ask another and directly related to new urbanism, we have the concept of the walkable neighborhood. What is the role of new urbanists in addressing the social problems in America today in your view? I think walkability is great. I think density is great. I think they're not enough. That's my main message. Just because you live in a dense environment which with lots of sidewalks and small streets doesn't mean people No each other. Doesn't mean that people are supporting each other. I mean, there's a there's something about this the society or the culture of a place. That creates that dynamic. So new urbanists are only working on part of a larger puzzle and I don't expect them to work on the whole puzzle but to the extent that they build the landscape. This is like the second to last slide on my presentation. We don't just build for density and walkability. We should build places that matter, places that have identity, places that have centers. I mean, for me, I'm thinking my neighbor, my neighbor, certainly wasn't built. To be a new urbanistic model because we have basically lots of houses. The center that I talk about is certainly not beautiful. It's on the side. But because we have a lot of institutions, people walk a lot, people go to these places. It so happens we have community schools. It so happens that we have community parks. I mean a lot of these things are by accident but the one of the keys is we're bounded on 3 sides by green area. We know where this neighborhood starts and begin. We feel a sense of togetherness when there's some concern, someone starts a WhatsApp group for my neighborhood. There's a Lister for my neighborhood. There's a civic association for my neighborhood. There's lots of informal activity around my neighborhood. And so I think we can't just build, we have to build with this vision, not just of the built environment, we have to build with a vision of what it means for the built environment to encourage this type of social dynamic. And I've tried to give specific suggestions. It's not just about density and walkability. It's about fostering the sense of place, the sense of place, the sense of place, the sense of uniqueness. It's about fostering the sense of place, the sense of uniqueness. Each place should have a name. Each place should have places to gather. Each place should have a center. Each places should have institutions. And so on and so forth the more we build so that we each live in a village we want to villa size I'm not sure that's a great word but the more the landscape looks like a chain of villages that are connected but each of them are separate I think the more we will nurture. Relationships at scale. I'm gonna sort of take these questions. one, time in order. Many of them are good. And I can go as long as, as long as we need to here, Rob, as you know, I'll stay as long as people wanna keep asking questions. Okay. Okay, okay, well, Jordana asks, do you have any? Concerns about creating a delineated neighborhood. That that that might create friction and division. Well, if that neighborhood was gated and it only had wealthy people in it, I mean, people have created that landscape in many parts of the country. And one of our problems of neighborhoods, there's the racial problem, but there's also the class problem. I think so many people who are at the top of our society, they live separate from everybody else. The part of the country they live, the type of place they live, how much do they interact with the rest of us. And I think that is that is a serious challenge. So to the extent that neighborhoods are exclusive. On any of those lines. I would also say political. We want neighborhoods to nurture diversity. Want neighborhoods to work on building bridges both within neighborhoods and across neighborhoods. I don't want to say that to build delineated neighborhoods means that they are going to be isolated from other neighborhoods. That's really not what I mean. But to the extent that they're strong. And they have their own identity and they're connected elsewhere they can create bridging mechanisms within and they can keep bridging. Mechanisms to other places and to government. I mean, again, it depends on how you're designing. Mixed income housing and an opportunity for people from multiple classes and multiple backgrounds to live in a place that will not, that, that I think is the way forward just to address any concerns over exclusion or anything like that. No, Teen asks, how, how do you define institution? And I, I was thinking about this as you were talking, but the new urbanists often think about uses uses that are needed in a neighborhood. What kind of institutions are you talking about? That really should be provided in every neighborhood. So we need to we need to remember institutions are formal and informal. So a school is a type of institution. A parent teachers association or a church or a store. These are all These are all institutions. I would say that we need to have a broader definition. We need to think about the formal and informal. So, people who Who I mean, I'm thinking of my neighbor again. I'm at 9 10. I have a neighbor at 903. She goes around knocking on the doors of people every week or alone. I mean, that's not an institution in itself, but if she does that. And then it leads other people to do that. And then it becomes the norm. Remember institutions also mean norms. So to the extent that she creates a pattern. That leads to many people doing that, that becomes an institution. The inter-family network, something that's very really talked about in any circle that I'm familiar with in America on these problems. Inter-family networks are hugely important to the well-being of any household. However, we want to define family. Could be multi multi-generational families. It could be a single mother whatever it is. Inter family networks are huge. The stronger inter family networks are that is an institution. If you go back and you look at America before the sixties, you look at, like Robert Putnam or Alan Earhart's work, they will talk about all the types of institutions and some of these were just, I mean, if you read Jane Jacobs, the institution was people were on the on the front of their buildings watching the streets and the streets were safe because there were eyes on the streets. And if a lot of people do that, that becomes an informal institution that people are there, they have a sense of stake in the place. And they're there to take care of each other. That becomes an institution as well. I mean, in the way we live in America today, no one watches the street. Nobody cares for each other's kids. And the norm is just hide in your house, get on your screen, and don't talk to anybody else. So I want to argue an institution that would be good is let the kids go on the street and let people have eyes on the streets and let's have some sort of co-ownership of our neighborhood and that in itself is a type of institution. So I think we need to think about this term very broadly. And I think it affects how we think about design very much so. So the new, have often are working in suburban areas. We have this concept of suburban areas. We have this concept of suburban retrofit or sprawl repair. And we have this concept of suburban retrofit or sprawl repair, a suburban retrofit or sprawl repair, and a large amount of our metro areas are are suburban in form and so there is a question is is there any way to adapt suburban communities to your vision of what a good neighborhood is? And how would you suggest doing that? It's a huge challenge, of course. Our country has been built to isolate us. I think anyone who believes in new urbanism understands that is that is what we have done to ourselves. I think it's a important to think it's not only physical, it's institutional, it works on both levels. How we even design whatever institutions we have. But if I'm thinking about what to do in a neighborhood, I mean, certainly multi-function zoning. Certainly to the extent that we can create that we that we look at the physical landscape and we What is this is one neighborhood. This is another neighborhood. This is another neighborhood. And to the extent that we can build centers. I mean, I'm outside Washington. I think it's a somewhat imperfect example, but there's clearly is a plan to dentify around all the metro stations. So all the metro stations, there's been apartment buildings, there's been an increase in shopping to the extent that that's a center. My neighborhood is smaller than that. Except that there's a center. So what I would be doing is I'd be de-nating the landscape. I'd be looking for ways to create places to meet. It could be some neighborhood hub. It could be. Some places where people could have activities. Is there a park? You got to start with something. You always got to start somewhere and you got to think this is a long-term endeavor. It's going to be incremental. Let's at least alienate by neighborhood. Let's look for places that could be centers. Let's think about what institutions can be established there. Let's think about. Creating places where people can gather. I mean, all these things are just a starting point. I think it's really hard because I know there's so many neighborhoods they, they look attractive, but they're basically house house house house house house, house, house, and there's nothing that brings the people together. Maybe in a cold to sack, you know your neighbors, maybe if you have kids you might know someone else in the with kids, but you could live there drive everywhere and never know a single person and that's that's like scary to me and there's nothing like that exist almost anywhere else in the world. So I would just start where you can and think about. Again, the map and then about places and then about incrementally changing these places so that they can have institutions and activities in those neighborhoods where people can come together. I wanna get back to these, you know, to the institutions, that you keep talking about and drill a little bit deeper because New Orleans when they're often they're planning neighborhoods. They're doing future planning for neighborhoods and they're thinking of uses and they're often thinking of the school and they're thinking of the church in the park and the main street. But what else? I mean, What should they really be thinking of in terms of institutions if they're getting creative? What are the most? Should should they be thinking more deeply about what institution should be planned for if you're trying to create a successful neighborhood, a strong neighborhood. Again, of course the challenge of course is the best neighborhoods nobody planned some of the most important informal institutions. People generate them organically day in and day out. I mean, I'm thinking of I'm thinking of, My daughter's best friend, my daughters in sixth grade, and she underwent chemo this year. And lost all over here, missed a lot of school. And then the neighborhood, I mean, we have a community school, but I'm just thinking the school, the neighborhood, people came together around the family. People came together around the kid. And in many ways, the year was a good experience because so many people supported her and her family, that is a type of we have a norm in my neighbor that we do those things and you can't build for that. So this is a really challenging question. But I would say again, If we go back to this original vision that people, people for all of human history, people lived in something like village like conditions. And those villages had certain things. And those certain things those institutions overlapped and they incubated a lot of other institutions that we don't see on the map. So if I'm doing this, again, it's not about just building what you described those schools and places to shop. I think it's about bounding the neighborhood. So there's a clear starting clear finish. Creating if you could create some sort of civic center. I don't know if that's a government center. I don't know if that's a center for organizations together. Things like that. So it's not just shopping and retail. The thing is every place needs to have its own institutions. If everyone is driving to a church that's not nearby, I mean, I was in Tacoma with this friend of mine yesterday and he was saying a lot of people in his church live there but the church actually is in a different place. And so that is, I mean, someone mentions blue zone. So blue zones probably has, they have very good institutions and they have very good relationships. So I would just talk about your building so that these places are local and that you're encouraging people to come together and it's not just about a center shopping district and things like that. It's much more than that. I would also say that you want to build uniqueness. What is the what is the name of this place? What is going to be special about this place? Why are people going to feel that that this is a really unusual, interesting place? Is it because of the nature? Is it because of the architecture? Is it because something about the arts that we're doing here? I mean it's hard to put your finger on one thing. But if every place has some unique quality and has things to sell and have places in the center where People are wanting to come and gather and they can incubate a lot of other things, not just don't just people meet and go home. Gotta be incubating more sustained relationships. The one specific suggestion I would make is the Sherrett process. Which from what I mostly see is not a continuous process. Could that be a tool to bring people together on an ongoing basis. People talk about associations or association of associations in the neighborhood, the extent that you have some ongoing process that people are a lot of people are engaged with to improve the neighborhood and creates a lot of interaction around people, that by itself would be a type of institution that could be left as a legacy. For the neighborhood. And we have a like a specific question that deals with, you know, specific type of neighborhood. And how do you encourage the generation of neighborhood characteristics you're championing. If the neighborhood is built out. And, bordered on other sides by neighborhood resources and institutions and these institutions are located across primary local roads. And the neighborhood contains none of them. In its own boundaries. It's a little complicated but Yeah. That's hard. That's a hard one. It's very typical of America. America is built to drive from point A to point B and go shopping. America is not built for people to meet in a neighborhood and to thrive in socially where you live. That's how we built the country. That's why we have these problems. So, I mean, I can answer that. I mean, again, my neighborhood. As an example, basically on one side of the neighbor, there's a small shopping mall. And I think of my neighborhood wasn't strong, that shopping mall would wither and people would go further afield and she only had the number of supermarkets that came in it did not succeed and they closed. And the same with some stores. I happen to see my neighborhood is pretty strong. So if you were on the edge, if there was some shopping on the edge, I would certainly be asking, could the shopping there be more walkable? Could that shop in the area be more connect to the neighborhood? Could somehow that neighborhood and that shopping be more not only more connected but have it be that shopping for that neighborhood. It could be that the center is not physically in the center. It could be on the edge, but because it was easy to reach to it was very it was very dynamic that people wanted to spend time there and it was maybe somewhat, it could be 2 neighborhoods with one center. I mean, that's not ideal, but it could be you have they brought in each side with the one center and that center was more dense and that center was more focused on like a neighborhood hub and more more of these institutions. Not just shopping. And it was designed to encourage the connection of neighborhoods on one or both sides to it. That would be a way to start. Noah asks, one hard part of neighborhood creation as a planner is there creating facsimiles of the things that you're talking about. And there's boundaries for neighborhoods. There's walls, there's property boundaries, there's non-government organizations, HOAs, parents groups, etc. However, these are clearly not informed that it's producing real community in many cases. How do we work with this reality that planners are dealing with and found in many communities and to try to create stronger neighborhoods. I think one of the challenges we have is that a lot of associational life in America used to be neighborhood or place based. And now it's not. They're like networks. They're like what I would call functional networks to achieve specific goals. I would say the more the institutions where the boundaries, for example, a primary school for primary school. The area that students come from to that primary school maps onto a neighborhood. Well, that's helpful because then the PTA of that school. In any parent involvement or student involvement with that school will match the neighborhood. I think too much of our landscape we built these associations or these institutions to be place to be divorced from place. And I think that's what's being described here. So I would certainly. Look to think about how we can encourage those to be more when I speak to church leaders for example my argument is your churches need to be more place based They need to be more communal. You have to stop thinking of yourself as a consumer product that people come in for 2 h and then leave and then maybe you're offering a few services. So I would be, again, this is beyond the scope of some of the some of the people's work here, but to extent that these institutions match neighborhoods, they won't be geared towards building community, but they will organically incubate it as opposed to if they're far-flung networks across many places, they're much more likely to be transactional and focused only on a specific function. If you had 6, 7 of those institutions and they were all based on one neighborhood. They would still have that fun, but then they would be overlapping and they would be incubating lots and lots of spin off relationships. That's what we don't have in our society. We're not incubating spin off institutions, spin off relationships, all these networks are for the most part very functional and they and they and they leave a great void in people's lives because of that. The neighborhood that I just left actually and I was living in for 25 years We had. You're talking about sort of the spontaneous, creation of neighborhood institutions, but somebody had the idea in 2,007 to get all of the the performers and the musicians playing in the neighborhood. Great idea. At one time on one date. And they called it Porch Fest and it is since spread around the country. But that is an institution that has really created a lot of community. In that neighborhood. I personally met a lot of good very good friends and in that one institution that takes place annually. So there's. It incubates. It incubates relationships and other institutions. It does. It incubates relationships and in a way that really nothing else does. Because there's it creates shared experience among people. So those kinds of institutions perhaps we don't think about as planners, but they can make a neighborhood stronger. Yes, yes, to the extent that we create hubs or places for them that will be very helpful. Right. In this case, the hub is the porch. And his porch is scattered around the neighbor. So it's kind of me. I wonder how that works in the wintertime. I hope it works well then too. Okay. Well, it's only it's once a year and it happens September which is the best weather that we have in upstate New York. So, you know, but if you can make use of these ports, I mean, in porches, oftentimes people don't do anything. In the winter we meet shoveling snow, but but porches are, I think, a real asset to a neighborhood if you make use of them if people actually hang out on their porches if when weather is allowed. I mean, whether allowing, but this is an institution. The kind of supercharges the power of the porch. If people take advantage, I'll use in my neighbor, we don't have porches, but when COVID struck. People started putting chairs in front of their house. They're still there in many cases. People put chairs in front of their house and people would meet in front of houses. And in my nearby, we have car ports. Now I never heard of a car port. I'm from the Northeast and when everyone had a garage and here they have carports which is a funny funny funny architectural thing but people started putting couches in their car ports and when the weather became cold they put heating units. So people would meet outdoors. With the heating unit covered by the car port and the thing is people just found ways to to, to meet people because we are connected to each other when you live in a place where people are connected to each other, they will find ways to Be connected and whenever there's a crisis they come together and I think for me when I look at America too few places are like this. And we have to think as does urban designers and, planners. We need to think, and anywhere in our country, we have to think about how do we make this much more the DNA of every neighborhood. So we're at the hour mark and we're going to be posting this video on Senews website probably tomorrow and and people if they have to go they can watch the full video when it is posted or see your questions answered we can talk a little more maybe answer a few more questions. And there was a question that had to do with renters. What about neighborhoods? Neighborhood health with the increasing trend of renters. This is a real estate trend. That more people are renting. Rather than home buying, it's probably going to change the mix in a lot of neighborhoods. Do you have any thoughts on creating strong neighborhoods? Resilient neighborhoods where you have more. Renters, a higher proportion of renters than, homeowners. I think that homeownership does make people feel a greater stake, but I think it's not owning or renting that matters. It's a commitment to a place. A strong neighbor typically has turnover of, let's say, 5 or 6% a year. Fraged on their book can have 2025% turnover. I mean those are very approximate. Every place is different. So if you're a renter I mean, I'm my neighbor. I look for a neighbor to move to before I chose my neighborhood and then I rented for several years before I was willing to buy I wanted to make sure I had the right choice and then I wanted to know where in the neighborhood I wanted to live. And we do have people who rent, even though a lot of people own. I think the key thing is that turnover rate matters a lot. If you have 2025% turnover, it's very hard to build institutions. It's very hard for schools to do well. That's much more common in distressed neighborhoods. But any place that has high turnover, it's a problem. So I'm not sure renting itself is the problem, it might make the relationship with the neighborhood more transactional and it might make people more more likely to leave. But if a place is dynamic and exciting. It could be the stepping stone to buying. And, I can think of somebody I know who moved to, some neighborhood in Connecticut. They were only planning on renting for a year. But it so happens they so love the neighborhood. She was committing I think an hour and a half to NYU to teach. And she so loved the neighbourhood that they ended up buying. So renting. Could go many ways. I think the most important thing is long-term commitment in the amount of turnover you have in the neighborhood. Okay. Tina asks, have you seen examples of the Sheriff processes ongoing? And connected to. A local neighborhood or local institutions. Or something like a Sherid process. It's, it's doing that. Of performing that function. When I was in Charlotte, I talked to several people about this. And I myself not not being in a new urbanist field. And less familiar with this than people who spend their lives working on this issue, but several people when I talked to them, because I was specifically asking about this said there were examples of a Sharete process being converted into some ongoing. What I think would be a more general case is some sort of neighborhood association. If you look at purpose built communities. And what they what they did in East Lake and elsewhere is they work with some sort of neighborhood association. And they seek out, I know a lot of people work on neighborhoods. They the ones that do it well, they look for or they create some platform where people can come together where they have some method of inquiring about what the needs and the desires of people are. They include them in some degree. I mean, I have a chapter on an organization in Detroit, which is not building. It's building a neighborhood. It's not changing the physical landscape. And that organization had a lot of trouble when it first went into that neighborhood. In Detroit because it didn't build relationships, it didn't build trust and it was seen as an outsider and it was it wasn't welcomed and then that person had to make a course correction and learned that he had to make break bread, yet to hire people from the local community. He had to create meet the the senior people or the most respected people in the neighborhood and eventually had to create an advisory board. So he went through a whole learning process and established the series of relationships and institutions around his work to ensure that it would be directed to a certain extent owned by the neighborhood and it would be it would be well and messed in their bud. So I think Anyone who's doing a project especially if it's an existing there but with high levels of mistrust should should have to follow a similar process to what life remodel did in Detroit and it's about building trust. It's about working with people. It's about establishing whether to show red or some sort of advisory network advisory board. And that board did not dissolve when his project was up and running. That board continues. It meets regularly. They discuss various issues. In fact, the established 2 boards, one of these senior statesmen and one of students because they particularly want to appeal to students. So they literally have a board of students. Getting their feedback as well. So I think there's many ways to do this and it can be ongoing and could be very helpful. You know, as a newervenist practitioners, planners, they're often gathering data on places because this is part of the process of getting to know a place before you do a plan. But it may focus on economic data, you know, that's the obvious stuff to get demographic and economic data, but You advise people gathering data. To focus on things like social norms, family dynamics and the quality of local institutions. Why is that and how do you gather this sort of information. It's very important. That we we use data, but we have to use the right data. And I think For the most part, we tend to use material or economic data. And I certainly think that's important if people are homeless or people are poor or people, something's wrong with their houses. I mean, this is all important. But I want to encourage people to think that flourishing has a material and a social dimension. My book. Purposely set aside. Most or all of the economic issues. It comes up from time to time, but I was trying very hard not to focus on the material because a lot of people are focused on the material. And I felt that there's very little focus on what can we do to improve relationships. That's what I wanted to write about. That's the ask me my obsession every night. I'm trying to trying to deal with this one question is how can our relationships be better so our societies will be more we will thrive more that's what I've done for 20 years and and so those indicators I would think that people would need material indicators as well, but I focus on those because I think those are examples of of social flourishing and And they're not always easy to gather. You could certainly measure the the density of institutions. You surely could do something to measure the nature of relationships. I mean, some of this might be surveys, could be something that you do with desktop, somebody might be asking people, you surely could be looking at data on at the household level and then at the neighborhood level to try to figure out what is going on in terms of institutions on multiple levels. Some of this can be found easily, some of it requires more work. There are people who have spent a lot of time thinking about this. If you look at the ride steady work, he clearly was able not at the, work, he clearly was able not at the neighborhood level, but he was able to get This data at the. Zip code level. So this data is out there and there's different ways to find proxies for it. And if people wanted to know more, I mean, they should, I'm happy to answer this, but I would certainly create a scorecard and I mean the material may matter on one side to socially matter on other side and I would encourage people to look for either the the things that I mentioned or proxy some of it's available online some of it's available to government some of it only comes out once a year but these are things that we certainly can find and we certainly can look at and gives us at least some sense about how well a neighborhood is doing. I mean, I would look at local businesses, local businesses, it's economic but it relates to also creating relationships because local businesses, local restaurants, local associations, all of this do relate as well of the things that Rob mentioned. Okay, well I think we've gotten to the, the end of our questions. This has really been a stimulating discussion. Clearly, urbanists and planners have a lot to learn. About how to create stronger neighborhoods in a way that's, you know, beyond just the physical aspects of the neighborhood. And how those 2 can be linked together. But this has been a, a really interesting discussion. Thank you, Seth, for doing this with us and thanks for reaching out to seeing you and being part of the Congress this year. So, you know, we will, I guess people can, get in touch with you if they have additional. Please, please find me. They can find me at my website, Seth Kaplan. Org. They can find me on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to answer any follow up questions and I'd be happy to continue the conversation any in any way it would be. So thank you so much and it's a it's an honor and a pleasure because I think so highly of your work and the work of this field. Okay, thank you, Seth, and thanks everybody who, who tuned in and took part. Have a great day.
