Exactly! Top Essay Bronwen Lloyd and one that needs repeating in a climate of "shrinking communities".

It is as though Australia has lost the most critical asset of all, within community... the value of 'human capital' and how to respect or better take care of it, at ground levels.

From Cooktown, I ran an Candoo NGO for some five years - based on Good Government Policies. Given not many understood the value of an NGO, I persisted regardless…

I used the media to call for change in a inter-regional rural area, resistant, with a cultural power base that used its politics… as a means to marginalise community issues that could otherwise focus on open transparency, encourage broader understanding by building capacity and greater social cohesiveness.

The problem is that government staff and Council’s middle management more than often lack faith and or commitment to basic connectivity.

I have found many work at arms length of ‘community engagement policies’ and ridicule (as if a silo culture) those who could advocate or help develop community policies.

We need a bridge built between community and services. Government and community needs to share knowledge and exchange community policies.

Unless you have a committement from within Local Council, staff within in Primary Health, among the Police and local School, to work to integrate local community policies, you are accused of working ahead of them, sounding too much like “the” government… and you can become inadvertently isolated, at odds with these paid public-servant workers.

Unfortunately, this problem evolves in funding rounds as a fundamental flaw within the ‘partnership’ developmental framework.

The framework errs to the populous culture (whose in and whose considered controversial) and does not focus on addressing support to the causal elements of community breakdown (especially civic politics) that could otherwise help glue issues to direct positive outcomes at absolute ground levels.

State and Federal staff need more attentiveness here.

Our community is not the only community divided… shrinking… having a fraction of the population processing the resources… including a social capital based on spatial populous, a form of co-dependence.

http://www.miacat.com/
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It's not just cultural, although there were some very pertinent observations above. Surely half the reason we're becoming so isolationist is the physical design of our built environment?

We work in town, drive home to a suburban McMansion, drive into our double garage, get out of the car, and get inside to watch TV and sleep. Rinse and repeat 5 days a week — moving between 2 boxes in a little private car.

Where do we actually engage with the local community on a daily basis?

Now we COULD design eco-cities that are 'more European than European' that eliminate the need for a car because everything you need is right outside your door. Sydney's CBD could easily be retrofitted into an Eco-city with high density high diversity living... it's already part of the way there, and the 2030 vision for Sydney is heading in the right direction. We should massively accelerate that, out into the suburbs as well. Build a few train, tram, and trolley bus lines... and then let suburbia slowly rezone and rebuild New Urbanism back onto the transit lines. It would wean us off oil, solve global warming and create community more naturally than any mandated programs. When you can work rest and play from home, and do most of your shopping, coffee, recreation, church, and local parties in the community hall... it builds loyalty and life into the region. Why we don't hear more about this I do not know. Maybe the "Australian dream" has been so packaged to the McMansion that we'll not be able to shake the suburban nightmare until it's too late.

See my page for more.

http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2007/06/relocalize.html

Eclipse Now,

I have worked with a lot of foreign scientists and engineers over the years and have noticed that, while they may initially live under higher density conditions, the ones who intend to stay almost all move into a detached house at the first opportunity. This applies to both Europeans ands Asians, whose families have probably lived under high density conditions for generations. As someone who has lived in a big city flat, it is easy to understand why they feel this way. It is great to be spared noise, smells, pollution, being cut off from nature, and knowing all about your neighbours' arguments, sex lives, and tastes in music (or the lack thereof). I would submit that the lifestyle you applaud primarily exists because people are not given a choice, although I don't dispute that some people are willing to give up space and privacy for other advantages.

If we really can't afford to let people keep a decent distance from their neighbours and even have a vegetable patch if they want it, perhaps we have too many people.

There are obvious cultural and educational benefits from having some diversity, but the enormous scale of it today is another issue. The research of Robert D. Putnam, the author of "Bowling Alone", suggests that it reduces social capital and social trust, not only towards members of other ethnic and religious groups, but towards one's "own" people as well.

"If we really can't afford to let people keep a decent distance from their neighbours and even have a vegetable patch if they want it, perhaps we have too many people."

Now there's the main point! Rather than pave over, plough up, and pollute the entire planet by increasing population until we have wall to wall suburbia, how about trying to create some more 'demographic transition' in the 3rd and developing worlds, and reduce immigration to already over-crowded, over-consuming first world nations?

Thank you Bronwen Lloyd for an insightful, considered and humane article. It's people with ideas like yours who contribute to building the community and society many of us value. Despite the cynicism of some of the response comments, I remain hopeful.

cheers

LAUNCH a camPAIN for this , launch a campain for that the same elies attending all these free ,launches?

SO we have the media getting all the cash as usual [the selfsame media that beat up this isolate and conquer strategy]

I watched the media campain of fear unwind [from the aids scare to the bird flue ,to the negative murder/horror show /lawyer fear programing , cops shows , court cases , and dumbed down reporting as sport-stars became the info taintment, give up smoking take the blue pill.

i watched as govt shut down sociaty in the late nineties [when public funds dried up along with education[as well as public liability insurance shot up 300 percent, i watched the people withdraw to their pay television sets to be programed with ever more fear and murder cops shows and sports.

i watched the towers fall down, instead of being at the social club talking with humans i was allowed to watch the spin twins.

I watched the work for the dole contracts unfold , i watched so many cam-pains on the media [seen the overpriced adverts the spin machine put out [stop smoking, have a fourex, here comes big brother,

Its deliberated govt policy designed to make us into work drones who pay taxes that then get given by the millions to the big buisness lobby] so we have the solution...

Yet another media blitz to enrich the media that sold out the people
cam-pain launch anyone [its paid from the public purse go on dig into the trough everyone else is ]

The media hard press has done its master'sss sssserving well