One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about living inner-city is the seemingly close proximity to everything. (I said seemingly. When you get ‘out there’, the reality can be quite different depending on where you want to go and what time of day it is when you want to get there.) The ability to ‘catch-up’ with neighbours, and nearby friends, is a treasure. It’s not so much what’s spoken about; it’s the act of talking with one another that’s important. And my theory is: the more people there are around – and cities are nothing if not densely-populated places – the more opportunity there is to chat, and so, to get to know someone new. (And, with a little effort from both of us, in time, we’ll become friends.)
To see the street as a meeting place, rather than as somewhere to simply transit through, creates an opportunity to build connections with each other, and with the place we’ve chosen to make our homes. Whether it’s sharing something you’ve cooked with a neighbour, or a friend, who’s “doing it tough,” as the Aussies say, or being part of an eager crowd, 6-people deep, at a food truck or eating al fresco at a dining club where you’ve arrived with people you know yet you’re seated separately, so everyone who arrives is in the same boat: we get to be part of something much bigger than ourselves: a community. (Though, where I live, the powers that be sometimes ‘shutter’ a venue – usually by issuing ‘noise ordinances’ for keeping people awake at night. (You expect noise inner-city; it’s part of the charm of the place: the near-constant hum of other humans living full lives.))
For me, the idea of ‘community’ begins at home. It’s where, if we’re fortunate, we’re nourished by our families, not just with food and drink, but with affection, and with interest in us as human beings. Where we learn to understand where someone else is coming from, as our lives intersect with those who parent us, whether they be our biological parents or appointed guardians, grandparents, siblings, extended family, or friends, as they too continue their journeys transiting through the different seasons of their lives. It’s in these relationships, and their associated recipes, that our minds map ‘home’. These meals resonate within us, because the ‘taste of home’, when we leave on our adventures, is often what sustains us in a new place, and encourages us to keep going. It’s a way of claiming our space in our new place; of celebrating our unique identity in our diverse communities; of meeting each other where we are at that moment in our lives.
And it’s not only in sharing meals together that we can find this kinship.
In many inner-city communities, there are murals dedicated to establishing unity and strengthening connections among inhabitants; to memorials of fellow residents no longer with us; to those now-shuttered businesses where residents congregated, inside and outside, that were once ‘the beating heart’ of their localities, until a city council issued a ‘noise ordinance’, then agreed to the sale of the land they were situated on to a conglomerate of property developers, thereby opening another part of the city to encroaching gentrification which, over time, prices many current residents out. And the irony is: with all this outside investment into a neighbourhood, while some residents work together, find kinship, in protest of these property developers gentrification – murals can act as a rallying cry for change, or to strengthen a community’s commitment to its members’ ideals – many local residents cease investing in their neighbourhoods themselves.
Why?
Because it no longer feels like ‘home’ when a place has been deliberately allowed to become ‘run down’, where the powers that be have made “sure things don’t work,” so “people get angry,” and the under-funded local authority passes their responsibility “over to private capital” who can get it at a ‘steal’. (I’m quoting Noam Chomsky.) And in the meantime, people from so-called ‘well-to-do’ places comment, “Why do people from ‘rough’ places feel proud of where they’re from?” I’ll answer: Because without that pride in where you’re from – which gets eroded each time people sneer and put down places as ‘rough’; where a group of youths, talking on corners, use the street as a place to meet and to communicate, are labelled ‘up to no good, again,’ – there is no incentive to improve, via state-led regeneration, your locale, and so your prospects. (This is the art of ‘placemaking‘, which shouldn’t be confused with private-investment-led gentrification.)
Murals have a deserved place in society; they’re a form of artistic self-expression as valid as any art work that’s been framed. Why else would a city council within Britain’s west midlands place a protective frame around a Banksy mural in that city’s Jewellery Quarter? To protect its asset-value to the city as a visitor destination, even if, by its positioning next to a bench, photos of interactions with the mural commented on wider social implications within the city. (I wrote about this mural, previously.)
And that’s why I wonder, sometimes, about a curious discrepancy I’ve noticed here, where I live, and if it’s a similar situation across the country: How often we pass one another in the street without pausing to mutter hello, or to issue an enthusiastic “Good morning!” to each other, and to stop, if we have time, for a quick chat – whether we know each other well or we don’t. It costs nothing but a few seconds of our time, and this acknowledgement of each other has such significant positive ramifications on each other’s days. An act of everyday generosity, the sharing of a warm greeting or showing a polite interest in how someone is, can buoy someone for whatever storm they’re facing. So I propose a suggestion: let’s take it upon ourselves to work together to build resilience, and inclusion, into our communities; to accept each other ‘as is’; to not leave anyone out, at all. Let’s help each other feel welcome, and valued; that we belong wherever we’ve made ‘home’.
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