Communities
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community development<br />
Seize the<br />
opportunity<br />
of crisis<br />
to rebuild<br />
community<br />
The Chinese word for crisis is<br />
comprised of two characters,<br />
one meaning danger and the<br />
other opportunity. In every crisis<br />
there is opportunity. Our world<br />
is confronted by multiple crises.<br />
Jim Diers explores the upside that<br />
we now have unprecedented<br />
opportunities to rebuild community.<br />
Christchurch, New Zealand struck<br />
me as beautiful and orderly<br />
when I first visited Seattle’s sister<br />
city in 2008. It was a very different<br />
place when I returned four years<br />
later. A magnitude 7.1 earthquake<br />
had shaken Christchurch on September<br />
4, 2010. It was followed by<br />
thousands of aftershocks including<br />
one on February 22, 2011 that killed<br />
185 people, collapsed hundreds of<br />
buildings, ravaged the underground<br />
utilities, caused liquefaction and<br />
flooding, and in the eastern suburbs,<br />
triggered massive landslides<br />
and rock falls.<br />
But, this crisis brought people<br />
together like nothing else. On the<br />
vacant lots that are now ubiquitous,<br />
residents have created community<br />
gathering places – a dance-o-mat,<br />
cycle-powered cinema, blue pallet<br />
pavilion, petanque court, miniature<br />
golf, dino-sauna, little free library,<br />
community gardens, coffee shops,<br />
a unique pub called the Smash<br />
Palace, and dozens more of these<br />
“Gapfiller” projects.<br />
One of my favourites is Urban<br />
Poetica, where the wall facing<br />
a vacant lot on Colombo Street<br />
has been painted as a chalkboard<br />
inviting neighbours to share their<br />
poetry. Kirsty Dunn contributed the<br />
following poem that was so popular<br />
it now appears in permanent paint:<br />
Amidst the shards of glass<br />
& twisted steel<br />
Beside the fallen brick<br />
& scattered concrete<br />
we began to understand<br />
that there is beauty in the broken<br />
Strangers do not live here anymore<br />
Out of crisis, Christchurch residents<br />
discovered what is most important –<br />
community. As one survivor put it, “It<br />
was a time when neighbours, family,<br />
friends and strangers stopped opening<br />
conversations with ‘what school<br />
did you go to’ and replaced it with ‘Are<br />
you OK? How can we help? Let’s check<br />
on each other.”<br />
Similarly, on the global scale, the<br />
economic crisis has been an opportunity<br />
to rediscover community. At the<br />
very time that people’s needs have<br />
been the greatest, our governments<br />
and other institutions have had the<br />
fewest resources to respond. Many<br />
people learned what those in the<br />
global south and many impoverished<br />
western neighbourhoods have known<br />
right along – the only genuine source<br />
of care is community and all we can<br />
really count on is one another. Other<br />
people came to realize that even<br />
when times were good, they weren’t<br />
that happy – whether by choice or<br />
necessity, they began to focus less on<br />
acquiring material things and more on<br />
building relationships.<br />
The economic crisis also opened<br />
many governments to the opportunity<br />
of community. They began to see<br />
neighbourhoods not just as places with<br />
needs but communities of people with<br />
underutilized resources. Many local<br />
governments initiated bottom-up<br />
planning and matching fund<br />
programs as ways to leverage those<br />
resources. In the UK, the national<br />
government invested in community<br />
organisers because its budget was so<br />
much more limited than the community’s<br />
untapped resources.<br />
A second global crisis is climate<br />
change. Increasingly, people are realising<br />
that they can’t wait for government<br />
or green technology to solve this<br />
crisis. We all need to change in order<br />
to live more sustainably, and that will<br />
only happen if people feel connected<br />
to one another and the place they<br />
share. It’s in community that we feel<br />
responsible and accountable for our<br />
individual actions and have a sense<br />
that our collective actions will make<br />
a difference. Of course, the most<br />
important collective action is to<br />
hold government and corporations<br />
accountable for doing their part.<br />
The unique power of community<br />
isn’t limited to the environment,<br />
though. As Margaret Wheatley says,<br />
“Whatever the question, community<br />
is the answer.” There is a vital role<br />
for government and professionals<br />
6 Inner Sydney Voice • Summer 2015/16 • www.innersydneyvoice.org.au