The editor of L'Encyclopédie de L'Agora and well known newspaper chronicler and philosopher, analyses actuality through the looking glass of Belonging.
Communities
Associations or teams are created to accomplish specific tasks. Communities, on the other hand, are where we are born, live and die. They are places of being more than places of doing, and are threatened when doing takes precedence over the simple joy of being together. And those who are likely to suffer the most are the most vulnerable members of community.
A good indicator of the quality of community life is how long it takes to discover that someone who lives alone has died at home. This was the indicator Jane Jacobs used to compare two Chicago neighbourhoods during the heat wave of 1995. Noting that one neighbourhood had 90 percent fewer deaths than the other, she attributed the difference to the higher density of the former, which increased people’s connections and reduced isolation.
Harold Lejeune, L'Arche Beloeil
«Residential common areas with trees and other greenery help to build strong neighborhoods. In a study conducted at a Chicago public housing development, residents of buildings with more trees and grass reported that they knew their neighbors better, socialized with them more often, had stronger feelings of community, and felt safer and better adjusted than did residents of more barren,...
Ivan Illich
Ivan Ilich – whose name is associate with the notion of conviviality – predicted the crisis of 2007-2008, more worrying than those which preceded it, the last perhaps before the great implosion which he saw as inevitable. “Against the threat of a technocratic apocalypse, I offer the vision of a convivial society,” he wrote at the beginning of the 1970s. The word “convivial” is not a...
Ivan Ilich – whose name is associate with the notion of conviviality – predicted the crisis of 2007-2008, more worrying than those which preceded it, the last perhaps before the great implosion which he saw as inevitable. “Against the threat of a technocratic apocalypse, I offer the vision of a convivial society,” he wrote at the beginning of the 1970s. The word “convivial” is not a...
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Jacques Dufresne's
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The editor of L'Encyclopédie de L'Agora and well known newspaper chronicler and philosopher, analyses actuality through the looking glass of Belonging.Latest posts
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Loneliness affects one in ten people in France
ONE in ten people in France lives in solitude and a quarter have only the most basic links to family or friends, a new report has revealed. The issue of solitude came up in 2003 after the...
Preventing Home Foreclosures - a Promising Innovation in Philadelphia
