Category Archives: Neighborhood

I agree with Hillary Clinton that It Takes a Village to raise a child. I just don’t agree with her on what kind of village it takes.

In her bestselling book of that name, Clinton finds the original notion of a village to be quaint and outdated. She writes, “The village can no longer be defined as a place on the map.” Instead, “it is the network of values and relationships that support and affect our lives.” Many other writers agree with her that a village isn’t physically delimited. Even fifty years ago, communications theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the term “global village” to argue that mass communications technology had created a single, global culture.

The problem with this modern definition of a village for children is that they can’t use most of the technologies that adults routinely use to extend a village beyond a small local area. They can’t drive cars on their own until they reach the age of 16, and they can’t interact with others using interactive communications technologies like mobile phone texting until sometime in the elementary or middle school years. So, for children, this modern village concept would force them to depend on the the intervention of parents.

As I’ve argued repeatedly here on Playborhood.com, children have a deep need to experience things on their own. The more rich is the physical (not virtual) domain that children can access on their own, on foot, the better.

So, I strongly believe that it takes a village – i.e. an old-fashioned, tight-knit neighborhood – to raise a child. Not some “network of values and relationships.” Not a “global village.” This village is a place where children can wander safely on their own, where they have many meaningful relationships with people – children and adults – outside of their families. Continue reading →

The following is an interview with Hetty Fox, a South Bronx neighborhood activist who has been instrumental in creating a very warm, tight-knit community on her block, a short one-way street called Lyman Place.

Here, she describes how she rescued Lyman Place back in the 1970s, when life in the South Bronx was terribly bleak. Vandalism and theft was rampant, and arsons were totally out of control. Over 40% of all housing there was burned down during that decade.

Fox and her neighbors were forced to take extraordinary measures to enable their neighborhood to survive, but in fact, even peaceful neighborhoods that are in no imminent danger would benefit greatly from applying Fox’s lessons. Continue reading →

Much has been written about the deep, positive impact that exposure to nature can have on children. I agree. Recently, I’ve seen with my own eyes how vital a relationship with nature can be for children.

However, through this experience I’ve come to realize that the discussions of children and nature have largely failed to address how to best include nature into children’s lives.

I’ve come to realize that two factors are crucial to the magical experience my two older boys (6 and 2-1/2) have had: Continue reading →