Sarah Wong

Here are the four key principles Lofland identifies as enabling smooth interaction (or non-interaction) among strangers in public spaces:

1. Civil Inattention

• Definition : The practice of acknowledging the presence of others while deliberately avoiding sustained attention or intrusion.


• Example : Making brief eye contact with someone walking past

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In the modern era, the satisfiers for needs have often been appropriated by large centralized organizations such as the nation-state or multinational corporations. Such satisfiers are decontextualized — they are not unique to place and culture and their ownership, management and control is not embedded in the communities who depend on them.... See more

Our preparation for rolling the network out included a survey of the community about local civic engagement and a mapping of existing civic groups—both helped us identify potential partners and build an understanding of civic life in the community. This fact-finding and coalition building, along with prior work, informed our approach to building... See more

“The wedge metaphor to me is most useful in making sure you’re not a blunt instrument trying to chop into a market by being everything for everyone, but instead the sharp blade with extraordinary focus on a specific persona/use case to start.”

Environmentalist Michael Lockhart identifies four damaging forms of economic growth: “ jobless growth, where the economy grows, but employment doesn’t; ruthless growth, where economic growth benefits the rich; rootless growth, where economic growth starves people’s cultural roots; and futureless growth, where the present generation squanders... See more

the more instrumental care is, the less relational it becomes; the less we really listen to our kids and enjoy the process of letting them unfold with, yes, some intervention from us, but a much looser and less frequent grip on the reins.