Beyond the Diet: 7 New Year's Resolutions for Your Neighborhood
Around the start of each new year, my wife and I schedule a daylong mini-retreat with one another. Together, we look backwards on one year and forwards on another. And we do this through the lens of our most important values: physical and spiritual health, the health of our marriage and family, meaningful work, etc. We talk about our goals and how we can help each other be successful.
Another value we discuss is something we refer to as “neighborhood flourishing.” We start by imagining what our neighborhood would look like in five years if it was more connected, more hospitable, safer, and more loving. (We get our kids involved in this as well.) Then we identify a few tangible things we can do in the next 12 months to help bring that vision closer to reality. These become our neighborhood resolutions. Here are a few examples from past years:
We will be a more active presence at the city park, meeting our neighbors there and occasionally bringing a thermos of coffee to share with other parents.
We will invite our immediate neighbors into our home for meal or dessert.
We will humbly and yet proactively share our vision for “neighborhood flourishing” with a few kindred spirits.
Most New Year’s resolutions are focused on personal improvement. Get in shape. Quit smoking. Get organized. Read more. These are important, but what if we resolved to improve our places too?
Resolutions will vary from one person, one place to the next. Below are a few ideas to get you started, but we want to hear from you too. How will you make your city, town or neighborhood stronger in 2020?
1. Meet Your Neighbors
According to the Pew Research Center, only about 26% of Americans know most of their neighbors. Knowing your neighbors not only makes life richer, it is the first step in weaving a fabric of care in your community. A growing body of research suggests that neighborhood connectedness leads to more active citizens, greater happiness, and greater resilience in the face of crisis. Meeting your neighbors doesn’t have to be as dramatic as what this guy did. Some easier ways:
Learn your neighbors’ names
Live more of your life in your front yard
Bring a welcome basket to a newcomer
Join a neighborhood association
Ask for help
Offer help
2. Eat With Your Neighbors
My family has made it a practice to regularly share our table with neighbors for the last twelve years.
Some of this is spontaneous—inviting people we want to know better, or because they have been on our hearts, or because they may be lonely. We’ve been known to make too much of a favorite dish just so we can share a plate with a neighbor. My wife also recently built an outdoor oven so we can make wood-fired pizza and bread with our friends and neighbors.
We have recurring practices too. For the last couple of years, we have met every Friday night with a half-dozen other families for homemade pizza. Before that, we hosted a weekly Soup Night in our home. Every Sunday night, anywhere from 10 to 35 people crowded into our living room for great food and great conversation. At the center of our feast were two types of soup, one of which was vegetarian and gluten-free. (We called it our “inclusive soup,” because it allowed everyone to participate—even those who had to abstain from certain types of food for health reasons or for matters of conscience.) In this, we were inspired by a wonderful book called Soup Night: Recipes for Creating Community around a Pot of Soup, by Maggie Stuckey.
3. Go On Walks
Walking the neighborhood is one of the simplest, yet most intimate and illuminating community-building practices. History, demographics, sociology, economics, justice, hopes, dreams, fears—they all come to life as we encounter real people in real places…at the patient pace of step-by-step. It can be done by yourself, with a friend or partner, or with the whole family.
Walking is one of the best ways to meet your neighbors. It also slows you down enough to notice the cultural and natural rhythms of your place. You begin to see other details too: the gentle rise in elevation, or the subtle ways in which the built environment makes it more difficult for people in your neighborhood to come together. There’s the added bonus of the health benefits too—lower blood pressure, reduced risk of cancer and osteoarthritis, improved heart health, improved mood, etc. How about that? A neighborhood resolution that helps with your other resolutions too.
It turns out the placemaking benefits of walking have long been known:
[The pedestrian] is not isolated, but one with things, with the farms and industries on either hand. The vital, universal currents play through him. He knows the ground is alive; he feels the pulses of the wind, and reads the mute language of things. His sympathies are all aroused; his senses are continually reporting messages to his mind. Wind, frost, ruin, heat, cold, are something to him. He is not merely a spectator of the panorama of nature, but a participator in it. He experiences the country he passes through — tastes it, feels it, absorbs it; the traveller in his fine carriage sees it merely.*
— John Burroughs (1895)
*Note: If someone in a horse-drawn carriage merely sees the country he is passing through, how much shallower is the experience for the person in the automobile screaming down the interstate at 80 miles per hour?
4. Build a Little Free Library
You’ve probably seen one of them around—perhaps on your own block. Little Free Libraries are free book exchanges that promote literacy and a sense of community at the same time. The Little Free Library nonprofit initially set out to inspire the creation of 2,510 Little Free Libraries, the same number of libraries Andrew Carnegie helped build more than a century ago. Today, there are more than 90,000 registered Little Free Libraries around the world!
The organization’s website is a treasure trove of useful resources — including plans, kits, stories, a robust FAQ section, a Google map of Little Free Libraries, and more. Little Free Libraries come in all shapes and sizes. Check out these Pinterest boards for inspiration (or just for the fun of it):
Last year, Rick Brooks, the cofounder of the Little Free Library movement, wrote an article for us on the experience of moving to the small town of Princeton, Illinois.
5. Invest Locally
Locally owned businesses are the cornerstone of community prosperity. We all know the benefits of shopping local, but there is a growing movement toward local investing—and an increasing number of tools and organizations that make local investing easier and more effective. Thanks to recent rule changes, it is now possible for all individuals (not just the wealthiest accredited investors) to invest in private startups and small businesses.
What are some ways you can invest in your local economy? You can go in with neighbors to invest in local real estate, using a tool like MainVest. You can move your money to a bank or credit union that invests in local businesses. (Here’s a tool to help you find one.)
You could also start or join a Slow Money investment club. Slow Money brings money literally “down to earth” by supporting a new generation of entrepreneurs and investors who measure success not just by return-on-investment but on how our economic activities strengthen neighborhoods, promote cultural and ecological diversity, and contribute to resilient local communities. To date, Slow Money has invested over $73 million in more than 750 small food enterprises around the United States.
6. “Repair” an Intersection
An intersection in Portland, Oregon. Image via John Luton.
Have you ever been driving or biking through a neighborhood and come across one of those vibrantly painted intersections? Maybe it depicted a tree, a flower, native wildlife, a sun or rainbow, a labyrinth or a Celtic knot, or a group of people. And maybe a couple of the corners were outfitted with benches to encourage lingering. This is called “intersection repair,” and more and more of these projects are appearing in all kinds of communities—urban, suburban, and rural alike.
Portland’s City Repair Project, which has provided a lot of energy and expertise for these initiatives, says that intersection repair “[reclaims] the street as a shared public space and as an important venue for local culture.”
Friends of mine who have led or participated in intersection repair agree. They describe how these projects slow traffic, become natural gathering places for the neighborhood, and provide a useful landmark for navigation. And this is after they bring neighbors together to design and paint.
Maybe more than anything, an intersection mural is a sign that says, “This neighborhood is alive and active and loved.”
7. Start a Common Change Giving Circle
A friend of mine started an organization I love called Common Change. Think of it as community-supported micro-philanthropy.
Leveraging technology to engage individuals in relational giving, Common Change makes it possible for friends and neighbors to pool their money to help others in need—with an unexpected medical bill, a costly car repair, etc. One of the rules of Common Change is that giving is on a one-degree-of-separation basis, so it is highly relational. Someone’s practical needs are being met even as they are being enfolded into a circle of care. In the words of Common Change, this approach to philanthropy blends “high-tech” with “high-touch.”
The video below will give you an idea how Common Change works:
What’s a Resolution that Best Fits Your Own Neighborhood?
The neighborhood resolutions mentioned above are just to get the conversation going. I’ve seen them work in my own neighborhood, and in the neighborhoods of friends. But they might not be right for you or where you live. (For additional inspiration, check out a few of these “one-day resolutions.”)
Maybe the best thing you can do in the coming year is to meet with your family and neighbors to envision together what a more flourishing neighborhood looks like five, ten, even fifty years from now. From there, you can decide on a few tangible things you can work on together now. Supposedly only 8% of people follow through on their New Year’s resolutions. I’m guessing we would be more likely to succeed if we had the whole neighborhood behind us!
Later this week, we’ll be publishing a follow-up post to this one. We will highlight a few of the neighborhood resolutions people share with us on Facebook and Twitter, as well as in our Community Group. What is your neighborhood resolution?
Top image via Jamie Street.
John Pattison is the Community Builder for Strong Towns. In this role, he works with advocates in hundreds of communities as they start and lead local Strong Towns groups called Local Conversations. John is the author of two books, most recently Slow Church (IVP), which takes inspiration from Slow Food and the other Slow movements to help faith communities reimagine how they live life together in the neighborhood. He also co-hosts The Membership, a podcast inspired by the life and work of Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, writer, and activist. John and his family live in Silverton, Oregon. You can connect with him on Twitter at @johnepattison.
Want to start a Local Conversation, or implement the Strong Towns approach in your community? Email John.