Why should we stop with neighborhood? Why not to implement the systems that help people nationwide? Standard school program, nationwide preschool system, single payer health system could do a lot of goods for many folks, independently from what neighborhood they were born.
76
I grew up in a neighborhood that was safe, modest incomes, neat and clean and where we watched out for each other. As children we did not have to set "play dates" supervised by a parent, counselor and an armed security guard. There were few if any dual income families but everyone had a family car, took a vacation and we had Parks & Recreation sponsored activities in the summer. Little attention was paid to political differences or what church one went to or not.
David you preface your narrative with " If you’re trying to improve lives..." That is the problem today, there is little interest in improving lives other than selfishly our own. No one hates the average people living average lives in average neighborhoods let alone poor ones like the Republicans do. They have contempt for neighborhoods other than their own plush gated ones. They don't care about crumbling infrastructure as they live in pristine surroundings. They will not support living wages so that we don't have to have dual income families. They don't support our public schools or universal health care. They don't support Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid or school programs that help feed hungry poor children so they can focus on their studies and not their empty bellies. So the big question David is just when are you going to come clean and denounce the GOP and join we people who care, trump and his minions don't and never will. The GOP is evil and decadent, time to change your allegiances.
18
"cream skim" or do you mean "skim cream"?
Sorry, this confuses me, but I like the imagery.
6
Kumbaya Conservatism.
There are no atheists in foxholes, and there are communitarians filling out Medicare and Medicaid applications. In other words, give me comprehensive systemic solutions to universal problems like healthcare and retirement.
So tired of brilliant local ideas and their breathless gurus and fundraisers.
5
Thankfully one person at NYT is writing and thinking beyond Trump. As someone who didn't quite make it once wrote, It takes a Village.....
13
So, you are saying that a "social contract" is a good thing - but you cleverly limit that to the local level. Why is it that you Republicans cannot admit that a social contract is also needed at the state and federal levels: i.e. good,well-funded k-12 schools, affordable universities, equitable law enforcement, universal health-care, support of the elderly that comes without continuous threats to its continued existence? Why is it with you in the GOP that "society" is good, but "socialism" is the worst form of evil?
12
I wonder if Mr. Brooks's "neighborhood" is a so-called gated community, walled off from the "community" with a fascist-lite HOA in control. (But hey, there's a nice pool!)
This is so tiresome listening to Brooks’ ideas for changing the world, one kind word or deed at a time. But, what the heck, it can’t hurt. So YOU should start reorganizing YOUR neighborhood so that YOU and YOUR NEIGHBORS can pull yourself up by YOUR bootstraps. At least, Jimmy Carter, knows if your going to advocate change one house at a time, you need to roll up your sleeves and show up with your hammer. Which neighborhood will Brooks be helping this weekend. A Cheshire cat grin and some smug advice in a newspaper column has no credibility in my book.
10
Nice work Brooks - the lone voice in the NYT that doesn't pound the victim mentality home in piece after piece!!!!
Thank You
9
Cut off your bootstraps, folks . . . don't need 'em anymore.
1
I don't where David lives, but he needs to get out more often. He lives in a conservative bubble.
3
Fixing America starts from the neighborhood up?
Yes, and fixing the Indian reservation starts from the reservation up. Yes, if the Indians would only get organized they can go back to their former lifestyle or surge off the reservation and up into American life in all its vast freedom. Right.
God help America. Power in America appears largely held by a bureaucratic, managerial, elderly, number obsessed, sterile culturally and intellectually, always intrusive, legal/business jargon class which tries to keep the young in as prolonged an infantile state of mind as possible, and tries to control as much as possible people between the ages of 20 and 50, hammers them with work, tries to keep them as urban and away from nature as possible, tries to keep them locked and watched and under dominant forms of communication except of course for books, tries to keep them screwed to dominant forms of entertainment when not at work, tries to isolate and control people and keep them in box-like row of houses, is always obsessed with whether things are "safe" or not, creates a culture where the dominant cuisine is fast, where all art is primarily for children or the very young (music) or increasingly escape into fantasy (acting/film), where committees with respect to everything are organized from the top down then we are told finally much can occur by organizing a...neighborhood committee.
Freedom in America is largely consumption. You breathe and cough until your soul wastes and dies.
2
At 80 years of age, and I still miss Mr. Rogers.
6
No mention of places of worship -- churches, synagogues, etc. -- as important parts of "social glue"? Libraries are good and all, but they're nothing compared to churches. The decline of church-going (including by me) is removing an critical pillar of community life, with no clear replacement.
12
Some might look at those neighborhood maps and see how local, state, and federal initiatives have turned neighborhoods into prisons for poor kids. First of all, despite the variability in average incomes for poor kids who grew up in these neighborhoods, the reality is that some averages were bad, others were terrible, and still more were HORRIBLE--you could hardly find any that were exemplars of upward mobility, I'd say "less bad" is the best you can find. Second, development, housing policy, red lining, municipal law enforcement, gerrymandering, incarceration, regressive taxation, school district spending are among the neighborhood-to-state-to-federal forces that trap poor people, some more than others.
6
A subtle effort to distract from the enormous importance of the upcoming elections for all aspects of our life, including communities. You should write a column a few days before the election on the importance of opioid parties as proof of the health of our local communities.
1
By now we should get the idea of these Brooks essays. What matters is the local, the community, the random acts of kindness. See how nice that sounds. And since you called your mom or helped out at the YMCA you don't have to worry about that voting thing. That doesn't matter. The Democrats and Republicans, Trump and Clinton, they are all the same so just let the GOP rule everything and Trump do whatever he wants. We have Kavanaugh now to take us back to a past where everything was fine and loving, you know in the 50s on TV. So bake a pie for the neighborhood and let us get on with making America authoritarian.
9
Saving one at a time may not work for starfish but it sure works for plutocrats. And this has been the goal of the consertive movement for the last fifty years. The role of the federal government has become the care and feeding of each and every precious plutocrat, the rest of us can stay in the hood and fend for ourselves. Perhaps this is the source of the contempt for 'community organizers' displayed by the right.
11
As nice a man as David Brooks may be, I feel he is also a man who rarely leaves his comfortable, upper class life. He may write well and be thoughtful and well read, but he is painfully restricted in his experience of our country (and the world). I think, first, he needs to pack a small bag and get on a Greyhound bus that makes a lot of local strops and crosses the country. Even if he just stayed on the bus and talked to people who got on and off and observed things, this would change his life and he could start writing things worth reading.
32
Not every neighborhood is a community, and not every community is a neighborhood.
11
A good example of neighborhoods working together to solve local problems is the Oliver neighborhood in East Baltimore. At one time, nearly every third house was vacant. Today, only 68 of the approximately 750 abandoned properties that existed at the start of the project remain abandoned. A vibrant, affordable neighborhood is now arising. This house by house revitalization effort arose out of the tragedy when seven members of a family died when drug dealers set fire to a home in 2002. Local clergy and residents subsequently joined forces with Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) to form a neighborhood centered partnership to revitalize the area. This neighborhood led effort is an example of what can be done when engaged citizens work together to solve a local problem. Thanks David for this article
14
@Kim Thanks for sharing this uplifting account of how people can pull together for a common good.
6
Brooks states that many of our social programs are based on the social change theory of helping people only one at a time to improve society. False! Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, etc. etc. help the "many" but Brooks is just perpetuating ideological dishonesty.
3
@Peter Kernast, Jr
I'm so happy you noted this as well! I've noticed so many of Brooks's columns start with a false premise and move on from there.
David, poor poor David. Reminiscing about what used to work to some extent is not only NOT contagious but you risk exposing yourself as an archaically wishful relic of bygone days, a dinosaur of a sort, holding out hope that people who coexist in communities actually care about the other person's well being.
Don't you get it? Neighborhoods were being phased out long before the digital age and texting came along. Grotesquely gerrymandered districts have brought about the segregation that is prohibited everywhere else, silencing folks who might have pushed for those things that turn idle youth into productive citizens. Nowadays line items in budgets make it unnecessary to be concerned or alarmed about social ills where we live - or wherever the other people live for that matter. I could take a page from the dogma espoused by the supporters of #45 to tell you that if you don't like it here you should go back where you came from. But, instead of being offended, you would most likely reply, GLADLY.
1
The business of America should be producing healthy, educated, productive Americans.
What else should a country do?
It just makes sense.
Do you think if our politicians were given the following choice they could come up with enlightened policies?
*figure out the most effective programs and neighborhood level outreach to help ensure that every American can attain their highest potential* OR we'll cut off your thumbs.
I bet that would focus the mind.
I bet that would lead to a shift of wealth and resources from the 1% to the vast mass of Americans.
I bet you they would want to be VERY creative and partner with local groups that are doing great work locally.
Like this group:
Purpose Built Communities.
https://purposebuiltcommunities.org/
People need basic things.
Look around your comfortable neighborhood if you live in one.
Safety.
People with jobs.
Opportunities for healthy living.
Parks. Culture. Spaces where people can gather, shop, commune with each other.
Friendliness with neighbors.
Schools.
Read about that organization.
They understand the building blocks of healthy neighborhoods and they get it done.
Why not set the entire nation on such a positive course.
Think of the benefits.
Think of the national pride in ourselves.
Heck, it might even supersede the enmity we've fallen under.
And, we'd all keep our thumbs.
It's all doable.
Click that link.
5
I suggest that "neighborhoods" are the single starfish and the nation comprises the others...
1
In which David Brooks states the obvious and once again trots out a tired analogy to do the heavy lifing.
2
Hmmmmm? Who said that? “It Takes a Village”. That would be Hillary Clinton. I guess you’re finally getting around to adopting her point of view.
9
@Lisa Murphy Hillary said it, but it was an old African proverb - and they actually LIVE it.
4
The best part of Brooks' articles was GEMLI's comments .... now that's gone too!
1
Our President is covering for a gruesome murder of a journalist who wrote for the Washington Post.
Bone saw is a word we hear daily now.
Yet David seems to be stuck in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.
Too surreal.
14
So are you saying that all these stories from all these columnists have to be about the same topic? No point in reading them then, is there?
6
@KJ Khashoggi's murder is the news of the week or month. Brooks is taking the long view, because social change is a long, slow process.
7
Oh, no! So it DOES take a village? Hmmm.... going to lose your Republican credentials when and if that party ever recovers from its Randian fever dream.
4
Radical realignment, radical transformation. Blah, blah, blah. You know what would be really radical? If the GOP believed that government, well run, can help ALL people, and took steps in that direction. You blather on about neighborhoods, which is well and good, while GOP policies create a corporate feudal system. Stock the corporate campus moats with mean crocodiles to eat the poor. That's the answer.
4
@Jim There's too many silos on this barn . . .
1
“Conservative” pundits can‘t face up to the GOP monster they’ve enthusiastically created over the last 50 years... so they run back to ‘community’ and ‘neighborhoods’ and ‘churches’ as the solution to all things... ANYTHING rather than look their hideous creation in the face and call it what it is.
Wall Street, the 1%, and Big Business are bent on ruining America. And the world. And Mr. Brooks finds another angle on the ‘you're just not having enough bake sales’ as ‘the problem’.
Balderdash.
7
And being a lot standing Republican apologist, Brooks obviously could not just say 'It takes a village'.
Yes! Culture--like the common cold--is contagious. This news?
1
I remember when this column was a book called "It Takes A Village" by Hillary Clinton...
4
David exposes the great falseness of the Right in this column. Of course it is easier for small groups of people to figure out what is wrong in their area and figure out a plan to fix it. Most teenagers could come to that conclusion on their own without David's column. Additionally there were programs created at times when this country thought it would be good to alleviate the ills of poverty that failed despite money and effort to the contrary, but that shouldn't mean to end all such programs.
Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, democracy and the American government is an ongoing experiment. We should be able to try to fix the ills of the society by any means and from any and every level of government AND be honest enough with ourselves with these results be they good or bad AND try to repair the system or abandon it as the majority sees fit.
The Right, which doesn't want to expend the resources needed for this experiment, wants to demean this process and let things remain as they are. If you were born into privilege then good on you and unfortunate to be born into poverty then good luck finding your way out - it's not our job to make your life better. But it is. We live in a society founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those aspirations have been perverted to mean the individual but it was meant as a whole of society.
If a neighborhood determines a fix to their woes, the society should assist in its enactment.
6
Dark More politics runs Republican Washington, where they buy state legislators, state appellate court judges, who will vote their way. Dark money comes fro outside of the country. The politician leading the charge attacking the Press is running Mr Brook's party, and all three branches have a clear agenda, taking millions off healthcare and killing some of them, privatizing schools for profit with no public oversight, taking away bank regulations so we risk our saved money. Yup, I'm gonna give an apple to my neighbor.
4
No, the individual is the unit of change. Selfishness rules; how else but by examining our own selfishness will change come about? Have any of the sages or political leaders been able to end war, for example? War ends when the individual decides not to engage in it. Do not look to save anyone else. First, save yourself. I refer you to Nisargadatta, Ramana, Mooji, Rupert Spira and Toni Packer, among many others...
I wish someone had told the folks that built the interstate highways that destroyed African-American neighborhoods.. And told the folks who 'red-lined' African-American neighborhoods (our President is one of them). Those who made the GI Bill mortgage program a whites only program. There is a long history of breaking up neighborhoods of people of color in this country. This country has a long way to go to atone for this history.
8
@David
Today in this very publication is an article about wealthy people building a boutique hotel in a section 8 community’s garden/playground
3
@Anon Thanks for the info.
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
~Martin Luther King Jr.
8
So, in other words, it takes a village? Where have I heard that before??
7
Someone please take Mr. Brooks to a neighborhood, preferably a poor black neighborhood. Show him around, meet some folks. Ask the neighborhood folks how much they earn, follow them to their healthcare choices, check out the schools. Don't forget to visit with the neighborhood cops. By all means check out their voter ids.
8
Pardon me while I can't stop laughing. Having helped Republicans destroy communities and neighborhoods with racist dog whistles, voter intimidation and suppression, tax cuts for the super wealthy, starving anti-poverty programs, cutting Medicare and Medicaid and unlimited guns for every miscreant and mental case, Mr. Brooks has now discovered the joys of the neighborhood. As a ceaseless apologist for all thing Republican, he's always working hard to get HIS PARTY - the party of liars, thieves and in 2016, traitors off the hook. We are sick and tired of the party that hates government running the government, when basically, they belong behind bars.
26
@Ignatz Farquad A real republican does not apologize . . . he blames.
1
Mr. Brooks, Have you read "It Takes a Village?"
6
Let’s not forget that corporations are people or “individuals” too. On NPR this week I heard David Wessel, senior fellow in Economic Studies with the Brookings Institution say with the Republican tax cuts corporate tax revenues are down by 30%. Talk about being a selfish individual. They only want more tax breaks and want to keep wages low to their neighborhood of employees. To them greed is good. All the while the government deficit explodes because of lost revenue. Now Republicans are complaining about government spending causing the rising deficit, not the tax cuts. So what do they think will stop the ballooning deficit they caused? None other than cut our entitlement programs- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Programs that benefit everyone in your neighborhood called America.
7
Human behavior, as the Seattle experience shows, can be contagious in positive ways as well. But I think we need to recognize that this is not all 'leading by example.' Sure, kids that see their counterparts at school studying rather than joining gangs are more likely to study and avoid gangs. But parents in these neighborhoods are also more empowered to demand good schools, recreational facilities, and police protection.
So kids have greater opportunities. They are also exposed to higher expectations. In the Shoreline School district, kids are expected to go to college. They are offered classes to prepare them for that and counselors to help them navigate in that direction.
Seattle's inner city schools can't offer the same environment. Garfield (where I went to school) is the legacy inner city school, but it serves a gentrified area now, and has become a magnet (it's proximity to the University of Washington has meant that it always had a cohort of sons and daughters of educated people, but the school population was bifurcated when I was there).
Gentrification has forced poor and minority kids farther out, to schools that offer less in the way of opportunity.
2
Maybe, just a thought here, the mere action of going into a neighborhood to improving its physical environment for everyone by adding beautiful greenery, and gracious and uplifting artwork, a lovely fountain, sidewalks, and common green space would make a great difference. Much more difference that might be imagined by common thought. You know, allow beautiful actions to demonstrate, not just talk about, love and kindness, and character.
4
This is a powerful insight revealing another benefit of an existing local program in which mutual interest over money encourages cooperation between nearby individuals and organizations that might not otherwise ever interact.
Some of Chicago's 50 wards use their discretionary money for Participatory Budgeting -- a formal, resident-led process that identifies neighborhood infrastructure projects and puts them to resident vote for execution. My ward encourages individual projects to bundle together as a single ballot item for greater vote gathering potential. The catch is each bundle must include both the north and south parts of the ward because of the stark demographic extremes between them and the historically small voting activity in one part. The effect has been increased civic engagement and personal connections as well as resident-directed priorities on infrastructure.
3
Its good to know that DB has finally come around to "it takes a village to raise a child." Hat tip to HRC.
5
How about affirmative carbon action.
Lower income neighborhoods would have more trees planted in them and a carbon payments system would be implemented. The leafier neighborhoods would, because their trees were already there, before the baseline period started, get less income.
The less affluent neighborhoods would gain income they could use to improve their infrastructure or community centers, for example.
3
I would love to understand how this applies to smaller cities, too, where neighborhoods might be a few square blocks and not large geographic areas as in NYC. In our town, poor people move often and therefore end up in a different neighborhood often. The kids end up changing schools often and struggle with the transition. What policies can be implemented to help people stay put? And to help kids stay in one school even if they change home addresses?
3
In his zeal to promote boot straps conservatism, Mr Brooks unwittingly highlights how quality public schools and public libraries - both of which get crushed by the fake cowboy boot heels of his fellow conservatives - dramatically change lives and break the permanent cycle of poverty.
4
As usual the pieces by David are interesting and provide room for thought. However we are so shattered by the insane king in charge, I don't think the words can penetrate anymore.
I got so excited reading this that I could hardly finish! Years ago I was a community leader, somewhat of an activist in my community. I lived in a large artists’ community in Chicago that was in the middle of a poor Mexican neighborhood. There was an unacceptable line between the two. This was my home. I tried to bring people together with a newsletter, with art events. It’s not about money. I had no grant. I had time. I ended up with more volunteers than I could handle with one phone line. I had no idea that what I would end up with was “delight in community”. The delight in common history in a community is the same. It’s very moving. As human beings we need community. We need to understand how you do that. The lack of community inthe US, the lack of any understanding of how that works is detrimental to the whole country. Most Americans don’t want to know their neighbors, not knowing what that means. After having it I don’t want to live anywhere that doesn’t have a common understanding of community, village, good neighbor. So I live in Mexico. I locked myself out of the house, four neighbors stopped to help. The woman who owns the bakery has finally decided I’m okay. Juan Carlos died and I am sad, no longer seeing him sitting outside his store. The bicycle repair guy who has no speech because of a stroke, has a dog that likes me. I bring food. Marta has quit smoking. How wonderful! I need her outspoken humor. etc. I live in GDL.
4
@Susan Draftz You can still have an impact on the Pilsen community. See my comment a little later in this thread about a program the 25th Ward (aka Pilsen) Aldercreature, Daniel Solis, can join. Participatory Budgeting. Hints: one of the outcomes for us has been increased civic engagement among our Hispanic residents. But also expect those artists to be among the early adopters.
Please, please lets leave the republican/democrat lapels out of the comments. They are universally off the track. This is social commentary-non partisan. Like in: "It takes a Village to Raise a Child." We would all think more clearly if we would quit always seeing things through the partisan party lens.
3
Thinking in neighborhood terms is not effective if creeping authoritarians are thinking in national terms.
3
David's Washington fatigue, mainly due to right wing fanatics in his own party, is becoming tiresome. We need a sense of community at EVERY level of our complex nation; local, state, and national to be a healthy forward looking society for all. Obviously, there are numerous issues, such as national security, trade, environmental protection, and on and on that impact our daily lives but require a national consensus. And, regarding mobility and opportunity, all I can say is that both of my twenty and thirtysomething children benefitted from their mobility, getting greater opportinities in their chosen fields yet keeping their personal network of close friends more dynamic and durable as ever, regardless of the distances between them. As a political journalist, Brooks is becoming more and more irrelevant. I hope he comes to his senses soon, leaves the most regressive major party in history, joins the Democratic Party and helps this country move forward with facts rather than mythology.
1
I completely agree with David Brooks that the unit of change is the neighbourhood or the community where we live; the Swiss who run a direct democracy run this through their cantons, every decision is taken by the Gemainde or the “little people” they call it.
Change always starts with such small units, in fact if you have very large numbers you must understand that the unit of change is the square root of that number, this smaller unit makes communication to happen where responses would be invoked not mere uni-directions. But the people must learn how to communicate in a group, what questions to ask and how to listen.
Big change starts with such ordinary questions, listening and internalising a conversation. Most of the bigger problems that we deal with have no unique answers, it is simply a common good that must be served. Sometimes this could be that building a school instead of a mall or a park instead of a highway could be the best social choice that the unit of change would converge on, if allowed to be voted.
Ranked preference of individuals do not necessarily lead to the preference of the community or the most optimum preference. It is through conversations that the best is derived by the unit of change.
And what if the local community decides that the best way to help its people is to keep certain other people out?
3
Then laws would prevent them from going ahead with such a plan. Another example of how important it was that we were a nation of laws.
2
I live in the blue collar section of a blue blood town. You may say I live on the wrong side of the track. Still, I consider I am the lucky one because the neighborhood is so mixed. While some newer - but not the newest - comers got lucky because they got at various real estate bust, it is back up there. My newest neigbhor is a couple in the medical field.
The expensive areas have a barrier of entry, even if they are not gated; and the low income areas are trapped. So, I don't know. The schism continues
1
To paraphrase James Carville: "It's the environment Stupid!"
1
The starfish story is a weird way to start a column about connection. After all, apparently, he saved just the one. Why didn't he walk up and down the beach tossing back many starfish? Why didn't he get other people on the beach to help? That would have been more apt for this particular piece.
2
More wishful thinking. Does Mr. Brooks really believe that a better Manassas, VA neighborhood association could have prevented the Civil War? Good neighbors aren't going to paper over the fact that the Republicans have triple-downed on a strategy that involves stirring up rural white hatred of everyone else.
5
@Menelaeus
Truth.
Neighborhoods tend to be monolithic. Certainly, improve neighborhoods, but that only goes a short distance to dealing with the difficulty of convincing people that it's worthwhile to actively listen to someone who doesn't look like you do.
1
"It takes a village" Remember how everyone laughed at that? Now Mr Brooks is just discovering the concept and supports it.
2
Give people stable jobs and fair wages so a community can exist in the first place, or else this idea is DOA. We need to reduce the income inequality in this country to build stable 'hoods.
4
Agree with much said here, but also believe that while neighborhoods and communities are often the "units" of change, nevertheless national initiatives and programs are very often the necessary "agents" of change, e.g. the Voting Rights Act and the Clean Air Act and Medicare and... The Voting Rights Act is being subverted at the state and even the "neighborhood" level, as Mr. Brooks surely knows from reading this very newspaper.
1
The reality is that Donald Trump and his cult members think elections, public policy and government should all be Worldwide Wrestling Federation (WWF) matches, replete with one side smashing the other over the head with a chair while talking trash.
Roads, infrastructure, healthcare, science, the environment, reproductive freedom, income inequality, fair taxation, education, facts, free and fair elections do not enter their wrestling radar.
This will not end well for America or the world.
November 6 2018
D for reality; R for the WWF.
15
Stinks. Children do not get to choose their neighborhood. They are at the mercy of parents and adults. Focusing on one deeply poor neighborhood, I am told it has always been poor. It is accepted as such even though the costs are staggering: violence, police calls, evictions, homeless, hunger. The kids suffer. Why does the US prioritize failed 18 year, trillion dollar wars over our kids?
3
This article suggests to me that the prime mover of the young people's behavior is peer pressure and desire to belong to, and do like, others. Other than that, it is difficult to understand the statistical differences in crime between Watts and Compton. One of the clues may be lack of organized activities for the young in poor neighborhoods.
That's why we need universal education financing. Local financing doesn't work. There is no level playing field. There is no good excuse for that inequality. Period.
2
As a real estate appraiser with nearly 30 yrs experience, I would suggest a more refined understanding of what constitutes a neighborhood- an area of largely residential land use that enjoys common access to various amenities and supportive institutions - think schools, police/fire stations, places of worship, retail outlets, medical facilities, employment opportunities, as well as parks/playgrounds and other recreational areas.
As a North Seattle/Maple Leaf kid, I am familiar with both its Shoreline and Central District neighborhoods, and would strongly suggest that those elements noted above, and others, would account for the differences in outcomes for those two neighborhoods, and may point to improvements for those less-well situated neighborhoods.
1
It’s a shame more readers can’t appreciate Mr. Brooks for who he is, insisting instead that he join their parade rather than sit as he does, like Ferdinand, just quietly, contemplating the issues great and small that trouble our country. But he’s a Republican, for God’s sake, so don’t expect him to write a Paul Krugman column.
I for one think we should applaud and encourage all thinking Republicans—they have become such a rare breed lately—and hope they will someday see the light so blindingly obvious to us liberals. Maybe recognizing that it takes a village, I mean neighborhood, is quaint and well overdue, but it is a step in that direction. And that is something we should all be happy about.
9
Foreign dictators taking their cue from President Trump's "fake news" rhetoric, torture, kill, and dismember journalists, including one employed by the Washington Post and living in America, but "the neighborhood is the unit of change."
The ballot box is the only "unit of change" the cesspool that is the Republican Party will understand, which explains its use of gerrymandering, voter suppression, Citizens United, dark money, and relentless false and misleading propaganda.
4
Dear, dear David-are you trying to save an underprivileged neighborhood child or could you also use this analogy to save an overprivileged Republican 1%er? Your symbolism week after week of sympathy for the underserved is honorable. I feel you would better serve our nation if you took a deliberate stand and separated your self for the people who do not care about the 99% of people who "deserve what they get". How are you voting this November? More of the same I imagine.
1
Not if you live in North Dakota without a street address.
5
all of david's ideas are of course very good. and, if you stop & think about it - are rather common sensical. there are plenty of such social demographic arrangements around the world ( the Israeli kibbutz system, at least in its original/ older version comes to mind). and there are others throughout the world. all one needs to do is : look around, learn how the same problems/ situations have been solved elsewhere - and devise one's own version to fit.
the problem however is that we're not the kind of open - minded people geared to operate that way. we think ( and operate) AS IF we know it all. on just about any issue David might bring up.
( universal healthcare comes to mind. preventing hijacking of airplanes is another.). clearly, when there's little openess for learning from others, when we have the "we know best" attitude-
little room is left for change and improvement. as we're approaching Nov. 6-th, with all the hoopla around it, one recalls the " hanging chads " fiasco during the Bush- Gore elections.
there was a lot of talk following it about how important it was to ensure for Americans the one most significant action participating in their democracy. hardly anything of substance was done. just look what Brian Kemp, the secretary of state in Georgia, is apparently getting away with !? . we've clearly got lots to learn if we want to really improve ourselves.
1
It’s just business summarizes the foundation of capitalism that regards people as individual inputs that must be disaggregated for efficient consumption. Why be surprised that neighborhoods disintegrate?
There's one thing I do remember quite well from my childhood that many children today will not: my family and a good many others were able to afford a nice house in a nice neighborhood on one income. My parents weren't so stressed out that they couldn't be parents. They were able to save money for the future on one paycheck! We didn't take luxury cruises every year, have dinner out at expensive restaurants every night, or buy expensive clothes. But we had a decent life. So did the other people around us. We even had time to say hello to each other.
We were often home doing chores around the house: mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, doing the laundry, cleaning up the house, etc. And if we were outside and our neighbors were out we said hello. There were children outside playing. We knew each other. Today that doesn't happen. We're all too busy working to pay attention to life outside of work or to invest in making new friends.
There are changes that we could make but our employers want us when they want us and we cannot say no because it will cost us our jobs and then everything else. Unions used to stand up for us but they aren't powerful enough now. When you are afraid of losing everything and you know that no one will help neighborly behavior is not the first thing on your mind. Before you can be neighborly you need to feel that you have the time. In America we don't seem to have the time.
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@hen3ry There are so many truths here. One problem that I have to reconcile is the notion that in the 50’s most women stayed home and there was one income supporting the family. In my neighborhood, a stay at home mom was an anomaly. My mom was at home and some days she was the only mom in the neighborhood. Most moms were out working. They were all struggling just to get by. So this hardening to the past is filled with contradictions.
Amy Klobuchar for President.
1
@Rich Pein I'm not implying that all women stayed home. I'm making a comparison here about the fact that there was a time when it wasn't absolutely necessary to have both parents working to ensure that the bills could be paid, the mortgage paid, and decent life had. Now, unless the family is very rich and can pay for quality child care, both parents HAVE to work. There isn't anyone at home or in the neighborhood who can keep watch on the children in a formal or informal way.
@hen3ry The human connection used to mean something. Now everything is monetized and valued into a time table. Who has the freedom and where with all to show empathy? It's a shame. How can it be changed? Vote the bums out in November.
1
This is just a general comment. I often do not agree with David Brooks, but I greatly admire his sincere dedication to trying to find and publicize the ways our country can come together instead of constantly describing how it seems to be coming apart. The former is less viscerally effecting than the latter, and probably gets fewer reads, but it is critical work in a time of such tumult and uncertainty.
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Jim P, in normal times, Mr Brooks ideas are all fine and lovely.
But given his platform, he's essentially provided brownie recipes to his readers while his country, the Constitution, voter rights and the very notion of facts and truth are being burned to the grand by the Grand Old Pyromaniacs and their Arsonist-In-Chief.
Mr. Brooks lacks any situational awareness, and given his megaphone, that's unacceptable.
He needs to join the Resistance barricades if he has an ounce of patriotism in his fossilized, nostalgic view of 'conservatism'.
He needs to stand up and respond to the right-wing coup d'etat that has thoroughly rejected democracy and representative government.
New brownie and banana bread recipes won't cut it.
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@Socrates it seems to me that Brooks has plenty of political columns creating space between thinking/traditional conservatives and the irrational nativists that now occupy the Republican Party. Mr. Brooks digs deep and leaves the partisan wars to others.
@Todd MacDonald
Mr. Brooks refuses to acknowledge a role for government in making anyone's life better. His persistent digs are present in every single article he writes. Today, it's "does the neighborhood control its own networks of care, or are there service providers coming down from above." Or, "imposing blanket programs willy-nilly across neighborhood lines."
What do statements like that even mean? If communities can get some cash, they could build a community center, a library, a school, you name it. That there may be 'guidelines from above' does not automatically negate the effectiveness, and, without government in some form, where does he expect the money to come from?
That's been his schtick for many years. He lives in a magical-thinking world where the right solution will present itself if we just link arms and sing 'kumbaya.' Well, 'kumbaya' doesn't pay for a community center.
Just because he doesn't employ hate rhetoric like so many right-wingers do doesn't mean he isn't a libertarian right-winger through and through.
I know Mr Brooks is trying to go beyond our partisan divide with columns like this. But how can a lifelong Democrat read this and not say "Come on! Cut it out!" Which party is more likely to support "palaces of the people" like public libraries, public universities and national parks? Which party nurtured and supported a President who was a community organizer, drawing together and explaining public programs neighborhood by neighborhood? Which party has a former President who has literally helped build hundreds of neighborhood homes with his own hands? I am happy to see a thoughtful person like Brooks grasp the importance of hands on local action in solving difficult problems. But I have two suggestions: give credit to those who have "walked the walk" for many years. And switch parties.
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I am sorry Mr. Brooks, but the state and the federal government has to help people and neighborhoods. The neighborhood library, church, or school can do good, but in the modern society they cannot do enough. We need to change the tax laws in America so that the rich burden more of the weight of public help. Housing consumes much more of a person's income than it did in the 1950s and 1960s, when the classic pillars of society could fill the gaps. That is simply not the case anymore because income inequality is much to great.
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@Anthony Well said. Only the government has the energy contained in dollars to change the inertia in people's lives. Approaching things on a neighborhood level would be like mitigating state and federal debt with a bake sale. Donor funds have not been well spent on programs nor efficacious. That they exist at all is a function of the abnegation of government by David Brooks and other conservatives.
It's a good thing FDR did not share this philosophy. If the neighborhood could have provided sustenance after a tweaking, Tom Joad would have stayed there. More FDR, less Ronald Reagan. There was nothing in the New Deal that was willy-nilly.
23
Thanks, you should have written this article. Privileged white people here need a reality check.
@Anthony
Mr. Brooks offered an insightful evidence-based perspective on the critical role of neighborhoods and community in making desired change. At no point did he suggest that there was no place for federal/state/municipal funding and programs. So why must the close-minded knee-jerk liberal response to such a thoughtful article be to dismiss his perspective out-of-hand, without bothering to address the merits of his position, simply because he did not parrot the liberal view that the sole solution to every societal ill must be income redistribution and massive/unfocused government social spending?!
Isn’t it possible that the optimal approach might involve more governmental spending but also greater neighborhood involvement control?? Why is very real possibility so threatening to you?
We all would would be much better served if we paused to listen carefully and genuinely consider any possible merit in perspectives of others, rather than immediately launching into a close-minded rant of our preconceived views.
1
Speaking of neighborhoods, I've personally witnessed two different neighborhoods that initially consisted of people who were relative strangers to one another transformed into communities of friends by the simple method of one person (or family) taking the initiative to organize once-monthly pot luck gatherings at a neighborhood home, with the host home rotating voluntarily among neighbors. The host family provides only the venue and some name tags; the guests bring the food and drinks.
The idea was warmly embraced by most neighbors, and has made an immense difference in neighborhood "bonding." After the 2016 election, we've avoided discussing politics at these gathering, for obvious reasons, but we've mostly remained much closer as neighbors than we'd ever been before.
This may seem too simple to be effective, but I can guarantee from personal experience that it works. For anyone interested in improving our neighborhoods and our society in general, I'd recommend giving it a try.
3
I do agree with the general tenor of the column, but I think "community" is a better word.
Why? Because it scales.
My home is in a condo complex. It's a community.
The complex is in a series of blocks on the edge of my city. This is also a community.
We have city-level events in Medford, like the annual Jingle Bells decorations--my city is where the song was penned. This is also a celebration of community.
The state of Massachusetts has done a great deal to provide care for its neediest. Even though sometimes people fall through the cracks, it is about community.
Some of our solutions need to be about the individual, but we need other solutions suitable for a community. You have to look through both lenses to see how one impacts the other.
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@Jacob Sommer Agree--and would add (begging your pardon) that Massachusetts, g-d save it, is a Commonwealth!
1
@K Swain No pardon needed for a good point.
My biggest issue with Massachusetts is the potholes. They bug me personally—and they’re a real problem for the communities and the cars we drive.
The missing word here is "community." Neighborhoods are places. Communities are groups of people who share values, including what neighborhood is chosen for residence. Those values have a chance to be encouraged in any direction, from proactive neighborhood advancement to passive 'not my business." Focus on communities and the potential to help individuals also increases.
8
This essay makes a sneaky move at the end when it starts arguing against programs that operate at larger-than-neighborhood scales, without having presented any evidence that larger scale programs don't work. If the neighborhood is more important than the individual, why isn't the state more important than the neighborhood?
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@Eric
hmmm...so thinking of a forest, what's more important--water? soil? air? plants? animals?; or in a body--lungs, heart, ? Brooks is not arguing about what's most important ( a question that shifts the mind from living nested systems to objects) but rather asking us to think about what is most effective at this point in time in this set of conditions.
1
It's not the neighborhood. It's the kind of people who choose to live there. A neighborhood filled with upward strivers and one with people who are content with their poverty will have very different outcomes, even if their incomes and other socioeconomic measures are the same.
It's about values and culture.
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@Jonathan Katz "Who choose to live there." But those choices are limited by income, skin color, language. Many people don't have as much agency and free will as others.
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Or as much money, transportation to where the better paying jobs are.
1
Dear fellow commenters,
Yes, we understand you hate Trump and the fact that the GOP is in power. Try to think beyond that to when you will next have power. America has problems that pre-existed the GOP and were just as problematic when Democrats were in charge. The exit of Trump will not solve anything in and of itself, it is a means to an end. What should that end be?
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Brook's argument is that many social programs have been less effective than we would like, and that outcomes vary wildly from neighborhood to neighborhood. Would we be better off if we gave more resources to be distributed at the neighborhood level, rather than programs delivered to individuals nationwide, one size fits all? The fact that we find such different outcomes between otherwise similar neighborhoods suggests that neighborhoods matter. We could make them matter more by decentralizing more of our programs, pushing the money and government employees down to the neighborhood level, where social workers can tailor solutions to fit needs. There are limitations to what can be achieved with faceless bureaucrats at the federal and state level. Given 21st century communications tools for coordinating and accountability, why can we not deliver customized government at the level of neighborhoods?
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Don't get so caught up in anti-Trumpism that we forget that the goal is to govern. We need to more successfully govern next time, so there will not be another Trump. His success was in part our failure.
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@Tom What you say makes sense. The problem, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but members of one party seem to have little interest in what Brooks calls “social infrastructure." Brooks reminds me of a co-worker who said "I was raised as a moderate conservative. I was a republican my whole life. I don't know what to do now. I don't recognize my party and I'm not a democrat." Brooks no longer represents the part of his party that is in charge. They are a tiny fraction. I like his optimism, but, really, is there any hope for a republican party that is more centrist?
1
I wish I had a chance to discuss this with Mr. Brooks in more depth.
The modern desire to design systems that are inherently scalable is sometimes self defeating. Improving socio-economic outcomes is only one possible application.
I've been thinking about a huge reforestation effort; planting trees in all those degraded lots and roadsides across America. If it was truly locally controlled it might really succeed. Some municipalities would want forests to hunt in, some to ride their mountain bikes, some would choose to fence it off as a native species-only preserve, others would choose to create ATV trails. Whatever.
We could let the people choose and count our blessings in the beautiful, healthful new trees.
1
The greatest antagonist to empowered neighborhoods are large corporations that corner the market on most goods and services while dodging taxes and keeping wages low.
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I believe this assessment is very important. I would only add that neighborhoods, which are more affluent or have developed a better environment for its local citizens should reach out to adjacent neighborhoods and work with them to “bring them up”. I particularly think about this with our local schools. Schools like those in my community could reach out and "adopt" schools in poorer districts and work with them to achieve a better schooling environment. Cities now adopt sister cities in other countries to exchange ideas and improvements: we should think the same way about our neighborhoods in close proximity. This can certainly be a win-win for the region.
2
@Ron Horn
Sister cities are just an excuse for government-paid foreign travel for public officials. Those relationships accomplish nothing.
Brooks seems maybe (being generous) 2 levels of organization above the child helping individual starfish. The lowest level of organization is the army of one (a single child, let's say). At level 2, the child might organize with family. Brooks usually comes in around level 3, the neighborhood/community. I have rarely seen a column in which Brooks proposes a level of organization beyond this third level. Indeed, he cautions against "imposing blanket programs willy-nilly across neighborhood lines."
So it's odd to me when Brooks says, for instance: "If you’re trying to improve lives, maybe you have to think about changing many elements of a single neighborhood, in a systematic way, at a steady pace." If we count "neighborhoods" by school districts, there are about 13,500 single neighborhoods in ~180 state school systems. There is nothing "systemic" about improving lives with bespoke solutions for each such neighborhood; it's little different than the individual scholarship model Brooks criticized at the beginning of the article. Higher levels of organization are required for the kind of change Brooks wants.
A child and an adult might both try to tactically aid individual starfish and that's great! But adult minds usually ask "how did all these starfish wind up here, anyway? Is something going on beyond my present geographical location?" Addressing the broader, strategic-level questions allows for more intelligent tactical decision-making. The reverse is not true.
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The importance of place cannot be understated. If we love our places, we won’t let small towns become colonies of big agribusiness and miners of natural resources, to be used and scuttled by strangers. By making local communities independent economically, we make virtues like love of your neighbor matter again. As Wendell Berry said: There are no unsacred places, only sacred and desecrated places.
2
Mr. Brooks states that both approaches need to be engaged in, save the neighborhood and save the individual. I believe he is arguing that working at the neighborhood level provides more bang and creates broader change, a change that could very well have a domino effect. However, he points out that Americans are not the movers, changers of location, that people feel they are and it is because of the lack of movement that neighborhood changing is that much more important.
Again, I want to thank Mr. Brooks for looking for answers, answers that can also have a positive impact on the body politick, though that does not appear to be his only goal for the current vein his writings have taken.
1
The starfish metaphor (brought to our attention first by Loren Eiseley as far as I recall) is cast in a negative light in this column to make the point that thinking in units of neighborhood leads to far better results than thinking in unit of 1. In most cases that is true (in statistics we say that a sample size greater than 1 is always better than a sample size of 1) but think of the starfish. The boy throwing the starfish one at a time into the ocean is the best thing he can do under the circumstance. Were he to think collectively and scoop up more than 1 starfish, it would cost him time and make the enterprise more unwieldy, leading perhaps to more deaths than otherwise. What this means is that we try to do the best depending on the circumstance. If the option is that lifting just one person up in a neighborhood is the only practical option, then that's what we do. On the other hand, if the option is there to lift many lives together, then by all means let's do that, because that is better than changing lives one at a time. For most of us as individuals dedicated to social change, we are more effective lifting one life at a time, given our constraints of time and money. For government programs, more emphasis should be given to lift neighborhoods collectively, as David Brooks suggests.
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Jane Jacobs established this long ago. Where is the news in this article? While the selective comparisons Mr Brooks makes make it appear that the problem is one created by left-leaning charities he conveniently ignores the right-wing mantra of rising by pulling up boot straps. Why does Mr Brooks ignore the national calamity caused by his Republican friends embrace of Trump-like facism for the cherry picked star-fish of an example of localism?
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So, it takes a village afterall. Sounds familiar?
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Historically, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution have had the greatest negative influence on community. Apparently we need to live and work in the same neighborhood in order for our work not to be 'immoral'.
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David: Good column, food for thought. However, this fact is almost funny if you are trying to prove something.
On April 1, 2010, 44 percent of low-income black men from the Watts neighborhood of central Los Angeles were incarcerated. But just 6.2 percent of the men who grew up with similar incomes in central Compton were incarcerated on that day.
It's up there ,or down there, with--I stayed at a Holiday Inn Xpress
Clearly, by ‘environment’ Brooks doesn’t mean the topography, or the soil, or the weather of a place; he means the kind of people who live in it. What his prescription amounts to, therefore, is little more than a tautology: get the population of a place to behave better, and they will become better behaved population.
2
Republicans look at the dying starfish on the shore and just say,"Ew, I'm glad I'm out in the deep water in my half a billion dollar yacht."
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I like the idea of it takes a village 2 raise a child. But not all villages r equal. Some r more equal than others. Even when u get neighborhood groups 2 help out, the difference they make in 1 area is a drop in the water compared 2 the dif they make 20 miles down the road.
Realistically, tho, ppl can try the very best they can 2 make changes where they live. And then the makeup of the other ppl they live w will decide whether more changes come about.
This may sound like a silly ex., but as a kid raised in a NJ suburb going 2 public scl, my teachers from elem thru HS made efforts 2 put me (& others) in other classes, gave add’l work, added 2 our edu’tn such that ult’ly we had the op 2 go 2 Top colleges.
My nephew, going 2 public scl in NYC, is not getting similar help, altho these days, w the internet, etc., there must b so much more avail 4 bright kids. Who don’t get into the magical G&T programs w only ‘x’ # of spaces. I easily get t’ prob w not enuf space 4 all kids; I don’t get y the teachers can’t give t’ same small bits of xtra we got when younger. Even if t’ classes were bigger, it could exist as part of t’ curriculum. (& his class isn’t bigger.)
As per ur starfish ex., the passerby could have joined t’ boy throwing t’ fish back & soon a grp cld have formed, say, a mvmt of sorts, 2 help save t’ dying fish. & since this is a metaphor, t’ same can work in all those villages ment’d above. Gen’ly t’ most imp req’mnt is at least 1 indl w good community skills. Like Obama.
Mr. Brooks--no matter the value of the rest of the column, you blew the starfish story. Loren Eiseley, the great naturalist and writer, told it quite differently. Look it up, you might be enlightened.
Let's just get rid of national government. Forget the "United" part of the United States of America, and the "America" part too. Heck, get rid of the "States" too. If "neighborhoods" can meet the needs of all the residents, cities and counties can make the few laws necessary to arrest murderers and thieves and collect a few pennies in tax to pay police, judges and jailers and pave the streets. Volunteers can put out fires and people can dig their own wells for water and share water with their neighbors who can't afford to dig a well. Home and church schooling for the kids, of course. It would bring us all so much closer together.
4
So I guess David’s message is this: Since the GOP is busy cutting taxes to the rich, increasing deficits wildly and calling (again) for severe cuts to entitlement programs to pay for their tax cuts and deficits, we should all look to our local communities and neighbors for help to protect us from the Republicans.
Will David’s “Centrality of Place” pay for a minimally decent retirement and medical care once the Republicans have finished make the rich richer and deconstructing the federal government? I guess local churches, food banks and non-profit medical clinics in the neighborhood, none of which receive federal dollars, will fill the gap—-right, David?
Republicans want to shrink the federal government by starving it of tax dollars, so that the power returns to the uber wealthy and large corporations. The rest of us will be left to beg for their scraps as we try to make ends meet while living in Mr. Brooks’ mythical neighborhoods
This column is a bunch of claptrap. The real story is the Republicans’ vision of “centrality of wealth”, not “centrality of place.”
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No, it is about money and taxes. I grew up in the 1950's in a great neighborhood in the Bronx. But, the real reason we could focus on one another is that every dad had a job. Housing was subsidized or rent controlled and we lived a stones throw from a MUNI hospital. Check the marginal tax rates for the rich in 1959. You'll see how NYC, NYS and the Feds paid fo all we enjoyed. P.S. The subways were a dime and they were highly reliable. It was the continuation of FDR's New Deal. They were NOT the good ol' days. It was part of a plan to everyone to enjoy a middle class lifestyle after WW2. EVERYONE contributed a real fair share. It was not "place". It was the system. The rich. led by Republicans "broke" it.
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@Mark Life was not so good for the "rich" in the 1950's - you don't see big fancy mansions built in that time - when I was a kid I looked at the huge houses from before 1929 and wondered "why don't they build them like that these days (1960's and 1970's) - well, the rich were not so "rich". You said "The rich. led by Republicans "broke" it" - some might say the "Republicans FIXED it."
I totally agree with your assessment.
Also, I wonder when Mr. Brooks is going to invite someone from the "wrong neighborhood" to come live in his neighborhood?
or, better yet, Mr. Brooks could move to the "wrong neighborhood" and be a "shining example."
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Mr Brooks has disappointing suggestions for fighting the fascist government that destroys neighborhoods and
Is doing so with an angry cultish selfish electorate
The one thing needed in our government is honesty first and representation of their citizens.
Since the days of 1950/60s
Communities have been decimated
Why.....racism,elitism,hubris,avarice
And the community revitalization movement was a misnomer for the communities you describe
Mr Brooks, I don’t know where you grew up but believe me ,the neighborhoods I grew up in were a real melting pot and we got along.
I think we have to stop trying to change your wrongheaded idealism.
Vote. We may be at the end of our run as a country “of the people , by the people , for the people”.
Those of us who grew up in the post war golden age know our progeny have no idea how it felt to know every person a mile in both directions in a small manufacturing city.
I am truly sad.... for us.
6
Mr. Brooks, I’ve offered you this invitation before.
You want networks? Come to Ithaca, a definitively liberal college town in the Fingerlakes region of New York State.
We’ve got networks of volunteer organizations, networks of book lovers, networks of dog owners, networks of school parents, networks of gardeners, organic farmers, potters, teachers. And even some churches.
Of course, you should know that our Republican Congressional representative, Tom Reed, ridicules “Extreme Ithaca Liberals” on his website in order to excite his “base.”
So you might not be perfectly comfortable here.
But we’ve got some great restaurants. Lots of waterfalls and hiking trails. You like Thai food?
Welcome.
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More conservative nonsense. This piece is trying to get people to stay in their neighborhoods and out of the rich white places where people like Brooks live. And instead of taxing the wealthier people and spreading it around to help those in the poorer, repressed neighborhoods, everyone is on their own. Each neighborhood can pick themselves up and grow on their own. This might work if we started from scratch without the economic disparity. But, when the schools are awful, the jobs are lacking, the transportation is broken, it is much harder to get ahead.
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"On April 1, 2010, 44 percent of low-income black men from the Watts neighborhood of central Los Angeles were incarcerated"
How many people live in that Neighborhood? How many were detained in one single day? Something must be wrong in the data presented by Dr. Brooks; unless we're talking of micro-neighborhoods, or military type raids targeted to a particular people.
While neighborhoods are critically important, they are more and more affected by outside forces that pull them apart or bring them together. The play "Sweat", now playing in Philadelphia, is the story of how Reading, PA was pulled apart by outside forces and never recovered. David, two good books that explore the factors that affect neighborhoods and what leads to revitalization is "Our Towns: a 100,000 mille journey into the heart of America, by James and Deborah Fallows, and The New Geography of Jobs, by Enrico Moretti. Basically, revitalization is a combination of the right things in place and luck! You should use these books to write about the factors necessary to revitalize a neighborhood (or small town), and why so many neighborhoods will not be able to revitalize themselves without outside help and support.
2
As Reagan famously said, there you go again. Of course a community will benefit if its citizens work to make it better. That still might work if there were no forces working to defeat the well meaning efforts of local people. That describes the spreading concept of gated communities, which make their own rules and are well heeled enough to ignore the surrounding world until they drive out into it. But consider a ghetto (see Rothstein's description of Lawndale for example), or in olden times the slave quarters on a plantation, which function better when organized even with the constraints that exist. I'll stop by mentioning that you really stepped into it when you mentioned swimming pools.
1
This reminds me of the metaphor of the priest, the velociraptor, and the panda.
The priest grew up in a rich neighborhood in Palo Alto, the velociraptor in a lower middle class part of Oakland 12.7 miles way, and the panda in San Francisco's Tenderloin, equidistant to the other two, where every third kid went to jail for extortion or grand theft moped.
The priest earned $10,000 more than the raptor. The Panda was destitute.
Income difference divided by mean per-mile-distance results in the Neighborhood Watch Well Being formula, stipulating that local environments correlate at 90.4% with income, health, and civil rights march attendance frequency (adjusted for late converts to Evangelicalism and same-sex lifestyle).
Then the Panda then moved to Norway, whose policies as we know place it high on OECD data-rich measures of health and well-being. His "neighborhood" ranks higher than the USA in democracy, civil rights, and income equality. He stopped dealing Advil, works a good job, has full health care, and has taken up ice fishing.
As the priest and the raptor drive between Palo Alto and Oakland, passing mansions and impoverished city blocks, they think fondly of their friend the panda. They think: our neighborhoods are the direct result of our national policies. We should govern more intelligently, relying on evidence rather than sound bytes and dogma.
And the priest said to the raptor: yes, but at least we have it better than that older white male in that other story!
2
These ideas are laudable. But what the real problem is, Mr. Brooks doesn’t want to confront. It is that social transformation requires government intervention. And those controlling the Republican Party now do not believe in that, will fight tooth and nail using misleading or illegal tactics, and they really have no sense of an American community; they are only in it for themselves.
19
@Phaedrus Just another anti government piece by Brooks. Another thinly disguised argument for less government. This mindset is in direct contradiction to the history of this country. All of the great things we have accomplished, winning world wars against fascism, putting a man on the Moon, providing disaster relief and all of our scientific breakthroughs came about due to the country pulling together as a whole, not as a collection of neighborhoods. They came about due to the pooling of our resources to accomplish our goals. But that costs money. That costs sacrifice on the part of its citizens. The great life does not come cheaply, nor should it. And any political party that tries to sell the idea that we can all live like kings without any cost on our part is just conning us. And sadly, many want to be conned.
4
As always, Brooks fixates on one simple answer for a complex problem. This time it is neighborhoods, next week it will be whatever narrow solution he reads about in his book of the week. A perfect case in point is his citing the percentages of men from Watts and Compton who were incarcerated in one particular year, probably chosen for having the greatest disparity between the two neighborhoods. The most likely reason for 44% incarceration of black men in Watts is the culture of the local police force. Were they, as in so many areas, trying to increase revenue with fines and tickets and arresting the poor people who couldn’t afford to pay? Was it just policy to arrest as many people as possible to make their stats look good? One statistic taken completely out of context, a common tactic on the right, is useless to explain complex phenomena.
4
@Renee Margolin. It’s odd you would bash Brooks with opinions and theories unsupported by a single fact or statistic. You’d have been more convincing if you had just made up “atlternative facts” like Trump. Brooks is simply commenting on one aspect of human society that should be obvious to everyone - that we are the product of the local communities we create and support. I think he’s got it right based on my own lifetime of observation, and while the facts and statistics he cites are interesting, you are correct that they don’t prove or disprove anything. But that does not diminish the message.
Here's a simple question: Do you support community funded public broadband? If you're nodding your head in agreement, everything about this article says we should expand public internet infrastructure. The library is actually one tangible object of public connectivity.
Here's a another question: Why then are so many municipalities moving to restrict community funded broadband? Think of it this way. If my neighbors and I wanted to run aluminum cans on strings from house to house, there's nothing stopping us. However, you make the same suggestion about fiberglass network cables and we suddenly run into a brick wall.
Now here's the final question: Which political party is primarily responsible for retarding community efforts at building a 21st century local network? I'll give you a hint. The answer does not begin with the letter "D."
6
If you're captivated by this notion (hardly new) I recommend the recent interview with Klinenberg on the BBC's Thinking Allowed podcast.
Once i viewed libraries as secular temples, then I had a child. I then saw them as the core meeting space and support space for my whole community. Then I started understanding what was missing from the temples I had once attended.
God bless the local librarian.
5
There are lefty government programs that can save whole neighborhoods, not just individuals. Rent control, living wages, universal healthcare, free community college, fair loan practice, fair tax policy -- these are opposed by the right through deregulation and a philosophy that wants to drown the government in the bathtub. Yes, neighborhoods are important, so lets support the ideas listed above for they lead to financial security for the poor and middle class, which lead to secure neighborhoods for the poor and middle class.
10
Radically Affordable Self-Reliant Neighborhoods as "Units of Change"
Architects, builders and growers in academia and business should design and build Self-Reliant Neighborhoods (SRN's) for the sheer elegance of creating communities that are radically affordable. This is so because embodying perpetually repetitive wealth production into the original design of a community is truly radical. A design in which the critical human requirements--for energy, water, food, waste-recovery, child care and education—are embodied in the design and routinely fulfilled by residents, reduces or eliminates their costs--inherently. SRN members, skilled in community, can also form income-earning entrepreneurial teams.
We contend that the enduring personal control of one’s fate requires a deep economic response, one that would permit unbowed citizens to directly transform their intelligence and labor into the well-being of their community on a permanently sustainable level.
Local control alone assures dignity. And the controlling view of the affordable SRN model is that these require designers and developers committed to putting flesh back on the bones of hollowed-out neighborhoods.
@Larry "Mac' Maguire
In your list: critical human requirements--for energy, water, food, waste-recovery, child care and education; You left out 'Work'. We need to live and work in the same neighborhood in order for our work to 'moral'.
This approach best addresses the immorality of non-local (big) business. Historically, non-local business has had the greatest negative influence on community.
1
I'm really happy to read the rare column from Mr. Brooks that isn't preposterous on its face. I agree with the notion of the "tyranny of the randomized controlled trial," the scientific gold standard for determining causation. This extremely useful idea has been imported from the hard sciences into the study of society where it is impossible in all practical respects for such a study to ever be conducted. This obvious impossibility hasn't stopped Thought Leaders from encouraging our donor class overlords from dumping tons of money into the pursuit of this ivory tower ideal that could have gone to, you know, hiring more teachers, or building housing.
3
Decades of sociological research has shown the importance of neighborhoods on outcomes such as safety, crime, health and education. The difference almost always lies in whether people feel they can trust and depend on their neighbors—what Robert Putnam calls social capital. More funding for government services such as police and schools is one factor, but even more important is the establishment of local resources operated by the community, such as churches, YMCAs or other religious centers, athletic leagues, PTAs, Boys and Girls clubs, sewing clubs, tenant associations, even health clinics run by local people. One of the prime factors that counters delinquency is parents who watch each other's kids and report those kids' parents when they see them misbehaving. How such resources grow and thrive in a community needs to be a subject of study (it actually already is), Raising community leaders is the key. Government plays a role, but it isn't the largest one. Strong neighborhoods are built from the inside.
1
@Casey Dorman The comment should say that parents report the kids' misbehavior to those kids' parents, not report the parents.
First distinction to note is that between mitigative and paradigmatic change as discussed by Prof. Sheldon Wolin in "Democracy Incorporated" and illustrated by the Obama administration's view of change, which was clearly mitigative; although from the vastly hyperbolic rhetoric, folks became convinced that there was going to be some sort of paradigm shift. And while neighborhoods can be effective agents of change, that will also be mostly mitigative. Unfortunately, while this may be helpful in the short term, what the society desperately needs in the more expansive time frame is a paradigm shift away from corporate totalitarianism, else the entire notion of U.S. Constitutional democracy find itself at risk.
4
In the summer of my youth, my mother used to give me carfare and pack me salami sandwiches so I could ride the buses of Dallas to the ends of the lines and discover what was there.
Today there are no more real neighborhoods left to explore. Just shopping centers. And they are being fast replaced by Amazon.
6
Only a fool could say that neighborhoods are not important. Only a greater fool could say that neighborhoods are the answer to the problems we face today. Those problems are.
1. The domination of politics by a few wealthy donors and corporations they control paired by control of the media by the same wealthy individuals and corporations they control.
2. A persistently demand limited economy.
3. The coordination of trade treaties, tax law, antitrust law, labor law, intellectual property law and goverment policy to favor corporations over individuals, to reward corporate combinations, to limit competition and to encourage domination of almost every market by a few large corporations.
4. The inability of our domestic economy to produce the goods our population consumes, everything from appliances to generic drugs.
5. Global warming and climate change.
We need to pull our heads out of the sand, drop conversation about starfish and neighborhood and talk about these issues and the political action required to tackle these tough problems.
10
Whoa!
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."
In short:
"Being determines consciousness."
Karl Marx
Without any doubt a "neighborhood" is some kind of "being". A small one but an effective one when it comes to consciousness and then to influenes on behavior as Mr. Brooks has undeniably pointed out here.
So this column openly proves a crucial stance of Karl Marx.
A fervent con is sliding onto the wrong side of the road - methodological at least. David Brooks is going socialist. What an event!
Is it a realignment of thoughts or has just an accident taken place today?
His next column might be pretty interesting....
1
Welcome Back, Mr Brooks ! I've missed you and your always intriguing viewpoints. You always get these brain cells working in ways that they wouldn't have otherwise if i hadn't read you.
As for neighborhoods, here in FL., the self segregation of white people into 'developments', has left the neighborhoods in the hands of the lower middle classes of all colors. And we who live in these neighborhoods are better for it. There's a lightness, a happiness, a connection in such neighborhoods that i never experience in the developments.
3
Yes, sure, social infrastructure matters—where it still exists.
But you are deluded if you think that it still exists everywhere. My mother lived within 18 miles of my sister because my sister brought her there. She lost whatever community she had then.
I had a neighborhood of sorts in elementary school, but never since then. People move, and they know they're moving again.
My daughter has a "neighborhood" of sorts with her friends in high school. But she's a minority and has been racially bullied since elementary school. She's so, so tired of it. She won't be staying here after she graduates.
Please stop thinking we can all go backwards, David. That doesn't help the part of the world that has been forced to move on. New things need to be devised.
1
Neighbourhoods and schools depend on tax revenue. As long as Private is the Word of Mammon, equality is impossible, whatever the community, neighbourhood.
But then given the constitution you have, fairness was never the objective, White property owners know that.
4
Right on David!
While I was born and bred black and poor on the almighty South Side of Chicago aka the oldest largest contiguous black community in America, we moved around. And every neighborhood had it's own unique ecology. The people and institutions and culture varied considerably.
But one thing was always true the overwhelming majority of folks were good honest and open. And everyone knew who the bad girls and guys were. And the community delivered them justice when needed. Along with expecting the thugs aka gangs not to go too far.
Public institutions outside of school were not relevant. Cops were anathema. Politicians and preachers were often crooks.
I worked with and for many community groups. I was a block club President a couple of times. This molecular approach is our only hope. But the whole concept of neighbor has become warped. It is not too late. But midnight darkness looms.
Yes, neighborhoods are important. Are you in DC? What do you see? Here's what I see. Trump didn’t just promise to build a wall on the Mexican border. He promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. That was a lie, and one that he’s never even tried to make good on.
Ditto for tax cuts. He didn’t just promise a big corporate tax cut, he promised to raise taxes on the rich. That was another lie.
Nor did he promise merely to repeal Obamacare, he promised to replace it with something better and cheaper for everyone. Yet another lie.
He promised to break up big banks. He promised price controls on prescription drugs. He promised to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan. He promised that he was committed to upholding clean air and clean water goals. He promised a $1 trillion infrastructure package. He promised $20 billion toward funding charter schools. He promised bigger tax deductions for childcare and eldercare. He promised new ethics reforms. He promised to introduce a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Congress. He promised a federal hiring freeze. He promised to label China a currency manipulator. He promised a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying for foreign governments. He promised to bring manufacturing jobs back.
How is it going in your neighborhood?
6
So, in other words, it takes a village. Where have I heard that before?
23
Kind of flies in the face of the Conservatives' mantra of personal responsibility.
3
Interesting concept, David.
Democrats have been advocating for programs of outreach since the New Deal, but have been stymied by most Repubs along the way.
Why help the poor, since they're all cheats according to King Ronald Reagan, who wanted to protect Real Americans from "Welfare Queens driving Caddies."
Far be it to voice that the military-industrial cheats scammed many more millions from the taxpayers.
When con artists like Reagan and Trump use the poor and disenfranchised as targets of anger for the white lower middle class, why would Repubs bother to fund serious programs to raise people out of horrendous conditions.
David, congratulations for acquiring your newly developed social conscience, too bad it came so late in life.
2
"From Neurons to Neighborhoods - The Science of Early Childhood Development National Research Council Institute of Medicine WDC, 2000 Chapter 12, p 336, "Neighborhoods matter most when other risk factors are present, such as family povety or mentl helath problems within families."
2
@rmm635
That´s the reason why some public (social) housing associations have own social worker/streetworker departments here.
As far as they can perform activities - as a matter of fact they are limited to their own projects unfortunately - these departements had been very succesful in avoiding well known "banlieue" effects.
I remember one project going bad that was succesfully pacified (and saved from a severe state of abandon and decay in some extent) when they came in, in cooperation with faith based organisations and a former sports star. It took them some years and they had to throw out some of the worsest trouble makers but then it worked well.
Given that these people will never be able to save the country or the entire world they can save a mid size project nevertheless. This is better than nothing I think. One has to start somewhere.
BTW: Never let SJWs meddle in their affairs. But a good street worker will keep them out of this business anyhow.
Sounds like a knock on community social services. Neighborhood groups alone can't deal with major mental illness, education, physical health,etc.
There is a place for good government-sponsored programs.
2
David, this seems like the latest iteration of an argument you like to trot out every now and then: small-down folksiness as the antidote to evil big government. The problem is, neighborhoods are supported by infrastructure, and who is working to enhance that? Who is working to degrade that?
2
A few months ago you told us all that we need to move to where the jobs are. Don't stay and fix your down-and-out community, move, move, move. Staying in one place is bad. Go to Texas. Go to North Dakota. Staying in one place to be near family is bad, bad, bad. Not good for our GDP.
So. Now your thinking has evolved. Stay, and get cozy with the neighbors. Fix things locally. Don't look to a government to dole out a few bucks to the less advantaged communities because it might come with strings attached, like funds for education that might require kids to perform well on a standardized test. Oh, the horror of that tyranny.
People have been getting together to make life better for the locals since the cave man clan days--it takes a few committed individuals and a few dollars. This is not news. You have two nearly identical neighborhoods and one is crime riddled and one is not? Build a community center where kids can go after school. Then, they won't be hanging around with a bad element. It takes commitment and money, and I hate to tell you this, in poor areas the money comes from outside.
You and I will forever disagree on where that money should come from. For you, Jeff Bezos should step up and rather than spend his money sending us to another planet, he should build some community infrastructure here. For me, Jeff Bezos should pay a whole lot of taxes so the government can infuse these areas with cash and resources.
That's what it always boils down to.
18
I have seen these studies and the data is compelling. I think that there could be merit in tackling conditions that determine whether a neighborhood offers opportunity, or stagnation, or worse. The difficulty lies in deciding what factors will turn a "dead end" neighborhood into a pathway to success. Furthermore how you bring change would affect how residents perceive those alterations. Spending big money to make a neighborhood more responsive to the people who live in that neighborhood might bring pushback from people who resent such expenditures since that's the way we roll these days. Changes could just end up as gentrification.
A program could decide to move everyone out of a neighborhood by tempting folks to chose housing in other neighborhoods with more to offer. But sometimes people feel comfortable where they are and giving them tools to change their neighborhood for the better might meet with more approval than breaking up a neighborhood would. Just throwing money at neighborhoods often fails as a tactic. There needs to be planning for how to inject funds into changes that stick. Doing nothing to help neighborhoods where poverty is stubborn is unacceptable. However, we should not knock the efforts to lift up talented individuals who might go to waste either.
Wendell Berry has been writing about this his whole life. Port William is a neighborhood, though he calls it a community. Brooks is right, but this iis an old idea.
To restore civil society start with the library
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/opinion/sunday/civil-society-library....
Eric Klinenberg Sept 8 2018
2
All true.
But Mr. Brooks ignores the central role he and his party play in rendering these excellent solutions problematic.
"The good news is that there are more neighborhood-based programs than there used to be..." he says.
Well, no. We have in the not too distant past been very neighborhood and community oriented.
Then we made a conscious choice to wreck all that.
In my city, we rammed a freeway straight through the heart the most vibrant neighborhoods in the place. We may as well have thrown up a Berlin Wall, except our newly separated citizens couldn't even gaze longingly at one another across a fenced-off DMZ. Eight lanes of traffic prevents it.
This inhuman, impersonal Republican impulse to improve things for the wealthy had been planned for the Shaker Lakes, a long stretch of artificial bodies of water extending from wealthy neighborhoods to the edges of downtown. Never happened, because rich guys.
There is a place for high speed efficiency in America, and millionaires don't live there.
Speaking of America, we tend not to model concern for others or communities in general these days. In fact the Right, from the tippy top through the courts to reporter-beating locals fetishize pretend Hollywood loners. They hold in contempt those who demonstrate care for neighborhoods and communities.
Mr. Brooks clearly agrees, despite these Norman Rockwell pieces of his. You can't be a self-made, beholden-to-no-one, Randian hero snuggled in the heart of a community.
Thanks David. The geography of neighborhoods can be measured and compared, but the qualities that make one neighborhood more conducive for children to thrive in than another remain largely hidden. You are right that it has something to do with the quality of particular relationships that connect the people living in a particular network. The Search Institute, search-institute.org, has done extensive research into the particular kinds of relationships and qualities that are needed for children to thrive at various stages of development. They have suggestions, guidelines, and training programs for communities that desire to become more supportive of their children becoming their best possible selves. The only obstacle to making things better is ourselves and our total state of distraction in a solipsistic, consumer culture that tells us every day that it's all about material possessions where some's good, more's better and too much is just about enough.
1
From a lofty perch, this makes perfect sense, but ignores the reality of poverty, economic disadvantage and the struggles people face in overcoming them. Finding fault with attempts to deal with those problems may help us come up with better solutions, but sidestepping or denying them is not helpful.
I don't agree with all of the points in this very good column. But I do know that a good neighborhood can offset the effects of a bad family. And social determinants of health are well-documented. Does this mean that we should be spending less time in virtual neighborhoods and more time in real ones? I think yes.
2
Our current iteration of capitalism commoditizes everything. Goes against the basis for true meaningful human relationships. Makes everything transactional, including human relationships. It needs a radical overhaul before it eats itself (and all of us) completely.
As usual, Mr Brooks has discovered something everyone knew, treats it as revelation, then draws a completely invalid conclusion. Neighborhood is important. One's peers are from one's neighborhood. Neighborhood is the root antagonist in Romeo and Juliet. Nothing new here, but to conclude that cross-neighborhood programs are bad is pure sophistry
The abuses of "Stop and Frisk" programs are examples of general laws applied differently in different neighborhoods.
4
Many comments here seem to miss Mr. Brooks' point, that the interconnectedness of human beings can foster change. Yes, outside resources (private or public) may be needed to build the library, community center, sidewalks, the local barber shop or corner store -- but it is the human infrastructure that creates the change. It is the neighbor who looks out for the kids next door or offers the ride to church, or the kid next door who mows the elderly neighbor's lawn that creates a society worth living in.
Robert Moses was known for "loving the public, but hating people" and his urban planning created segregation and urban desolation. Jane Jacobs on the other hand saw that urban vibrancy comes from local shops, walkable neighborhoods, the places where people can congregate and communicate. This isn't a new concept or discussion.
1
@bob
No, we don't miss the point. The behavior you describe has been with us since the days we got together in clans. It's inside us all. Those things you talk about...mowing lawns, looking after neighbor kids, rides to church...do you really think that behavior is lacking? That if more people would do these things all problems would melt away?
As you say, none of what David says is new, but he seems to think it is. And, as always, he skirts the inevitable question. Money?
Our point is that the community centers and walkable neighborhoods require funds. David doesn't believe government has any role in that. I'm rather tired of waiting for people like Jeff Bezos to realize he created a homelessness problem he now has to fix. We used to have a well-funded government that would take care of these problems.
2
We were concerned about individuals, now the neighborhood, is going in the right direction, but it is not enough to fix these individual and neighborhood problems. Attention and energy has to be there for all levels of governance.
The problems were have are the external costs from all economic activity. Poverty and injustice happens the moment you have an individual or group denying adequate resources to another individual or group. In an unfettered capitalist distribution system, everyone is stealing and cheating to keep their costs down, and they dump costs on others. There has to be a power system that balances, regulates, and provides courts of justice to fix these systemic problems. Over the past 35 years, and now, more than ever, the energy of this economy has greed agency not sufficiently balanced with justice agency.
The problems that need solving certainly happen at many levels, but the size of the economy determines the size of the problems. We are globalized now. Every level takes fully funded governance, with majority political involvement of its people to assure competency. It takes a neighborhood...a village...a city...a state...a country...and a world, to raise a future.
2
Mr. Brooks neglects to mention neighborhood schools as a key social connection. They are places where neighbors turn into playmates and friends, where neighbors come to vote. Supporting your local school is a way of investing in the future. They have historically been a cornerstone of democracy, which is why our ruling oligarchs like the Walton, Zuckerberg and DeVos families have tried to co-opt our public school system for their own financial gain. We are losing our public schools, as district by district they are hemorrhaging money to charters.
16
David, but isn't this finding in opposition to the essential belief of conservatives that it is the individual alone who must accept responsibility for improving their situation? We liberals for decades have been castigated by conservatives for our attempts to change the social and economic structures of neighborhoods---our essential belief that yes starfish are not saved one by one. Yes, I would admit that these liberal programs can be messy---conservatives love to point to wasted monies and bureaucratic mazes. Knowing the complexities of changing neighborhoods, we liberals still attempted, against conservative bootstrap policies, to unleash the power of healthy neighborhoods .
10
Something else also needs to change. We need to constantly measure results from programs to help these needy citizens and make changes immediately and make appropriate changes.
This is a major difference between the public and private sector. In the public sector we pass laws and appropriate money accordingly and then move on to the next bill.
In the private sector we set up checks and balances and adjust to what is and is not working. zThe public sector has no "living" No adjustments are made based on results or lack thereof.
@sbanicki
The private sector - like banking or Halliburton - has adequate checks and balances? How about the cell phone videos of black men and boys killed.
There was a program in TX years ago to provide low or no cost birth control to poor teens. Teen pregnancy is correlated with ongoing poverty.
This program resulted in a large decrease in teen pregnancy. It was then defunded, due to the legislature not wanting to provide such unnecessary social services to poor women.
Right wing ideologies, not compassion, drive people like Brooks.
2
In contrast to the various shaping of Brooks' repeated attempts to diffuse the differences that separate us, all solutions - like all politics (governmental and otherwise) are most certainly not local. They are now decidedly national as within the neighborhood Brooks projects as turf for solutions, my neighbors' and my own opposing congressional campaign signs - are now not merely in our yards but clearly in each others' faces - attest. Brooks longingly proposes cooperative local, community paradigms to rally America at its grass roots. However, this grass roots are being dramatically withered by the national weather incessantly either raining, scorching or freezing down upon it. Brooks continues to evades his responsibility to become a prominent voice in seeing that weather finally moderated, unified and controlled.
6
Invest in the people and neighborhoods will develop. It is a second order effect.
Education, and social programs create people who build communities.
10
Urban and neighborhood planning is still very much taken for granted. While I have worked in the field in the past, my current experience shows me that more than anything, having decent sidewalks is vital. In my city, they are being replaced after having been left to crumble for forty years. The impact is amazing.
4
This concept relates to the "Neolithic Village" model of looking at human behavior. For most of our evolutionary history we lived in small, self-sufficient groups of maybe 10, 20 or 30 people, and this formed our customs, instincts and outlooks. Even today that's about the number of close associates, friends & family that we interact with routinely and intimately.
Of course, each of those groups was in mutually supportive contact with similar groups who lived in the neighborhood. Emotionally, that's the world we still live in, a face-to-face world. As Blake observed: "Pity has a human face, Mercy a human heart".
2
Granted, the good news is there are more neighborhood-based programs than there used to be.
But the bad news is more and more neighborhoods are being torn apart by rising rents and the demographic changes that usually accompany it.
And nowhere is this more evident than right here in New York City where many previous communities of color, whether in Harlem, Bed-Stuy or Bushwick have seen an explosion of new housing development whose rents are out of reach for most of the longtime residents.
So now the question becomes: What can be done about that?
2
@N. Smith
I'm attaching this link to illustrate what I'm talking about. It has sadly become the norm.
Full Disclosure: I was Baptized in this Church and where I once grew up is now a gated-community.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/nyregion/harlem-church-nyc-.html
You know the main thing that made America great under Republican President Eisenhower Mr. Brooks?
Taxes.
He had everyone, including the rich, pay for a really big idea:
The country should have an interstate highway system that stretches from one end of the country to the other.
He also balanced the budget, Not just once, But three times.
Despite pressure to do otherwise, he also refused to cut taxes and raise defense spending, which allowed him to balance the budget.
There are small thing that neighborhoods can do to improve things, especially given your obsession with strange statistics.
But, they are small things.
Trump, McConnell and Ryan believe in government spending on the military, in subsidies for farmers, in subsidies for ethanol, in tax cuts for 401ks, which help the rich people in this country and not the poor.
But, finally, what Eisenhower also did that no Republican would have the guts to do these days was sponsor and sign the Civil Rights Bill of 1957.
This was the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction. Of course Congress amended the bill and critically weakened its effectiveness.
These are the type of impactful actions that real leaders undertake.
You know, things like helping all Americans have access to affordable healthcare.
No small neighborhood can accomplish what these forward-thinking initiatives can accomplish.
You continue to write the same article about individual initiative and social change.
Don't you have any other ideas?
67
@V
Here is exhibit A for the idea that the wealthy should pay taxes in a headline this week in the paper you write for, Mr. Brooks:
Jared Kushner Paid No Federal Income Tax for Years, Documents Suggest
According to this article, confidential documents reviewed by The Times indicate that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, probably paid little or no income tax from 2009 to 2016.
His personal stock investments have soared. His net worth has quintupled to almost $324 million.
His low tax bills are the result of a common tax-minimizing maneuver that, year after year, generated millions of dollars in losses for Mr. Kushner, according to the documents. But the losses were only on paper — Mr. Kushner and his company did not appear to actually lose any money.
You might want to read the article in its entirety, Mr. Brooks:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/business/jared-kushner-taxes.html
Perhaps making people like Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, pay their fair share would have a greater impact on the neighborhoods you constantly wax poetic about, Mr. Brooks.
22
.........which makes it all the more urgent to address the lack affordable housing in good neighborhoods.
Here in Brooklyn our downtown area is being vertically developed to the point we will all need to take Vitamin D to offset the lack of sunshine. Sure, developers strike deals including some ratio of market rate to affordable units in their buildings, but it’s never enough and “affordable” is still way out of the reach of most low income families.
In other areas there is talk of easing restrictions on basement apartments, as houses are mostly north of a million dollars and young families who are first time homebuyers can’t handle the jumbo mortgages they will need. Having income from a basement unit would go a long way. And these apartments would be affordable. But many residents, already going mad trying to find parking and seeing their kids’ class sizes balloon in overcrowded schools fight these initiatives. Density brings a lot of stress.
Still, we must keep trying to find places where families can settle in areas with good transportation, good community organizations and good schools. In neighborhoods where these services are inferior we must prioritize improvements. Recently the UFT agreed to a contract where teachers in certain Bronx schools that have great difficulty retaining staff will be paid $8000 more.
Finally we must study neighborhoods with active and successful neighborhood organizations and try to replicate these structures more widely.
1
We don't live in self-contained pools. Where there are railroad tracks, there's always a wrong side, Where there's a river, there's always an area prone to flooding. So long as some people control the economy and the law, we might as well say a poor neighborhood can cure global warming. It takes a legislature, not a parish council.
21
We don't? Oh, honey, let me introduce you to St. Louis County, Missouri, where fearful whites municipalized their subdivisions so that they could more effectively keep "those people" out.
Gated communities came much, much later.
Yet again, David Brooks perpetuates the myth that communities can flourish, blossom, bear fruit in a social and political environment that is essentially hostile to its wellbeing. It is a nice fairy tale but it has virtually no evidence behind it. It as if to say that an ecosystem could survive climate change. It is true that some good people will relentlessly try to improve their surroundings and work for the common good, but without help from larger political and economic systems these efforts will have limited resources. Evidence shows that people's lives (and neighborhood wellbeing) improve from social supports and income transfers-- food stamps, housing vouchers, health care, transportation supports, and a basic minimum wage. Moreover, residents need political and economic power that allow them to realize real and sustained change in their communities.
28
@imabroadwaybaby
Well said.
Brooks is an old GOP ideological organ cast out of Trump's party and now lost. His DNA will not allow him to be a liberal. He is trying to erase all his pre-trump liberal bashing writings with these nonsense pieces.
The problem with being an op-ed writer is that you are on record. It's impossible to pick up your droppings.
If everybody is in charge, no one is.
If there is a problem and everyone is brought in to work on it, it won't change, since problems are usually intentional and profit the rich, the very educated, the connected. The very poor don't have medical care, or access to housing, or an education that leads to a good job because the rich have bought off the politicians.
But the children of Donald have all they need and more. It is intentional and because the economic neighborhood of the rich want it so.
Did Donald become rich because he grew up in a good neighborhood, or because he grew up in a place and time that was devoted to tax-less lives for the rich and living under the bridges for the poor who are having to compete with someone in Mexico or China making a few dollars an hour.
No, I am a socialist because I finally understood that neighborhood is irrelevant, what counts is ownership, and the only way for the poor to own anything is to share this country and its wealth.
McConnell and Ryan and the Congressional Republicans are the only neighborhood that counts today, so vote tomorrow.
Hugh
17
Interesting but we have no anecdotal basis for comparison. Neighborhoods are in cities and suburbs. In rural america where we live, what I would consider our neighborhood are the half dozen people in 4 families that live within 5 miles and in the nearest town of 1000, the entire town is pretty much one neighborhood. When your nearest mall or Walmart is 30 miles away...........
1
@tom
I thought of the rural areas. I hope your 'neighborhood' is doing okay, but as I criss-cross the country I pass through many communities where I have to ask how on earth people are getting by. Dilapidated, a hundred miles from nowhere, and with nothing in town but a gas station.
A little help from 'above' in terms of a decent school, health care facilities, a community center, and internet service would make a big difference. Money? That's always the question, isn't it?
1
Montclair is less than 10 miles from Newark, but it's a different world, and each neighborhood in Montclair is a different world. I've wandered into 'hoods here that felt like gated communities, and been followed by cops on my own street. No longer feel welcome here, but wondering where to go. There is less mobility nowadays because even moving is expensive, and we've figured out that loans are often predatory, and who can afford to live here, or in this county, any more? To get an apt, you have to be able to put down a few months' rent, and sign a lease agreement. Even if you get to Florida, you have to put up the money. Unless you are well off, you feel trapped. So I'd like to read an article where people, in their own words, describe what happened, and how they got stuck there. Some have lost a better job and now jobs are minimum wage. Who can live well on that?
6
Having worked in nonprofits and philanthropy for decades, I was totally with you until the last sentence about needing more "neighborhood programs." This is exactly where I feel that the philanthropic sector gets things wrong. It isn't about programs or services. It's more about social spaces like libraries, schools and (eek!) faith communities as well as the social capital to advocate for them. The charitable sector and government funding thinks about "models" and "programs" and "services," and maybe they have to because how else will you invest in communities? But very few programs can be replicated successfully on a mass scale, because norms and leaders cannot be mass produced. These need to grow organically and be nurtured by the power structures. But that need exists in tension with the need for accountability for public and private funding. How do you "report" on growing leaders? Almost impossible.
5
For 35 years I've worked in human services, and I've yet to see the program that brought about any significant change in the lives of low-income and other disenfranchised groups. Funding for the thousands of initiatives going on at any given time across the state comes primarily from two places that have little contact with reality: Albany and Washington. Services are driven by funding, and as anyone in the field will tell you, funding is driven by the "flavor of the month," the current "sexy" issue, and whatever new, evidence-based study came out of somewhere. Virtually all of it focuses on one specific issue, while ignoring larger, systemic elephants in the room. An example: HUD funds the Rapid Rehousing program, designed to get people who are literally homeless into decent apartments where the rent is subsidized for up to two years. But ignores the reality of a $12/hour job never being enough to afford market rent, and that people who were in a homeless shelter have long-standing problems that go far beyond having nowhere to live--mental illness topping the list, along with substance use disorders, chronic illness, incarceration, cognitive impairments, crushing child support orders, etc. In my experience, only civil legal services programs make a substantial and permanent impact.
10
People rarely survive, much less prosper, all by themselves.
And in a country like ours, so rich and complex, neighborhoods rarely survive or prosper without enlightened public policy on a national level. I've been to many poor countries and have observed the flowers in cans and boxes in the midst of shanty towns –– symbolic and beautiful, yet impotent on the grander scale.
Mr. Brooks would have us consider ALL local and personal options, EXCEPT changing our cannibalistic and predatory Capitalistic system as we know it in America.
I'm sorry, but we need to be a lot bolder and a lot more aggressive if we want a decent country to live in. Putting flowers in pots will not do the larger trick.
21
I am a retired senior. I am regular local YMCA attender. Some friends meet weekly at a local restaurant. Without thinking about it I realize now that my regular attendance is noted, quietly. If I miss a few days someone always says. "Where have you been?" I am part of these "neighborhoods" too. I get kind of a warm fuzzy about that. Never expected it.
4
You have raised an important issue which merits much exploration if needed effective interventions are to be planned. Carried out. If processes and outcomes are to be evaluated and learned from. Which they rarely are. Your article's heading is, unfortunately, misleading. "THE Neighborhood Is the Unit of Change," constrains needed consideration of ranges of operating, relevant, known, currently unknown, and perhaps even unknowable, interacting multidimensional parameters as an either/or paradigm. As if the choice is to consider THE neighborhood, or THE "community," or not to do so. Firstly there is a need to delineate what each of these complex terms/labels mean. For whom? Surface descriptions- for outsiders- as well as more hidden meanings- for "insiders." A range of historical based as well as newer operating dimensions. Surely not only geographically. Consider: Neighborhood/ Community are/can be life-long identities. For pride, shame and in-between. There is a need to know and to understand "who" is delineating. Using "what?" Enabled, or not, "how?" For what agendas? Who, by tradition, laws, and memories of the threat to life and limb are locked out? Consider: what can be the implications for a policymaker, of a rural or urban background, rooted and living in D.C's culture of enabled personal unaccountability, voting on changes in health insurance, available public transportation, affordable housing, well being, etc. affecting their diverse constituents' neighborhoods.
1
Good column. Taken as it stands it is an insight into the reality of community and how it affects the trajectory of our individual lives, not the answer to all political social challenges nor the tumult in the current political climate. Community directs and empowers one on one's journey (for better or worse) and can evoke a sense of responsibility (greater or lesser) for others.
If I didn't know better, I'd suggest that Mr. Brooks' column is a ringing endorsement of Hillary Clinton's "It Takes a Village" for which she was, of course, ridiculed by many Republicans.
Of course it takes a village, and always has. Urban renewal programs of the 1960's met with mixed success, but there were many examples that worked, such as in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. It certainly helped that Hyde Park was home to the wealthy University of Chicago, which had a vested interest in improving its surroundings, and acted with its substantial wallet when it counted.
It helps immensely when a sound economic base anchors a neighborhood, and successfully promoting social change without investment is a challenge. We need to get away from the presumed dissonance between positive social change and sustained economic growth. We need to foster both in tandem, through public incentives and private investment.
Politicians have long loved to yell, "Jobs, jobs, jobs!" It's time they also acted as if they meant it, putting their money where their mouths are, one neighborhood, and one starfish at a time.
21
Somehow I get the impression Mr Brooks does not understand that his parables actually show that not the neighborhood but the federal government should supply these securities.
35
Brooks continues to fiddle while Rome burns. I don´t get it. Are you so stuck your conservatism that you don´t even see our democracy drowning in a sea of self dealing, lies from our leaders, and endless efforts to give more power to those who already have it and disenfranchise and silence the rest. Meanwhile catastrophic destruction is barrelling down, not only on our neighborhoods, but on the entire world in short order if we don´t unite to make to make drastic changes in the we operate. We have withdrawn from the global community by abandoning the climate accords. Science has been replaced by gut feelings and integrity and honesty are no longer a values. So Brooks prattles on about wouldn´t it be nice if somehow our neighbors joined hands in friendliness. The idea that nobody knows anybody anymore is not what keeps me awake at night. I have never been so frightened for the future.
61
Brooks is a political pundit who sees America being destroyed by Trump and the GOP yet he tries to offer solutions by avoiding engagement of current political realities like the plague. Almost every column Brooks has written over the last two years relies on some study or book he's read, yet he can't even convince himself of how to solve America's problems. He constantly needs to find one more new book or study because he's unable to arrive at anything resembling a satisfactory solution. The reason is painfully simple; Brooks remains a conservative despite the fact that conservatism has been shown to be a sham. Conservatism was never about morality, fairness, or fiscal responsibility, as all those things were simply positioning, merely a means to an end. Now that the ends have been achieved, the true face of American conservatism has been revealed, and it is authoritarianism.
Bill Kristol and his inner liberal, socialist, and feminist may understand this, but Brooks instead desperately seeks refuge in mythical and idealized neighborhoods which never existed in the real world. What Brooks describes is pulled straight from black and white 1950 sitcoms, with fathers and who always knew best, and loving mothers and wives who were also a strong women, with great warmth and humor, and who were also active participants in their communities. Unfortunately, these weren’t real people. Hollywood actors named Robert Young and Donna Reed played these parts on TV sets using scripts.
90
@Robert B
The so-called compassionate conservatives of today seem to be nostalgic for the 50s - an era in which progressive institutions and ethos were at their peak.
They appear to be in complete denial about the aims of the post-Roosevelt era conservatives - who harken back to conservatism from the pre-Roosevelt era and are taking the country back to levels of inequality and worker disempowerment not seen since the early 20th century. The conservative agenda is being set by people like Mitch McConnell and Ayn Randian Paul Ryan. Trump is their useful idiot whose talent for believing his own lies makes him extremely successful in peddling the Republican agenda.
People like David Brooks, who repeatedly attempts to put a kinder, gentler face on the movement and the party are enablers.
2
This goes to our file of notable and useful Comments.
How many people does Mr. Brooks know in his Washington D.C. apartment building, if he lives in an apartment building? How many people on his block?
In his neighborhood, whatever that is.
Mr. Brooks is correct. It is easier to correct and build in smaller units. However, that is good only up to a point, especially in the US. At some point the neighborhood will need city, state and federal help, support, funds. The neighborhood is the unit of small change. Is that enough?
10
Gee, so I guess that's why some people are willing to spend thousands of dollars more for houses in "good" neighborhoods - who knew? I never realized that good schools, good public services, good opportunities for children to expand their horizons in safe and nurturing environments made such a difference! Thanks for letting us in on the secret David!
My one observation is that these services cost money and that the anti-tax fervor that animates the careers of all good Republicans at the national and state level is also present at the local level as well.
David seems to be a bit slow on the uptake, so it might take him another decade or so to figure out that the issue behind the mistrust of big gov't has been about taxes first and foremost.
40
Sadly, it's not just the GOP dividing us. Blues have ruled the coastal cities, and they are divided by extreme taxes and an outrageously high cost of living. Just ask us about realities, not theories. Both parties are taxing us to death. I only vote Dem because the GOP are crazy fanatics, warmongers and crash the economy. But the Dems have been stabbing working people and minorities in the backs for decades. There is no party for anyone who isn't rich. Period.
1
@Stephanie Wood,
The supposedly extreme taxes does not seem to deter people from wanting to live in those areas, which contributes to the high cost of living by pushing up the price of real estate, which then increases the amount owed in property taxes. People who think the taxes are unaffordable can do something about it by agreeing to sell their houses below their current market - if enough people are willing to do it, it will ultimately force others to lower the prices they ask for their homes, which will then drive down property taxes, which can then reduce public services, which will then make the neighborhood less attractive and more affordable.
But unfortunately, it seems that many people living in these overpriced neighborhoods are perfectly happy to accept the high six figure (or even 7 figure) bids for the homes that they may have paid less than 100K for. So they have only themselves to blame for the lack of affordability.
You might see the data and think: "Oh, the neighborhood approach will save us!" Another might see the data and see, "The neighborhood approach EXISTS some neighborhoods are more effective than others at sealing the depressing futures of a lot of very poor people." Because, honestly, it was hard to find many where poor kids grew up to have a very decent standard of living as far as average annual wages were concerned, and there were an awful lot of them that assured the poor kids who grew up there would continue lives of serious desperation.
2
Synergistic strength of community interdependence comes from taking turns to get through the hardest of times. Stories of survival in history are based on how communities learn to care for one another. Some groups survived concentration camps by taking turns sharing crumbs or carrying the weakest in a wheel barrow on a death march. We cannot begin to separate where individual health and community health begin and end.
3
@Chris Something tells me that you are not acquainted with enough feminists to know exactly what the average feminist thinks and/or feels.
A neighborhood united with a micro-grid, mesh-networked with other neighborhood micro-grids composed of electricity generated from natural gas (urban) or propane gas (rural) run internal combustion engine with associated directly powered fly-wheel generated electricity will energize both rural and urban neighborhoods as long as the BTU/burn is 2X plus more efficient coupled with very low emissions.
Unite off the internet, secure from hacking Health Information Technology driven by neighborhood needs, there can then be "patient-centered" and neighborhood-up versus profiteer-down health care.
Couple the above with on demand manufacturing by 3D printers of generic drugs managed by neighborhood / community pharmacies and one has a very efficient means of decentralizing an invigorated bottom-up health care delivery system.
1
This might be true if "neighborhood" is defined by actual social connections.
Not everyone knows all their neighbors, not even in an apartment building. They certainly don't interact with all of them.
True, if some are violent criminals they will reach out to touch the lives of people who don't know them, but that is a very specific case.
Just as true, those people who don't know each other are individuals, each with their own needs and desires. One thing won't serve all equally. They are not all starfish on a beach. They are not all swimming in one and the same pool.
That is why we notice individuals, and help them one by one.
We don't get them all? We won't make the effort, just make a show for one or two. That does not make it wrong to help one at a time, it just demonstrates how little some of us are willing to do to help -- that one girl but no others.
3
It's our national neighborhood that's been systematically ransacked by Randian vulture capitalists who simply have no use for society.
A 2018 UN report on poverty and inequality called the USA "a champion of inequality."
The report said that the the GOP's $1.5 trillion in tax cuts "overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and worsened inequality."
The report said the US has the highest child mortality rate of 20 rich OPEC countries and among the highest child poverty rates in the developed world at 21%.
The study said Trump's policies seem "deliberately designed to remove the basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship."
"Contempt for the poor in US drives cruel policies. The Trump administration gave massive tax breaks for corporations and the very wealthy, while orchestrating a systematic assault on the welfare system. The strategy seems to be tailor-made to maximize inequality and to plunge millions of working Americans, and those unable to work, into penury," said Philip Alston, who led the UN study.
"Even people who are working full time can't afford a decent living. They do need food stamps. They do need the sort of assistance that government can provide, but instead what we see is a constant cut back in all of those benefits by this administration" said Alston.
The USA is a big ugly bucket of right-wing Greed Over People.
November 6 2018
182
The repubs have never been for the 99%; since modern times anyway. They want to destroy our social safety net etc. etc. But what have the dems done for use lately? What have they done for the 99% since FDR or LBJ? They are spineless and leaderless. No wonder people in this country do not vote and when they do vote half vote for a party that does not serve their interest. How disappointing.
1
@Socrates
Yes, I read that report when it came out. There will always be poor-er and wealthy-er areas, but a strong nation makes sure no one becomes utterly destitute. Government-provided health care and education are the spine of a society. Infusions of cash for community development builds neighborhoods. Guilting people like Jeff Bezos into dealing with the homelessness he created or pretending to be raising the minimum wage for his employees while really doing a benefits bait-and-switch is the stupidest way possible of distributing the wealth of a nation. We're either all in it together, or we're a nation of billionaires and serfs. It's very simple.
We abandoned our leadership position on this issue long ago. I believe the year was 1980.
BTW, Nikki Haley, who everybody, including the NYT just loves, called the report nonsense. I have no idea why people are so enamored of her. There's no there there.
7
@Socrates "It's our national neighborhood that's been systematically ransacked by Randian vulture capitalists who simply have no use for society."
Yes, and I recall a Thatcherism "there is no such thing as society, just a lot of individuals" (paraphrased). Very Randian indeed. Every man for himself.
That idiocy does not work.
6
"It takes a village?"
And, social services organizations need to stop re-inventing the wheel with their programs. My limited interaction suggests an almost complete absence of sharing of lessons and strategies. It's reasonable to argue that non-profits struggling to survive and deliver, have no time for grand cooperative schemes. No doubt there's a lot to that. But that doesn't mean people/organizations shouldn't be working to figure out where they can share.
6
@AJ. You ignore the big fsh in a small pond ego centric nature of nonprofits
Excellent point. Until my retirement not long ago, I worked too many long days to be well-acquainted with my neighbors. Since my retirement, it has been my pleasure to get to know as many neighbors as possible and to befriend them. I have always had a strong sense that the neighborhood around us is of primary importance to our well-being. Knowing that our neighbors care, that we care, that we know each other well enough to help out and to laugh together is as healthy as it gets. When one of the neighbor babies died unexpectedly several years ago, I was too busy to mourn with the family, to be there for them when they need people to be there for them. It broke my heart to not be able to reach out to that family. I recently was able to apologize and to tell that mother (and mean it) how much I value her and her family. Together we are able to lift up and watch over another neighbor recently diagnosed with dementia. These are the acts of mercy in a quiet and normal life, the acts that bind us together and see to it that we can face each day with a measure of equanimity and comfort.
3
Brooks opinion piece made me me think of:
Pride of place, building the American dream, by Robert A.M. Stern. A book and series from 1988.
If what Brooks means is we enable strong family units in secure places of permanence, of course this is preferred, but trickle down does not allow for prideful outcomes. More people are being left behind faster than ever before; apartment construction is booming.
The one and a half trillion of new debt in the tax cut just guarantees that the republicans will go after all social safety nets next.
21
Yet, a poor neighborhood with no money can not have a good school unless some other neighborhood helps to pay for it.
Then, a virtuous cycle can kick in and the poor neighborhood can become wealthier and self-sustained.
How will that happen if all you think about is your neighborhood?
3
Everything written in this piece is true. HOWEVER, none of this matters if national and state politics is controlled by the GOP and its agenda of greed. Once in power, they can erase all of the good being produced though hard work at the community level.
As a national columnist who occupies by right some of the most precious media real-estate in the world, shouldn't David Brooks be focusing his words and thoughts on the current world-altering crisis that is taking place at the national and state level? Should he really be focusing on anything else but that?
Stop abdicating your responsibilities. Stop hiding! Make a difference David. Please.
109
@Bob. Mr. Brooks comes late to the table on most issues. He didn’t criticize the president until after the election. His Father Knows Best approach to social issues ignores the needs of low income families and he expects the neighborhood to solve problems exacerbated by the Trumpian assaults on national and state financing programs. The USA now suffers under about the same ratio of wealth and political power to desperate poverty as France did prior to their revolution. Shouldn’t that frighten the Republicans into changing their ways? Or are they so entrenched in their already disproven fantasy of the myth of trickle down economics that they can’t see the gathering pitchforks?
1
Maybe a good place to start is all those crumbling opioid ridden towns in the rust belt. At one time they were the rock solid foundation of America's Heartland.
I'd start with a massive bumper sticker campaign (an entrepreneurial opportunity in itself). Examples: "Just say no to your heroin addiction", "A $7.25 an hour minimum wage is $29.00 if four per family are earning it", "Don't let Government test our food and water", "Y'all turn out for Community Paving Day!!", "Neighbor to Neighbor Healthcare is the American way".
You may not be able to clean half a swimming pool, but it's no problem for the rich an powerful to pave the streets they like, finance the schools they like, and slice up the budget to suit their needs.
26
I am losing my mind, surely. So, now the neighborhood is the place? I thought we ridiculed Community Organizers and lambasted public schools?
Surely the earth’s axis has flipped, as we now have a Republican President that has convinced folks that he speaks for the little man.
I guess I should be relieved that Mr. Brooks has discovered that I,Me, Mine has taken us down the path of misery.
41
'For example, do people feel it’s normal to knock on a neighbor’s door and visit, or would that be considered a dangerous invasion of privacy'?
It depends on your community and how well you know it. Earlier, a loud knocking on the door. My neighbor to the left calls first, or leaves a gift on the patio, while my neighbor to the right does not and shows up, unannounced.
The politicians and religious representatives use the back door. These, regardless of their affiliation and belief, are given a polite wave and told to spread their message elsewhere.
Baltimore and New York in an uproar because my neighbor to the right, not only knocks on the front door, but is strong enough to push through it. Annoyed, I ask who is the cause of this disturbance, and he announces himself. Explaining to him that I am taking a rest, a moment of silence and the necessity of finding out where, and what he is doing.
On the edge of the kitchen counter is a flower delivery. From another friend in the neighborhood. What do I know about this intruder, whom I like and who is not well? This is not a dangerous invasion, and he was asked by his family to make this delivery because a truck they hired, is blocking my driveway.
Highly devout is his family, but they lack manners. It is doubtful that their voting for Trump is the cause because according to their matriarch, they 'could not do otherwise'. They will vote for him again because it is God's Word, and they are struggling to live.
1
Nowadays a knock on the door might mean a police raid at the wrong house. It frankly makes me nervous. I know my neighbors, but usually we see each other outside and chat.
1
Mr. Brooks, your themes are getting a bit shop-worn. There is little value in keeping your own room neat and clean if the house is burning down, or if there is a wrecking ball set to hit it. You may feel virtuous about your tidy space, but that won't stop the wrecking ball or the flames. You studiously ignore all the outside factors that promote chaos and destruction. Unfortunately your refusal to acknowledge these dangerous forces doesn't make the go away. It just strengthens them.
137
Cruel and nutty right wing religious neighbors don't generally have enough tolerance for any neighborhood to improve. They are angry and mean. This describes great swaths of the red states. They are abusive to all.
7
Although Brooks makes some valid points, I fear that his sort of thinking might prompt people to withdraw from national and statewide politics and retreat into the cocoons of their neighborhood.
For example, very often effective neighborhood change can only take place if one combats national and statewide problems.
A neighborhood in large measure will be adjudged and assessed on the basis of the education provided to children.
In most of America, education is financed by property taxes.
As a result, rich neighborhoods offer much better, or at least better funded, educations.
We can only make the schools in poor neighborhoods better if we scrap the old method -- property taxes -- of raising education revenues.
Also, this emphasis on neighborhood seems, for want of a better term, just too cute. For example, I distinctly recall that after Nixon won the 68 election, the nation moved toward the Right and that in part was induced by changes in media from the national to a local emphasis.
Starting with ABC television news, TV shows, in NY, became progressively more stupid as they concentrated on "News for New York." Vietnam was becoming a bloody bore, civil rights passe and the evening news spent an inordinate amount of time wandering thru NY neighborhoods, commenting on Lasagna in Bensonhurst, and lulling the people into passivity.
And then, in 1970, the Senate seat once occupied by Bobby Kennedy was seized by a member of the conservative party, James Buckley.
8
David, do you mean to say “it takes a village”?
126
@wnb
Beat me to it. Good on you.
1
@wnb With a special thank you to Hillary...
My grandparents settled in a near east side Detroit neighborhood. It was a modest lower and lower middle class neighborhood. It had its own farmer's market. Prior to July 1967, it had two major supermarkets, Kroger and A&P. It was located near the center of Detroit just a few miles from downtown and the New Center area. The homes were not fancy. We never considered it a slum or a ghetto.
In July 1967 both major supermarkets among other stores were looted. Neither one re-opened. A second-tier supermarket did open. There were cries of "redlining!".
We had newer residents who insisted on referring to the neighborhood as a "the ghetto". My parents didn't see it that way. But as time went on and crime increased measures like neighborhood watches were labeled as "racist", with claims that the white residents has a "police mentality".
My father was attacked one day while getting off the bus from work. He was disabled as a result of the attack. He was near retirement, a 64 year old man attacked by thugs (yeah, sorry but that's what happened). No one was brought to justice.
Finally one night our phone lines were cut and I had to chase would be perps away with a firearm.
My parents soon moved out.
White privileged generational wealth? I now own the lot where our house was located. Its assessed value is $102.
The neighborhood was turned into a combat zone by its residents. And they eventually got their wish - it was a ghetto.
And in the NYT I read "Look, white flight!"
14
It takes a village, eh, Dave? Wonder where we could find a community organizer to run for President?
71
Good column, thanks.
You know, people teased Obama for being a "community organizer." They made fun of the calling, but this is the primary block of human leadership. I think I remember you making fun of this on a PBS show with Mark Shields.
I have been a small town and rural person all my life, but I doubt urban neighborhoods are much different; truly, a core of inspired people (not necessarily "organizers") can make a wonderful difference on the quality of life. I've seen it all my life.
Yes, best begin in neighborhoods. Thanks again, good column.
1
A traditional model of infectious disease causation, known as the Epidemiologic Triad can easily be applied to humans and social failure.
The triad consists of external agents, the individual under study and the environment in which host and agent coexist.
A person, (host) may have poor genes and live in a wonderful environment and not be able to turn away the many, negative transient agents they are subject to. The inverse is also true. But, generally speaking environment counts.
Why do we have an immigration problem? There are a multitude of needy and sometimes very talented people trying to leave their poorly functioning nations to improve their lives. Neighborhoods matter!
Causative agents also matter. We are experiencing opioid epidemics in cities that were once successful industrial powerhouses. Causative agents like globalization and the technological innovation greatly affected those environments. Certain individuals may still do well or have the ability to move. Others find the needle.
Good topic.
5
With the benefit of growing up in Bolivia, we felt truly what it meant to be social animals, inter-dependent, and communicating freely on a daily basis, even shaking hands whenever we happen to meet, and small talk almost a necessity. But those were different times, where some degree of idleness was considered an art and devoid of guilt, dedicated to social intercourse as a matter of fact, and where common problems could be tackled together, similar to what some communities do when one of the houses crumbles, or when harvest time arrives, or a newborn arrives, neighborliness becomes second nature. We have lost that sense of cordial camaraderie, looking after each other, too busy to care even for ourselves, workaholics living lonely lives, with unrelieved chronic stress, and seeking an escape in alcohol and other drugs...and their awful adverse consequences. We must rediscover this equilibrium of self-interest and our role in society as contributing members to enjoy each other...while solving locally the basics in housing, education, health care, jobs; and, yes, the time to get together and share our common heritage and values.
5
Robust public schools, even more than libraries, are the foundation of healthy neighborhoods. When will David Brooks and his conservative allies see beyond vouchers and charter schools, which benefit individuals over communities, as the only solution to the current inequities in our public school system?
199
@Vigg from Ossining. I agree. I wish Ralph Nadar had a column here in the NYT. His recent book talks about what needs to happen in the USA - Make it Great with:
a guaranteed living wage,
full government-funded health insurance,
free education including at the university level,
the prosecution of corporate criminals,
cutting the bloated military budget,
an end to empire,
criminal justice reform,
transferring power from the elites to the citizenry by providing public spaces where consumers, workers and communities can meet and organize,
breaking up the big banks and creating a public banking system,
protecting and fostering labor unions,
removing money from politics,
taking the airwaves out of the hands of corporations and returning them to the public
ending subsidies to the fossil fuel industry while keeping fossil fuels in the ground to radically reconfigure our relationship to the ecosystem.
Take care of our planet globally as well as in our neighborhoods.
2
I regularly make one interpretation of David’s argument myself over all these years that I’ve been active in this forum; but I never aimed at a lobotomized audience – I aimed and aim at a Times audience. Don’t get me wrong, it could be a very good argument depending on what he really means, possibly the true one by my own lights, but the way he makes it is more appropriate for the ignorati that need ALL context handed to them on a platter assuming that they bring none of it to the table themselves. I expect better of y’all.
Of COURSE the “pool story” is more compelling than the “starfish story”.
But my primary kvetch with David’s column today is its ambiguity. One could read it as support for large-scale transplantation of low-earners who can’t afford the types of neighborhoods that sustain upward mobility into more affluent neighborhoods that do – the kind of policy that Elizabeth Warren WISHES that Ben Carson would embrace but won’t. Or it could mean that society needs to invest FAR more intensively in less wholesome neighborhoods to make them MORE wholesome and capable of more reliably producing upwardly-mobile Americans.
If David intends the first meaning, then he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do, and I reject that meaning as an obvious and monumental failure over decades. If it’s the second, then I wholeheartedly support it.
Where are you going with this, David? You’re beginning to worry me.
1
@Richard Luettgen
Try reading the article again. What I got out of it was quite clearly stated.
"It means adjusting the structures of the state so that the neighborhood is an important structure of self-government, rather than imposing blanket programs willy-nilly across neighborhood lines."
I didn't see any value judgements about which neighborhoods are more deserving. - nor who gets to take credit for it.
It's a worthwhile and thoughtful article. Big problems require big ideas and reflection on evidence and data. Not name calling and finger-pointing.
4
@Warren S
The statement you cited simply reflects a standard conservative desire that solutions be defined at local levels, where they can be customized to local circumstances. It doesn't clarify the ambiguity of his column on how upward-mobility should best be reinforced for PEOPLE -- by moving them to neighborhoods that already foster such mobility or by investing in the neighborhoods that don't in order to ALLOW them to be more supportive of upward mobility.
David is going nowhere with this. He just tokes up, exhales his 800 words, shuffles along to the next… He has no intention of either paying attention to or doing anything with any of this.
All problems are arising due to nonexistent families and family values without which no programme however good it may be doesn’t work. So the significance of family bonding and values must be taught first wherever it’s lacking before taking up any socially and economically uplifting programmes.
3
It's also true that good neighborhoods -- especially those with good schools -- attract people who seek them out as a place to raise their families. The challenge is to expand those neighborhoods to encompass more people.
6
Over the last few months Brooks op-ed’s have become a one note song. In the past I’ve enjoyed his writing but there is now a undertow to his thought of an egalitarian past. One where individual communities can fix all. A Mayberry-ness. Of course it starts at a local level. Is that really a new idea? I applaud his pointing out the successes in small communities. While the tone also seems a little desperately old school Republican thought, a road we have traveled, longing for a solution with old methods. But there are also limits to this effectiveness. Brooks seems a man wishing to prove his deeper point, some redemption of a soured philosophy. “See kids, I knew you’d come back to Mozart!” No, there’s a time and place for all types of tunes.
I don’t know what key Brooks is in but it’s definitely a flat.
142
@Derek Chafin
Yes! David Brooks is having some kind of identity crisis through his columns since Trump became the GOP nominee. He's almost unwilling to engage in concrete political analysis that goes beyond the philosophical.
Can't be mad at you, David. Lots of folks are unsure what to make of what's happening in politics and policy. There's no steady place to rest today. Perhaps you need to go back to hard news reporting, and suspend attempts to interpret and analyze? Ask lots of questions, stop trying to find the conclusion.
17
@Derek Chafin. Right. Pay no attention to the greed, deceit, and__at times, sheer evil__at the top. Just live 18 miles from your mother. By the way, I know very few people who live that close to a parent.
The most important thing in cities to make neighborhoods engines of social and political change to benefit everybody is rent control. It creates long- term tenants who feel as invested in their neighborhood as homeowners. Connections run deeper. People believe the neighborhood in which they live really is their place.
5
Shoreline earned, at age 35, $9,000 a year more than those who had made this move in their 20s.
is 9,000 a significant difference? I would guess that people who attended graduate school often earn 90,000 more a year than people who don't attend college.
9000 a year is about 4 dollars an hour of pay for a 40/wk job. Is that a significant difference? It could be the difference between being a cashier and a manager at a fast food joint.
1
@richguy
An extra $9000 a year would make a dramatic difference in my household. The first year, I could repair my furnace and save up enough money for a down payment on a car. The second year, I could replace the windows. The third year, I could sell this house and afford the mortgage in the neighborhood I want to live in that's close to the things I love about my town.
But with the moniker "richguy," you might not get the significance of all that.
51
@richguy
According to Gary Cohen (when the tax cuts were proposed) a familiy could take their $1000 tax cut and get a new car. So that $9000 would surely buy a house using that thought process.
9
@richguy
I'm a public librarian. I have a Masters degree. No one goes into public service to get rich but it would sure be nice to make enough to support myself.
For me, $9K would be right about a 25% raise. If you don't think that's significant, well, I guess you really are a richguy and completely and totally out of touch with reality in the US. You might find this enlightening:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-higher-education-doesnt-mean-higher-pay/
For the record, I earn $17.51 an hour.
7
These days it is getting more and more difficult to read David Brooks; he is having the debate I once had with myself.
Today is delivering my winning argument and my many years of small victories and lots of frustrations. Everyday I ask the question was it worth it?
Thanks David I spent many years on Chicago's South Side.
8
"Many of our social programs are based on that theory of social change. We try to save people one at a time. We pick a promising kid in a neighborhood and give her a scholarship. Social programs and philanthropic efforts cream skim in a thousand ways. Or they mentor one at a time, assuming that the individual is the most important unit of social change.
Obviously it’s possible to do good that way. But you’re not really changing the structures and systems that shape lives."
"It means adjusting the structures of the state so that the neighborhood is an important structure of self-government, rather than imposing blanket programs willy-nilly across neighborhood lines."
If the neighborhood is the unit of change, it seems to me like it would be the starfish in your metaphor rather than the beach. You don't want to impose blanket programs willy-nilly across neighborhood lines, but you do want them to all have libraries (with the word "public" noticeably omitted) to prevent heat wave deaths? This is just a great example of the contradictions in conservatism's appeals to federalism and local government: "let's all learn from what works but then not actually help the other neighborhoods, just the one with the people I know. Let the other neighborhoods throw themselves back into the sea."
34
David Brooks has hit on something here. As a young college student in the 60's, I was taught in Sociology that the nucleus of society is the family. That, of course, still holds true. But over the past 50 or so years the definition of family has expanded beyond our biological, adopted, or foster parents and siblings. To quote Hillary Clinton's book, "It Takes a Village" to nurture our future generations.
Particularly while raising our families and when our kids are of grammar and high school ages, the neighborhood is our whole life. It is an inescapable reality of which we are interdependent of as well as dependent on others. Yet, as crucial as this is to being and becoming productive, stable, and ethical adults, we can only do so much. This is where our local government must step in. Yes, the state of course is responsible and accountable, but so also is the city. I look even at my own city of birth San Francisco and grieve. We have too many addicts and mentally ill homeless people living on too many streets. So, perhaps, it even goes further then the state and the town per se. It seems to go back to us and our neighbors to come together and insist on a healthier and more thriving community.
7
@Kathy Lollock it does come back to us in who we vote for, who we look out for besides ourselves and our families. It comes down to who we see as human and therefore deserving of respect, dignity, and whatever help is available. Sometimes people can't help themselves but that doesn't mean they aren't worth helping.
3
Some problems are complex to solve. Some have easy solutions. The United States Post Office has at least one, or not many offices in just about every community in America. If you want a US passport you can go to post office. When you go to McDonald's they always ask, "would you like to order anything else?" Have a transaction at a post office why not just ask, "would you like to register to vote?" It's the US post office, they have your address. You can show an ID.
93
@Sam: I cannot speak for NY State, but in my state of Ohio....you can register at any public library. It's a postcard -- there is no ID -- and even the postage is free.
@Sam Too logical and simple a plan for the GOP to go along...they would not benefit, so they would block your good idea.
1
Inequality? No part at all!
High rents? Nothing to forestall,
And the homeless that fester
Brooks don't seem to pester
And certainly do not appall.
A Trillion in tax cuts to the Rich?
Cut health costs the idea of Mitch?
It's neighborhood terms
Of squalor the germs?
It calls Brooks for a different pitch.
35
Sounds like community organizing 101. If we move the view a little wider, ingrained structural problems exist, alongside historical racial institutional control, red lining for example. But usually rental and housing prices determines who lives where in a community or a state. The right neighborhood seems serendipitous.
30
Why no mention of family?
27
Or the impact that mass incarceration of non violent offenders has on communities?
6
@turbot
Because I believe that this column is about neighborhoods, not families or mass incarcerations.
1
@Hugh CC Every now and again, I read Brooks' columns to see if he has connected to the real world. I don't think so.