Local Community

In other words, having your life bound up with those around you for its whole duration can support creating a culture of generosity, trust, and cooperation, rather than one of inequality and individualism. Being in conflict with permanent neighbors, while also living in such a communal culture, can prove costly and stressful. Learning to cooperate,... See more

The first thing is shrinking the service area. We serve four neighborhoods — about 8,000 to 12,000 people. If you have too big of a service area, you can't cover it effectively. We ensure that everybody gets access. Access is a big deal. We're aggressively pursuing clients, versus waiting for them to come to us. Some people don't know how to ask... See more

Instead of firing off salvos on social media, find a local problem you’d like to work with other people to help solve. Like most communities, we need trails cleared, litter picked up, funds raised for cheerleading teams and brass bands and animal shelters. In my community, we have programs where residents help elderly neighbors get to medical... See more

We agree with those who think revitalizing place-based identities and local engagement may help to break down these walls. If we redirect people’s attention back to local politics and working with fellow community members on projects that have a tangible impact, perhaps we can restart a positive feedback loop and regenerate the crosscutting... See more

“Our towns are where civic culture is created, for better or worse. As this polarized moment in our national politics has shown, civic culture can be poisoned from the top down. But it can be healed and unpolluted from the bottom up and the inside out. How the residents of Tulsa choose to make a civic culture will of course be different from how... See more

Strong ties like family, close friends, and churches are where ideas are nurtured and meaning is deepened. They are necessary, but limited. Weak ties are how information travels, how opportunities surface, how culture spreads. It is part of why social platforms are powerful. They dramatically increase our number of weak ties.

Strong ties create... See more

One way to create a shared context is through shared struggle. This is why many organizations implement ritualized hazing3 to initiate new members, but the important thing is not the hazing, it’s the sense that you are working together with your fellow humans to achieve a super-human goal. Whether that’s to develop vaccines, to drywall a shelter,... See more