Working my way through “The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighbourhoods” by John McKnight and Peter Block, a really wise book that deserves to be dwelt in for a long time. McKnight and Block are the ‘fathers’ of community organizing in the US. McKnight worked for the Kennedy Govt in the 1960’s and later trained Obama in the skills of community organising in Chicago. They document the fallout in shifting from citizens to consumers. “In becoming consumers we have stopped being citizens and as a result the role that families and neighbourhood play in our lives have atrophied and the community has become incompetent” (54)   The shift to a consumer society has come at a high price to neighbourhoods and society. The tally is familiar. Nature is marginalized, enslaved to debt, the rise of the superficial. But they are also concerned to detail the social erosion; the loss of care, social isolation in neighborhoods (we don’t know or trust our neighbors) and the disappearance of common interest and a sense of the common good. We reap what we have sown. What they are calling for is a re-awakened attention to the informal and human connections that are possible at the neighbourhood level, creating abundant communities that are competent with capacities that nourish life. This is something that a consumer society cannot replicate. Whats-more they want to demonstrate that a nourishing social life in a place actually has a productive economic outcome as well.

I have been comparing the use of the Freemans Bay Community Centre with that of Grey Lynn, both facilities owned and managed by the Auckland City Council. The former at this point in its history is simply a hire venue, a facility that has little relationship with its locality. The latter appears to be a hub of local community life, part of the resources available to an active community network of grass-roots social initiative and enterprise. Grey Lynn with its combination of character housing, neighbourly streetscapes, proximity and social energy is one of the most ‘liveable’ suburbs of Auckland to reside in at the moment. It is a place that has had its strengths unlocked (and consequently is rocketing in house values). Freemans Bay on the other-hand while sharing some of the same assets of housing, street-scapes and proximity, is a bit lost socially, disjointed, a dormitory. Are we too caught up in the consumer lifestyle and forgotten what it is to be citizens of where we live ? And to what extent is the Council complicit in this – tempting people to consume its centrally driven offerings to be the “most liveable city” in the world ? They may be missing the key ingredients according to McKnight and Block.