Article in Urban Environment Today
5 October 2000
Ever since the words 'regeneration' and 'redevelopment' were coined by the
first developer, there has been one intractable problem about the whole idea.
While the fabric, the buildings and the roads of a rundown neighbourhood
are relatively easy to regenerate, the community that lives there are
considerably more difficult.
Successive generations have dealt with the problem differently. Some just
pretended it didn't exist, like Mrs Thatcher, and rebuilt whole swathes of
cities - then wondered why the poor inhabitants went elsewhere.
Others kept their heads down and tried to involve local people as little as
possible. Then they wondered by their gleaming concrete was vandalised and
their dinky trees uprooted.
The problem of reviving communities is now the central problem of
regeneration. We have terms like 'social inclusion' to describe the elusive
ideal and 'social capital' to describe the missing quality that can achieve
it. But still the unrevitalised communities remain as a living memorial to the
puny attempts of developers, planners and architects alike.
Worse, there is surprisingly little in policy terms to offer as a solution.
Even Tony Blair's original pamphlet The Third Way skirts around the
question. It makes sensible noises about re-discovering a sense of personal
responsibility, but you turn the page to find out how he's going to achieve it
and all you find are worryingly authoritarian ideas like curfews and prison.
But one recent arrival from the USA does at least claim to be part of the
answer to rebuilding neighbourhoods - as its proponents put it - relationship
by relationship.
It uses time as a kind of money. And it culminates in an ambitious proposal
by the New Economics Foundation for a London Time Bank, an infrastructure of
local 'time banks' that measure and reward the efforts people put in for each
other at a local level.
The idea is that people build credits for time they put into voluntary
activities in providing health or social care and other worthwhile work in
their communities. Everybody's time is equally valued. Communities which are
'cash poor, time rich' are able to trade their time providing each other with
valued goods and services.
They provide communities with a means of trading services which they are
denied by the conventional economy, and they enable more health and social
care to be provided to the most socially disadvantaged people who experience
the worst health.
In Rushey Green in South East London, local residents earn and spend
'time', opening an account in the time bank held at a neighbourhood health
centre. One participant - we'll call her Mary - is a wheelchair user who
spends her time money being taken out of her house on trips. In exchange she
bakes cakes for local events.
Hyacinth builds up credit in the time bank by visiting an elderly blind
woman. She has spent some of her time savings on getting her garden shed
fixed. And it's not only people who can trade time credits - organisations can
join and use the time bank system to access additional hours and expertise
from other local groups.
The man behind the idea, civil rights lawyer Edgar Cahn, the author of a
new book on the subject No More Throwaway People, put it like this: "I don't
like feeling useless - society declares a lot of people useless - the
unemployed, the elderly and the young. My local time bank values what I can
do, and it rewards me for it."
"Market economics values what is scarce," he says. "Not the real work of
society, which is caring, loving, being a citizen, a neighbour and a human
being. That work will, I hope, never be so scarce that the market value goes
high, so we have to find a way of rewarding contributions to it."
The Rushey Green Health Centre can refer patients to the time bank as well
as - and may be eventually instead of - prescribing anti-depressants. Getting
them involved isiting local people, shopping for them, helping in local
schools - whatever they want to do - seems to make them feel better.
Researh in the USA also shows that in increases local trust. It certainly
involves people who never normally volunteer, often people who are normally
pigeon-holed by professionals as 'the prob;em' but who turn out to be a vital
resoure.
A joy of the time money system is that its benefits can be widely felt.
Healthier local people build healthier communities. Time banks encourage
community involvement. Participants in public consultations can be paid in
time 'credits' - older people in Watford earn time credits helping the council
design and deliver local services. Local authorities and voluntary
organisations can use the time bank network to channel and reward those who
champion local development and regeneration.
It may seem small-scale, though it's working in London SE6 and the other 14
or so time banks so far started in the UK. But it can be the basis of a much
bigger network, building the kind of volunteering in the capital city where
neighbour helps neighbour, building on experience where time banks are highly
developed as in St Louis and Chicago.
Time banks use some of the principles of volunteering to put forgotten
human assets to use meeting the forgotten needs, but networks of time banks
can also create a reciprocal relationship between people and institutions, as
well as between people and people, which ordinary volunteering finds it harder
to achieve.
Together they are a mechanism for involving people as equal partners in the
work of rgeneration, as well as allowing almost anybody in society, including
the elderly and housebound, to give something back. And the evidence is that
feeling needed is a critical missing piece of the social capital jigsaw.
The London Time Bank will be able to guarantee time credits earned so that
they could be spent in all the time banks rather than just the local one. It
will also broker volunteer time between different organisations, if particular
specialist help is available in one neighbourhood but needed in another - and
allow participants to check their balances online.
But it can also administer a stream of recycled or surplus goods - like
refurbished computers - via the internet or catalogues, to encourage people to
spend their time credits. And it will link into training programmes so that
people can provide themselves with new skills - paid for with their own time
and effort helping others.
The ratcheting Landfill Tax means that it is increasingly cost-effective
for companies to make sure their old furniture, electrical equipment and
computers are recycled rather than simply dumped.
A new infrastructure, organised by groups like Community Logistics in their
Cyber-Cycle project, is emerging which is recycling unwanted equipment, and
providing training for young people by doing so. They are also then putting
this equipment back on the market.
The problem is - as the government has found out giving computer equipment
away through Computers Within Reach - the people who need it most often don't
have the money to buy it at even much-reduced prices. But if it is simply
given away, it isn't valued. To get round this dilemma, the London Time Bank
can funnel this recycled equipment back into the community, so that it can be
earned with time.
It's all about finding resources that have no money value - something
economics isn't very good at - and building them into regeneration.
"As a nation we're rich in many things, but perhaps our greatest wealth
lies in the talent, the character and idealism of the millions of people who
make their communities work," said Tony Blair, little knowing what he was
saying, perhaps. "Everyone - however rich or poor - has time to give. Let us
give generously, in the two currencies of time and money."
Edgar Cahn is speaking at the London School of Economics at 7pm on 17
October. Tickets �12.50 including a free copy of his book No More Throwaway
People. Details from
[email protected]
More information about time banks from Time Banks UK, a joint venture by
the New Economics Foundation and Fair Shares, funded by the government's
Active Community Unit (web)
www.timebanks.co.uk
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