Working near, living near
The importance of generating in-person community with neighbours
Over the past year, seemingly infinite stories of local communities coming together to look after one another have entered our conversations. As work is reimagined, generating in-person community with our neighbours is more significant than ever before.
In this post we explore how getting to know the people you live near can transform life in your local area.
The Work Near Home Era
Businesses are realising that after a year of working from home, their employees are looking for flexibility, not a return to five days at the office.
Whether it be childcare responsibilities, or feeling isolated, working from home has not been easy for everyone.
For those who cannot work at home, and do not want an hour-long commute, finding local community spaces to work in will be vital.
With an increased desire for balance, working with the people you live near is going to become commonplace as the world realigns to new workplace practices.
The variations of a hybrid working model will provide much needed flexibility, but will also come at a cost. Not having to commute means also not regularly seeing your co-workers in person, if at all. As much as we all love a good Zoom call, nothing quite lives up to being in the physical presence of inspiring people.
As we start to spend more time at home, and rediscovering our local areas, the people we live near will play an increasingly important role in our lives.
Reimagining Community
If there is anything people have learnt in the last twelve months, it is that genuine social connection matters. It matters for our wellbeing and mental health, enriches our lives with new perspectives and lived experience, and often provides us with a sense of belonging.
For years, businesses have used the term “community” as a mechanism to increase productivity and further their company vision.
In a world where people are increasingly conditioned to believe that their self-worth is measured by their productive output, finding a sense of unconditional belonging is at the heart of craving genuine connection.
Meeting the incredible people who live near us, and generating authentic community, will reframe how we think about social connection, as well as ourselves.
Finding community in our neighbours is a unique experience that can’t be replicated. Our neighbours share so much of our lives, from the walk to the local post office to frequenting the same independent café, and most people take this shared experience for granted.
The genesis of these meaningful relationships will produce means for organic knowledge-sharing and help behaviour that will ultimately make us happier, healthier and more fulfilled as individuals.
There is so much untapped potential in getting to know our neighbours during the regular working week.
Resilience in Local
As these relationships evolve, the implications for community resilience are an exciting prospect.
As we have seen during the pandemic, the ability for communities to come together to respond to and recover from hardship, is an important yet often undervalued component of social connection.
This increased social capital will gradually become more visible through the emergence of support networks, the increase in local community-run initiatives, and widening access to opportunity, all of which contribute to building strong communities.
Trusting in the people around us will allow for increased mobilisation of collective action, empowerment of local people to have their say in creating change, and connecting groups to find sustainable solutions to local issues.
The possibilities are endless.
Our lives are so often consumed by romanticising the city as a place that will fulfil our wildest dreams that it becomes easy to forget that there is value in our local areas and so much potential in the people who live right next door.
