The South Fraser Blog: Creating strong neighbourhood identities and knowing your neighbours key to safe, health community

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Creating strong neighbourhood identities and knowing your neighbours key to safe, health community

Jane Jacobs was one of the great urban philosophers of the twentieth century. Her call to action was the destruction caused by mid-century century “urban renewal” which saw walkable neighbourhoods razed to the ground in favor of housing projects, highways, and parking lots.

In her seminal book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs observed that one of the keys to healthy and safe neighbourhoods was the loose relationships that people formed with one another in those neighbourhoods.

It wasn’t that every neighbour was your best friend, but that people knew who lived in the neighbourhood, and could trust them. A Langley City example might be to trust your neighbour to water your plants and check your mail when you are away. Another example might be to trust them to walk your kids to school.

Langley City is taking a fresh approach to building a safe community. One of the first steps is to invest in building connections between neighbours, and to create a sense of place. You may have noticed the following banners throughout Langley City. This is one on ways to start building neighbourhood identity. Another is the “Know Your Neighbour” campaign which will be launching in a few weeks.

Blacklock Neighbourhood Banner. Select image to enlarge.

Alice Brown Neighbourhood Banner. Select image to enlarge.

As noted on Langley City’s website:

An important goal of Langley City Council is to foster strong community ties among residents in the City of Langley. Neighbourhood safety is a team effort and it is evident that when residents work together to improve community safety it results in a reduction in crime. To that end, Council mandated the Crime Prevention Task Group to develop strategies that will encourage residents to get involved and take an active role in helping to prevent and reduce crime in our neighbourhoods.

To realize this goal, the Task Group has developed the “Know Your Neighbour” campaign! An initiative that will have volunteers hitting the streets July 21 & July 28 (11am-3pm), going door to door to educate residents one household at a time, about crime prevention strategies and to share tips about how to easily improve neighbourhood safety. We want residents to get to know one another and help us build a strong, safe community.

If you’d like to volunteer to spread the message door to door, canvassers will be going out two Saturdays - July 21 and July 28, 11am - 3pm. Please contact Dave Selvage, Manager of Bylaw Enforcement by Friday, July 13 to sign up and help out! dselvage@langleycity.ca or 604-514-2822.

So far there has been a great response from people in our community, but we could always use more volunteers. Building a healthy and safe community starts at the neighbourhood level.

Here are more pictures of the neighbourhood banners that were recently installed in our community.