Government to help people make friends

I presume ghughes is having a whinge about my comments and I apologise to all community devolopment officers who try to get people to talk to each other if I have offended them

I didn’t realise the local council was responsible for getting people to talk to one another. I always thought people could arrange that for themselves if they so desired. Silly me.

Please come down to my local tonight and encourage me to talk to suspicious characters who drink lite instead of sticking to my own shout

“Have people become so insular that they can no longer talk to people?”

I recall reading a survery that showed Canberrans (and larger cities in general) have an appaling rate of social interaction on a neighbourhood level. Apparently bugger all Canberrans have ever introduced themselves to, or even spoke with their immidiate neighbours.

(Unfortunately I can’t find the document where I read this information, but I will keep searching.)

Community development officers try to get people to talk to each other – in person. Rather than become small minded petty whingers with pseudonyms on a local blog

nice one centurion ari

Hey Barking Toad – if the community development officer did hand out fines for smoking, that would make him/her the Forde Prefect.

I want a pub development officer appointed so they can break up the little schools in the pub on friday after work and move people round to meet everyone in the pub ‘cos it will build social capital where other drinkers in other shouts will watch out for me and stop carlton supporters knockin’ off me meat tray tickets when I go for a piss

And said officer could go round the pub like a salvo selling the war cry and tell us not to drink too much and lecture us about the evils of tobacco and tell us we shouldn’t say the government is full of shite even though it is

In fact, I think the government should appoint development officers all over canberra to interfere with our day to day lives and stop worrying about the health system, schools and pot holes in the roads

Why are we naming a suburb after a bloke who PM for one week?

It’s not hurting anyone, it gives someone a probably quite fun job, why not? My to-do list does have “invite neighbours over for a BBQ” but it’s not a priority so the neighbours keep moving out before I get around to it.

Ahh – go on Thumper. We’re not all as extroverted as you.

It probably won’t work – but hey, it’s worth a go.

I’m pretty sure all of these green spaces will come to nought. They will be in-filled as soon as it becomes a financial imperitive.

Sigh…another outer suburb filled with McMansions…

There’s a method to their madness. Helping people in a community to form relationships with one another builds social capital, which can help mitigate the effects of economic and social disadvantage, or even poverty. People who live in communities with good social capital watch each other’s back, take care of the neighbourhood, organise themselves to lobby for and provide services to another and so on. Build a suburb full of families on low incomes and low levels of education without those networks, and you’re begging for high levels of petty crime, theft, vandalism and the like.

As for inviting your neighbours over for dinner – I think it’s something you’re much more likely to do once you’ve had a chance to mingle in a safe, neutral setting. If it gives somebody a job, and it gets people together, what’s wrong with it?

community development officer….the fuck??

I’ll put my hand up for that job – organising barbies and piss-ups would be right up my alley

but maybe there’s more to it, like handing out on-the-spot fines if you smoke in your yard in front of neighhbours kiddies

When Gungahlin was being built, the then govt reckoned that everything was OK. PALM and the Land Group refused to acknowledge the significant problems that they were creating through approving the plans being put forward by private enterprise.

Now that their gross negligence (remembering that ACTPLA/LDA and PALM/Land Group are just the same people with different logos) has become so obvious, they are trying to make up for it with these crazy schemes.

As always far too little, far too late.

ACTPLA/LDA would have to be the most dysfunctional agency in Canberra, and probably Australia, as it fails repeatedly to learn from its mistakes.

I commend Corbell for taking back control of broadacre development from profit-oriented developers, who so far have managed to only engineer slums in Gungahlin. Palmerston is a ghetto, and even the supposedly affluent areas of Harcourt Hill and Nicholls are mazes of narrow streets.

I’ll withold final judgement on Forde until the ink dries on the contracts though, there’ll probably be some “fine tuning” before then that will result in more cycle path width roads and McMansions on drink coaster sized blocks.

Or place a trailer park ther and watch them make a community.