Citizens for a Livable Cranbrook Society provides grassroots leadership and an inclusive process, with a voice for all community members, to ensure that our community grows and develops in a way that incorporates an environmental ethic, offers a range of housing and transportation choices, encourages a vibrant and cultural life and supports sustainable, meaningful employment and business opportunities.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Civility and Quality of Life

This is the title of a report from the Young Foundation in October of 2011. This report is relevant internationally and it states, “Wherever they lived, many said civility was the single most important contributor to their quality of life.”

“Experience of incivility shapes the way people feel about their communities and general social health more than crime statistics, according to new research, ” it goes on.

It argues that civility acts as ‘glue' in holding communities together and that when this breaks down it causes hurt, stress and deeper social problems. The research, co-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council, found that long-term trends make civility harder to sustain but even more important.

The trends that make civility harder to sustain include:

· Pressures on time; people feel that their working lives are more pressured, exacerbated by commuting times and that incivility is more likely to occur when people are hurried.

· Mobility, diversity and density; people feel that shared codes of civility are harder to maintain as they have more interaction with strangers and less interaction between the generations.

· Technology: a common complaint was people speaking loudly in public on mobile phones or overhearing music from headphones. People are also concerned about incivility online.

For the full article:
http://www.youngfoundation.org/media-centre/press-releases/charm-offensive-needed-counter-pressure-civility

No comments:

Post a Comment