Neighborhoods that Nurture: Why The Play-Based Childhood Requires More Than Just Putting Down the Phone
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Neighborhoods that Nurture: Why The Play-Based Childhood Requires More Than Just Putting Down the Phone
The role of informal, everyday interaction—sometimes unpredictable and serendipitous—should not be underestimated. But this requires a place-based social infrastructure that encourages such interaction. Neighbourhood churches (or other places of worship), religious activities, schools, butcher shops, markets, town squares, beauty parlours, taverns,... See more
What Is Community?
According to Putnam, the more we prioritize our private bubbles over public life, the more we disconnect from our local surroundings. This has weakened American democracy. Fewer people are engaged in politics, and those who do are often at the political poles. With less social capital, our neighborhoods are connected by fewer informal, reciprocal t... See more
Americans used to live within “place-based networks” of clubs, churches, schools, commerce, and recreation that overlapped, wrapping individuals in social support. Local networks protected individuals from isolation and loneliness.
Those networks have largely disappeared, replaced by networks based outside the local community. We shop and interact ... See more
Those networks have largely disappeared, replaced by networks based outside the local community. We shop and interact ... See more
Why we need to design community into neighborhoods
Free, unstructured, cheeky, loud, reflective, spontaneous, crazy, attentive, wild play is vital to the health of our children, and also to our ability to reimagine the world. Without it, we are all the poorer, our streets fall silent and our imagination begins to dessicate.
Rob Hopkins • From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want
The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence,
... See more