Neighbours
When a new suburb, town or estate is established, planners must take a great deal of consideration for how neighbours will interact and the amount of community spirit it will produce. But the question is whether high community spirit and a high level of neighbourly interaction is desirable or needed in today's society as households become more independent and move further away from each other. This is a question that I ask after reading three famous studies by Michael Young and Peter Wilmott (1957), Lyn Richards (1990) and Mark Peel (2000) on neighbours and how they interact in different housing developments.All three readings discuss different aspects of neighbours and the connection between them, but the universal question that seemed to be attempted to be answered by all was what the causes of changes in neighbourly interaction were.Young and Willmott's classic study was conducted from 1953 to 1955 by taking a selection of working class families and residents from a borough in East London, Bethnal Green, and moved them to a new estate on the outer fringes of London, Greenleigh, to see how they interacted with their neighbours. Intriguing results ensued, which deserve further discussion. (They stated that they were not exp
He finds the balance between neighbourliness and privacy rather clumsy but it would be less of a problem if "the people most easily forced to sacrifice private space for the uncertain benefits of rich community life are always most often those who lack the means to obtain the secluded alternative. She too noticed that at the new estate on the outer fringes of Melbourne, there was actually "a great deal of neighbouring" and that 'neighbourly things' were often defined as 'little things' by the residents. Upon further reading, however, it became apparent that the cause of the 'unfriendliness' may have been due to the lack of similarities that they had with each other, rather than an inherent or apparent animosity. Peel suggests that more people in the past lived in situations where strong community spirit via support, exchange and interaction were an essential factor of getting by. ecting the results that were observed and I will discuss their findings. )The main subject that Young and Wilmott address is the wider family as 'kinship networks' and how strong it is in the inner city. Young and Wilmott noticed that at Greenleigh, there was a challenge to live the life that their new house suggests. It seems from Young and Wilmott's, Richards' and Peel's studies that a neighbourhood could be a substitute for kinship or large family ties. It then becomes a competition as they watch each others home to have and do what the neighbours do but better. The older have been through all of this earlier in their lives and want to settle down in privacy and not be disturbed. An interesting point that Young and Wilmott discussed was that all the residents' complaints about their neighbours shared the attitude they complained of. As such, they were very different communities to start with. It can't be expected for residents of a new neighbourhood to make good neighbourly connections straight away, but if careful and proficient plan and design are applied, a pleasurable private and public community life will follow. I thought from this observation that it seems like that will bring similarities to the new community and it could be building block for a stronger community in the future.
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