We close week twelve with a question that goes to the heart of everything we have been building toward. What is a neighbourhood for? What is a team for? What is the purpose of the shared space we inhabit, whether that is a street, a workplace, a community centre or an organisation?

The conventional answers are functional: a neighbourhood is a place to sleep and to access services; a team is a structure for completing tasks; an organisation is a vehicle for delivering a mission. These answers are not wrong, but they are incomplete. Russell and McKnight offer a more ambitious and more demanding account.

“The purpose of a neighbourhood is to create a context and the essentials for a Good Life to be had by all who live there. For that purpose to come into everyday reality, neighbours have to take on some functions that only neighbours and their associations can perform.” Cormac Russell and John McKnight, The connected community

The purpose that demands citizen action

The significance of this statement lies in its second sentence. It is not enough to declare that the purpose of a neighbourhood is the good life of all its members. That purpose only becomes real when citizens take on the specific functions that no institution can perform in their place. And this taking-on is not optional, delegatable or deferrable. It is the condition without which the declared purpose remains an aspiration rather than a lived reality.

This is a demanding claim. It means that the good life of your neighbours is, in part, your responsibility. Not in a guilt-inducing or overwhelming sense, but in the very specific and practical sense that there are things only you can do for the person next door: only you can notice that they have not put their bins out this week, only you can bring a meal when they are unwell, only you can ensure that they are known by name to someone on the street.

The functions that only neighbours can perform

The functions that only neighbours and their associations can perform are precisely the ones we have been exploring throughout week twelve. They are the functions of care, of relational security, of ecological stewardship, of local economic exchange and of the raising of children within a village of adults. These functions cannot be contracted out, professionalised or delivered at scale without losing the essential quality that makes them effective: the quality of being freely given between people who know one another.

When these functions are performed by institutions, they become services. Services have their place, but they are not the same as care. A service is delivered to a client. Care is given between people. The difference is not merely semantic; it is the difference between a life that is managed and a life that is held.

Acting our way into the preferred future

The final phrase of the Russell and McKnight quote invites us not just to envision the good life but to act our way into it. Community is not built through strategic planning sessions or aspirational vision statements. It is built through the daily, accumulated practice of people who have decided to take on, collectively and thoughtfully, the functions that only they can perform.

This is the week’s ultimate invitation: to look at the shared space you inhabit, to ask what functions are currently being left unperformed, and to begin, in whatever small and practical way is available to you, to perform them. Not because an institution has asked you to, not because a grant has been secured, but because the good life of those around you is, in the most immediate and practical sense, your shared business.

Questions for reflection

If your group or team accepted that there is absolutely no institutional proxy for your community work, what would you begin doing differently tomorrow?

How can you act your way, thoughtfully and collectively, toward your preferred future today rather than waiting for the conditions to be perfect?

Think of one function that only you and your immediate neighbours or colleagues can perform for one another. What is stopping you from beginning it this week?

What would change in your team or neighbourhood if people genuinely accepted that the purpose of the shared space is the good life of all who inhabit it, not just those who are easiest to serve?

Inspired by: Russell, C. and McKnight, J. (2022) The connected community: discovering the health, wealth, and power of neighborhoods. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.