Neighborly
relations have been declining since the 50’s. However, during the last years it
has been noticed that the number of people that do not know their neighbors has
been increasing and this is not good for anyone.
Not knowing
the people that live next to you or close to you is something which only breaks
up society and benefits crime figures which also have been increasing in most
countries.
The main
benefits of knowing your neighbor are that
both of you could be more protected by taking care of each other and helping
each other with any situation. Another advantage is that you would know what
kind of person lives next to you and who is close to your family.
According to
Pew survey (2010), 28% of us know none of our neighbors’ names, and this is more
evident in young and low income people. There is a perception that tells us
that “we shouldn’t be involved with our neighbors”.
In a
situation of a lost dog, crime, or someone needing help to do something or
basically any type of neighbor situation it is important to have and use the
social networks to solve any issue in the community.
At the
moment there are existent websites in several parts of the world where people
complain about their neighbors or ask for help to find something within the
community. This are forums feed by the same community of neighbors where they
help each other. These forums are for free access and the data is plugged by
each neighbor/member. This websites could also assist a neighbor when looking for
help for someone to take care of their pet or painting the house or any other
type of neighbor assistance you could imagine.
A way to
measure the success of something like this is by measuring the number of
members and surveying people who had been assisted by another neighbor/member
of the site.
This are
only tools to enhance the physical and verbal relation that most people should
be doing with their neighbors within their community.
Examples of this type of sites are:
www.fleissigebiene.com in Austria
www.nextdoor.com in the US
Daniel Romero
1 comment:
I don't see anything about an SNA here (no data, no questions, no outcomes.) If you think in network-analysis terms,this could be the start of a good idea--using SNA not just to identify neighbors but to qualitatively select the ones most "relevant" to you.
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