Could Christiania Be a Kind Communities Model?

Following the Velo-city conference in mid-June, I traveled to Denmark to visit a few communities with potential for becoming models for One Street's Kind Communities program. Surprisingly, the one community I thought would not make the cut was the only one that did – Christiania.

For those not familiar with Christiania, it is an autonomous community started in the 1970s when random squatters jumped the fence of an abandoned military base in downtown Copenhagen. Since then, people who chose to live there have cooperated so that their current population of 850 can live amiably together.

Unfortunately, this includes drug dealers. During my visit and wonderful discussions with long-time residents, including one of the original founders of the bike shop, I learned why this problem is so entrenched. The original squatters were adamant about keeping this taken land separate from Danish and even European laws including allowing the sale and use of drugs, now restricted to hash and pot. Since then, residents have realized this was a mistake as they endure the violence and degradation around the drug dealing area they call Pusher Street right at the main entry.

Even after purchasing the land from the city in 2012 and thus legitimizing the community, city officials have allowed the drug trade to continue there in order to keep it contained and away from other neighborhoods. When I heard this, all I could think was that Christiania is being used by the city, not respected as a true neighborhood where such a problem would garner serious assistance toward a solution.

Even so, the residents and leaders of Christiania continue their efforts to abolish the drug dealers who have stained their reputation. Their concerted effort, including working with the drug dealers themselves, actually added to my realization that this community could indeed become a model for Kind Communities.

What do you think? Have you had experience with Christiania? Do you think it could make the cut? Please read more about our Kind Communities program at www.OneStreet.org then email your thoughts to sue{at}onestreet.org.

Sue

First Kind Communities Models

When we launched our Kind Communities program at the start of this year, we knew it would be a long haul. Researching and capturing elements that lead to kindness in communities could be a rather nebulous target to reach for. With the status quo to displace people in favor of profitable projects and to level old neighborhoods to build speedways, talking about kind places was sure to bring only blank stares.

Wrong! I have been thrilled by the response. Nearly everyone I have spoken to about Kind Communities gets it. They have either lived in such a place and miss it terribly or they have been angered by the lack of kindness in their own communities and have envisioned similar changes. A common comment is that few people talk to each other anymore, not even neighbors. Others note the loneliness of living in isolated places where houses are far apart and driving is the only way to reach community services.

During my recent trip to Washington, D.C., I met with staff at the nonprofit development firm Community Preservation and Development Corporation (CPDC). A few minutes into my introduction to our program, they jumped in to tell me about the success they’d had at one of their affordable housing projects—Edgewood Commons. After a horrible murder, CPDC took the opposite approach from the normal lock down. They engaged the tenants as experts for solving their community's problems.

Two years later, they have dozens of active tenant groups teaching classes, starting businesses, and keeping their community safe. They captured their success in this white paper including the steps they took to engage residents. CPDC is also looking at ways to bring similar processes to their other developments in the D.C. area, including bicycle initiatives so residents can obtain their own bicycle as well as career training in bicycle businesses. Can you imagine how excited I was to connect with them?

After that meeting and follow up calls, I convinced myself that CPDC is a special case and to lower my expectations again. Then I asked a Japanese friend who lives here in Prescott, whether he had any connections in Okinawa. Okinawa had made our list of potential models because citizens control the economy through local trade and their culture is to take care of each other. Within a few days, we were sitting down with Mitsuko, a friend of his who is from Okinawa and now living in Prescott.

I couldn’t take notes fast enough to capture her explanations on how the Okinawan people developed their kind culture and have preserved it through too many forced take overs by foreign nations, including the U.S. until 1972. Now, though Okinawans’ ancestors have closer ties to China and Indonesia, the ruling government of Okinawa is Japan, and the U.S. still has tens of thousands of military personnel on bases there. Through all this, including unimaginable horrors during World War II, they have preserved their culture of kindness toward everyone. I will meet with Mitsuko again this weekend to continue our discussion. She’s so excited about our Kind Communities program that she has offered to help me connect to more models around the world.

Now I can’t help but look at our list of potential models with a sense of excitement for what I will discover next. Here are the next likely for my outreach:

·         Nantes, France –focus on fun, citizen engagement, and honesty about their past. Video from Velo-city 2015: https://vimeo.com/97097924

·         Paqueta island in Rio de Janiero. Brazil – funny video of bicycles and car-free island: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C4lNCLcfa8

·         Worcester, Vermont – citizen-led, community lunches every Wednesday, central gathering place, online forum for sharing things, community pride. 1,000 population.

·         Villages and tribes that are unlikely to identify themselves as anything special. I’ve got some calls in to our local tribe here in Prescott.

I also have my eye on communities that seem to be trying to rebuild into kind communities, either after disasters or simply to recapture a sense of community they once had. Here are some from that list:

·         Christchurch, New Zealand - http://www.regeneratechristchurch.nz/ Earthquakes hit in 2010 and 2011. Started this entity in 2016.

·         Greensburg, Kansas – called their rebuilding after the 2011 tornado “green” and focused on energy-efficient buildings. Now locals are grumbling, but there still seems to have pride in their effort - http://www.npr.org/2014/04/29/307913565/kansas-town-destroyed-by-tornado-spreads-blame-for-lack-of-growth

·         Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada – efforts at engaging local artists and business owners: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/09/zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-what-i-regret-about-pouring-350-million-into-las-vegas.html oddly begun by the millionaire CEO of Zappos.

·         Key West, Florida – seems to be a kind community, residents trying to organize to stop reckless developers and preserve old community including affordable housing and bicycle access.

We’re looking for more potential models to add to our list so we’ll have a broad range to learn from as we compile case studies and resources to help all of you shift your own communities back toward kindness. Here is our current list of criteria (sure to be refined as we move forward):

• Residents feel secure and affordable housing is not threatened;
• Well-used community center including workshops with tools to share and classes led by residents;
• Improvements, projects, and activities organized by residents;
• Businesses owned and operated by residents (few if any outside chains), most necessities served (grocery, hardware, clothing, staples, etc.), social enterprise?:
• No charity services;
• Residents care for each other, none marginalized;
• Community goals and changes serve as many residents as possible, especially those near the margins, without doing any residents harm;
• Streets are all traffic calmed with pedestrians and bicyclists prioritized;
• Easy access to affordable transportation, especially bicycles, bikeways, and affordable bicycle repair.

As you can see from our Kind Communities webpage, we believe that such a backdrop of kindness will enable significant improvements for bicycling, for everyone, no matter their ability, age, or income level.

Do you know of a kind community that could be a model for this program? If so, please offer it in the comments section.

Sue

Learning from Kind Communities, Bicycles as Canaries

Most of us have been enchanted by places that have no outstanding feature, no grand building or super highway, no monstrous shopping mall or ballfield to draw inane profits. Instead, we enter such places with ease and relax even with activity all around. 

Some of the places that come to my mind include particular neighborhoods within cities; villages in Mexico, Africa, and Thailand, even Bangkok as a whole, though it is a massive city. I’ve worked on farms in villages in Sweden and New Zealand where people care for each other, rallying to help anyone in distress. Nantes, France is another city that makes my list with its playfulness and caring for its residents. These are wildly different places and yet each shares one feature – everyone who lives in places like this, kind places, expects to ride a bicycle.

In Cures for Ailing Organizations I show why organizations, like organisms, need to be healthy in order to accomplish positive change. This includes a strong purpose (skeleton), coordinated people helping each other (muscles), sound policies (nervous system), and steady communications (respiratory and circulatory systems). Now I wonder, could whole communities also function this way?

In 2017, One Street will embark on a new program to unlock the secrets of communities that already enjoy a connected and empowered citizenship. Our mission is based on serving leaders of bicycle organizations, yet we have found that bicycle facilities and programs in communities that isolate people—whether by high-speed roads, sprawl and single-use development, gentrification/displacement, or police harassment—cause little if any change. Many of these bicycle-only victories are eventually removed or vanish because they reside where people are not prioritized.

Bicycles are to communities what canaries were to miners. When few people can ride bikes, or only one sort of people rides bikes, it is a sure sign of disease. In such places, officials base decisions on grand infrastructure, attracting large businesses, and reactions to complaints, isolating and marginalizing people as if they are bothersome, inanimate objects. Streets are widened, housing and public spaces replaced by shopping centers and car parking lots. The purpose or skeleton of such a community is diseased and its muscles, the participation of its citizens, have atrophied.

I’ve been studying several proactive efforts that touch on this topic, but don’t hit the mark:

•  Intentional communities and ecovillages – focus on kindness and connection within their group, but are usually isolated from mainstream society.
•  Service communities – serve marginalized individuals, but rarely engage them as leaders or integrate their community into mainstream society.
•  Placemaking, community development corporations, and other socially sensitive developments – generally focus on infrastructure designed by outside “experts” and diminish the expertise of the people they desire to serve.

Even these promising efforts tend to veer away from integration. Our research into the reasons for this will be important to this new program. We do know that organizations and communities tend to devolve into places where a few people dominate, where new ideas are suppressed, where the hard work of kindness and respect are replaced by sudden pronouncements from those few or their call for a majority vote.

The goals of our new program will include identifying models and creating resources to help organization and community leaders gain the courage to resist this tendency and instead ensure the engagement of everyone (not serving them, engaging them) to better their community together.

Our working name for this new program is Kind Communities because it will examine communities as a whole to find out how some have kept or shifted their focus to break down barriers that marginalize people. And one of our best gauges for finding these model places will be that everyone—no matter their age, ability, or income—expects to ride a bike whenever and wherever they like.

Do you know of places like this? Can you offer pertinent resources, books, websites, or conferences? If so, please offer them in the comments section. Also, we’d appreciate any suggestions for naming the program. Kind Communities will work, but we’re looking for suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

Sue