Local Community Experience as an Anchor Sustaining Reorientation Processes during COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. The World Café Methodology
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Participants
3.2. Procedure
- How has the way of living in urban spaces in your neighborhood changed due to COVID-19?
- How have neighbors in your neighborhood kept in touch since the COVID-19 outbreak?
- How would you favor the social meanings and dimensions of common spaces in your neighborhood?
- How would you modify urban spaces in your neighborhood to enhance their livability?
- Whom would you involve in order to implement these changes?
4. Results
4.1. Neighborhood Experience under COVID-19-Related Measures
“The pandemic did not change how I live in my neighborhood. Even before the pandemic, I did not visit it that much. When I was younger, I was more participatory for sure.”
“Even before the pandemic, I did not hang out in my neighborhood, so nothing has changed. I admit that during my childhood I was more involved in it, but my interest waned when I started high school in another city.”
“Since before the COVID-19 outbreak and the related lockdown, I have lived in my neighborhood less and less, because as I have grown up, my meeting places have become others. Indeed, one consequence of living in a small village with few meeting spots and attending first high school and then university in the nearby city was experiencing the places in the city center more and those in my neighborhood much less.”
“The few times I find myself walking through the streets of my neighborhood, I dwell much more on its beauties, especially during Christmas time.”
“Before the lockdown, I did not hang out in my neighborhood, because I tended to move to other neighborhoods; now, due to the current restrictions and not being able to move to other neighborhoods, I am rediscovering some of its areas, even if in a limited way.”
“Before the COVID-19 outbreak, we certainly weakly lived in our neighborhoods and frequently tended to move away. This led us to estrange ourselves from our places of belonging, which have always offered few initiatives for young people, and to move to places where the nightlife was guaranteed. During this pandemic, however, as we found ourselves unable to move, we have been forced to experience our neighborhoods/towns, rediscovering the problems and strengths of the community and, consequently, getting closer to it.”
“The way I live in my neighborhood has changed drastically. I have never fully experienced the place where I live—except when I was a child—and the causes are different: Growing up, I have lost interest in going to the same places, I have lost the friends I had as a child, I have met people from different backgrounds. But now my neighborhood is the only place where I can go out, have fun, and be in company from a distance. I, therefore, changed my way of experiencing and seeing it, going out at least once a day if only to take a walk.”
4.2. COVID-19 Effects on Local Relationships
“The time of the lockdown […] brought me closer to my neighbors, with whom I found myself talking much more often. I got to know them a lot more in those three months than in the last 20 years.”
“The relationship with my neighbors has improved a lot. Specifically, I made friends with my neighbor’s daughter, who is almost my age. Together we took long walks in our neighborhood and long chats at the window, each one in their own home. To date, we are real friends, we hear from each other regularly, and sometimes we even go out together.”
“Our relationship has certainly changed, because if before it was limited to greetings and the usual pleasantries, now maybe we are more united, because we are in this together, and even if we cannot physically meet, we hear each other on the phone more frequently.”
“Over the years, there has always been a relationship of ups and downs that has stabilized clearly following the pandemic, where there has been greater mutual availability and a pleasant exchange of gestures.”
“During the pandemic, we certainly tried to be more united and to help each other as much as possible. Everyone tried in their own small way to be available for others, for example, avoiding letting the elderly out—since they are a group at greater risk of contagion—and making purchases online and in-person for them. […] Now we know we can count on each other in case of need, especially after some emergencies.”
“The relationships with my neighbors have deteriorated somewhat. They are quite annoying people, and during the lockdown, their presence was felt—and not a little.”
“The relationships with my neighbors have never been very intimate, but in recent months they have particularly cooled down because each of us sees the others as a possible danger, as the ones who can transmit the virus to us and compromise both ourselves and our households.”
“There is practically no relationship with neighbors anymore, as you always try to avoid any kind of contact, both for your own health and others’.”
“Before the COVID-19 outbreak, we stopped even for a few minutes to chat in the street; now, this happens from the balconies or it doesn’t happen at all, and the conversation in person is preferred over the telephone, so you feel a little distance.”
“These circumstances of uncertainty inevitably lead people to distance themselves from others, they are insecure of the slightest contact with each other, for the matter of preventing their own health.”
“By now, reciprocity is drastically lacking due to social distance, a distance that today is almost synonymous with safety, whose wake is a cold indifference, but which at the same time brings a deep sense of emptiness, loneliness, powerlessness.”
“The places in my neighborhood that were most populated before the COVID-19 outbreak are currently semi-deserted.”
“The way we live in our neighborhood has changed, especially in the activities that we can carry out today. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, local common places were lived in for the most part with friends, while today for the most part they are frequented in a solitary way or with someone belonging to the family unit at most.”
4.3. Desire for Reappropriation
“In my neighborhood, there are several spaces that could potentially favor the social dimensions; however, due to the lack of controls and to the little interest of the community, these areas are abandoned and over time have become unusable.”
“It would be useful to reuse the unused spaces of the neighborhood by creating solutions that encourage the participation of the inhabitants of the neighborhood and beyond.”
“I would definitely add something to the park in my municipality, which is very beautiful and very large but also really empty. It would be nice to add some benches to enjoy the view and maybe a few merry-go-rounds for families who go out with their children, but something more should be added for young people too.”
“I would use the green areas as key points of the neighborhood, redeveloping them and also organizing events for young people in these places, in order to repopulate the neighborhood with young people.”
“In my opinion, more initiatives could be implemented for young citizens, such as events and sports games that can improve the territory and give greater opportunities of knowledge both of the neighborhood and among peers.”
“I would promote the organization of cultural events (art exhibitions, presentation of books, concerts, theatrical performances).”
“I would organize more festivals and feasts, social and cultural events, to increase the sense of community and the culture within the neighborhood.”
“More open-air spaces, especially parks, which under circumstances like the one we are experiencing can allow people to relate face-to-face safely.”
“A place that you can attend even in periods like the present one and therefore where it is possible to respect the safety distance but at the same time meet people we have not seen for months.”
“I would add a meeting place that purely concerns the neighborhood and the people who live there, because all the available meeting places concern all the people of the municipality and also people who come from other municipalities. Instead, we would need something that makes us feel we belong to this particular neighborhood and that makes us want to have something to do with those who live there.”
“We would need meeting places that relate purely to the neighborhood and/or municipality of residence and all the people who live there, in order to increase our sense of belonging to a community and motivate us to more assiduously go out in our own town.”
“A fundamental step is to create initiatives that bring the population closer to their own town; certainly, feeling an active part of a community invites them to more assiduously live in their neighborhood.”
“I would bring back to life associations such as ACR (Azione Cattolica Ragazzi, Catholic Action for Youths), or meetings of young people who were in church, also discussing topics not necessarily concerning the latter, or I would set up meetings to exchange ideas or books.”
“It would be critical to carve out moments of social contact for the community by organizing social events, including cultural ones; in this way, we believe it could be possible not only to strengthen social ties, but also to have more activities available for young people.”
4.4. Citizens’ Power to Improve Their Neighborhood
“Certainly, many of us need a change, something that makes us feel alive and active in the communities where we live.”
“Making such a change is not easy. For this reason, I would involve as many people as possible. First, it would be right to involve the relevant institutions of the neighborhood, such as schools with children and teachers, but not only. I would also ask my neighborhood church for help, as it has always tried to help, and I know it would not hold back. Obviously, I would also bring the municipality into the question, asking for the support of many workers of different categories, such as having more and more active ecological operators in very busy and dirty areas. Finally, I would seek support from my friends and peers by trying to raise awareness about the importance of common spaces and mutual respect.”
“To activate a change, there must be dialogue between institutions and community members first, so that there would be a citizens’ initiative and active involvement.”
“We need to understand how to actively change something that we have thought would always remain the same until now: Being a citizen also means taking action to make things more advantageous not only for oneself, but also for those who will follow. Consequently, we think it would be nice to be able to cooperate with those who can concretely carry out these changes. There are few opportunities where we live—mostly clubs—and it would be good to be able to change this through everyone’s commitment.”
“Only through taking care of, controlling, and maintaining shared spaces, aware of our sense of civic responsibility, can we courageously obtain their revaluation, redevelopment, and enhancement, but also open the scenario to new possibilities and innovations with the introduction of recreational activities that could allow the inclusion of young people who, through knowing each other, could establish relationships and new friendships within the same neighborhood.”
“I would focus on the involvement of young people, precisely because they would become the main users of those spaces; in general, I would tend to involve the entire community in order to be able to strengthen local bonds.”
“We would turn to municipal bodies and mayors, as they are those who have the technical skills and the power to be able to implement these changes.”
“We perceive a strong sense of powerlessness, almost as if each of us is just a passive subject who is powerlessly subjected to the future of these continuous events and changes.”
“However, all our proposals seemed a utopia more than anything else to us: Beyond the COVID-19 outburst, there are many people who remain indifferent to the everyday life that surrounds them, and who therefore commit themselves to redeveloping and rediscovering their neighborhood and community very little or not at all, moving further and further away from it.”
5. Discussion
Limitations
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Themes | Subthemes |
---|---|
1. Neighborhood experience under COVID-19-related measures | Indifference to local dimensions |
“Forced” rediscovery of local dimensions | |
2. COVID-19 effects on local relationships | Polarization of the relationship with neighbors |
Distance from other community members and fear of getting infected | |
3. Desire for reappropriation | Desire to exploit the previously forsaken urban open-air spaces |
Desire for opportunities for community ties and encounters | |
Denial of COVID-19 outbreak | |
4. Citizens’ power to improve their neighborhood | Sense of powerlessness |
Delegation | |
Involvement of citizens and creation of a local network |
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Gatti, F.; Procentese, F. Local Community Experience as an Anchor Sustaining Reorientation Processes during COVID-19 Pandemic. Sustainability 2021, 13, 4385. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084385
Gatti F, Procentese F. Local Community Experience as an Anchor Sustaining Reorientation Processes during COVID-19 Pandemic. Sustainability. 2021; 13(8):4385. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084385
Chicago/Turabian StyleGatti, Flora, and Fortuna Procentese. 2021. "Local Community Experience as an Anchor Sustaining Reorientation Processes during COVID-19 Pandemic" Sustainability 13, no. 8: 4385. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084385