 In my
rambling post last year about community (ours) I described how once a
year we set up a 'goofy golf' course in our neighbourhood. The 100-acre
fence-free community has nine 'holes', with a one-foot diameter pail
sunk in the lawn for each hole and a numbered flag in each. We trim the
grass around the hole and the tee-off area, print up a bunch of maps
and scorecards, and invite everyone in the neighbourhood to try out the
course, using a sand wedge and a tennis ball. Some people put out
coolers of beer, wine and soft drinks by the tee on their property. We
have a big barbecue at the end of the day and offer prizes for the best
and worst scores. It's a great exercise in community building and is
now a neighbourhood tradition, with a phenomenal turnout.
Contrast this to what happens all too often in 'community' and
'recreation' centres: People don't take care of the facilities, which
are often starved for funds. User fees are needed to make up the
difference, which are often unaffordable for many in the community. So
the 'community' centre becomes and underused private sports facility
for the wealthy, and the not-so-wealthy hang around instead in malls
and parking lots outside convenience stores.
There are exceptions of course -- some community centres are absolute
godsends that help cohere an otherwise disconnected community. But in
my experience most are not. Why is this? Is it just another
manifestation of the Tragedy of the Commons, whereby the minute
something is owned by more than one family its facilities are neglected
and desecrated? Is this something inherent in community ownership, or
is it an issue of scale and size: The greater the number of people that
share something, the more likely each person is to expect others to
look after it, and lose the 'pride of ownership' that causes them to
take proper care of it?
Raymond de Young suggests
the answer is more complex than mere size of the community. He says
that commons (i.e. shared resources) only avert the tragedy when they
are managed by an inclusive, durable, self-initiated and self-managed
group. Our makeshift 'goofy golf' course meets those criteria. But how
scalable are they? The number 150 has been frequently proposed as the
upper limit for most functional social networks (our neighbourhood has
about 100 people). What do you do when the commons is too large,
complex or expensive to be sustained and managed by a community of only
150 people -- a large municipal park, or a community stadium or
theatre, or recreation centre? Break these up into smaller, more easily
manageable units and you significantly lower their utility.
The alternatives when self-management isn't viable, as Don Dwiggins has
pointed out,
are (a) abolish commons and privatize everything (the neocon solution),
or (b) impose strong government control (the liberal solution). But
neither has a good track record. Is there another answer?
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