Block club vs. Raccoons

Block clubs are hyperlocal. They take on issues that matter to residents. They work to fill in the gap between the failures of private property owners and government, doing what either might but neither does. This DNAInfo account of the residents of 8300 South Saginaw Avenue in Chicago shows how perfectly they understand what block clubs can do. In order to deal with their shared problems of raccoons that have occupied a vacant house, they are forming a block club.

Mentioned in hypnogogicfun

David Potash's hypnogogicfun offers a brief summary of Chicago's Block Clubs. He notes that "We gain a strong sense of on-the-ground dynamics and activities, but missing are the clubs’ roles in the larger context of Chicago politics, economics, and change."

Excerpt from Chicago's Block Clubs

A short excerpt from Chicago's Block Clubs is available in the UWM Report.

"People Ain't Neighbors No More"

Chicago Tribune reporter William Lee connects the violence in Chicago to a decline in neighborliness between residents. Informants in the article place blame on the distractions of social media and the failure to follow legal forms for property inheritance.

Dan Kleinman think's it's "way cool" that Chicago's Block Clubs cites The New Neighborhood Block Club Manual.

Politics

What is more important to your neighbors: Your politics or how you look out for their kids?

A Nashville resident explains in the New York Times, "Knowing our neighbors’ party affiliations would tell you nothing about which one of them makes a killer margarita, or which one volunteers at a homeless shelter, or which one secretly hung a lime-green thong on the back side of a neighbor’s Christmas tree after the caroling party."

Pacing in the middle of the night

The intersection of race, gentrification, and neighboring, revealed in this Washington Post article.