Neighborhoods & Communities
How to make our neighborhoods stronger
My next-door neighbor Kathleen was a social butterfly. She was great at talking to neighbors. And her outdoor discussions led to a little social circle in our neighborhood. Eight houses somehow came together as a friend unit. We socialized. We helped each other out with childcare and moving furniture. We got to meet each other’s relatives.
The commonality was our neighborhood. Yes, we were all Caucasian and social drinkers. But there were different religions, different educations, different social classes, and different ages. It was a great, fun, and somewhat diverse group to belong to.
Kathleen’s group were not totally dependent on each other. We all had other communities we belonged to which were outside our neighborhood. For example, I was in Toastmasters and in politics. I made some good friends in those places. But it was still nice to come home and know some of my neighbors cared about me.
Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG) will delineate electoral units on 200-resident neighborhoods. Kathleen’s natural TDG neighborhood would be about two city blocks. Kathleen was well known to the eight houses. She was somewhat known to most of our block. Our block probably would have voted Kathleen as its TDG neighborhood representative.
