“Describe the street you grew up on” I grew up in Haughton, Louisiana since I was four years old. The neighborhood I grew up in was beautiful, peaceful, and friendly. There were very few houses on my street, therefore I was short on kids to play with. Everyone who lived on the street had either lived there for years, or their whole life. You never saw any violence, racism, or other bad doings, just beautiful atmosphere and amazing people. However, a large percent of the people on the street were elderly and the ambulance would often be seen. We all looked out for each other like our street was its very own community. There you have it the street that I grew up on was laid back, peaceful, protective, and friendly. Not to mention, my best friend
When people think of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, they think of crime and violence within the neighborhood. I myself have thought this about Bedford Stuyvesant before I did research and actually visited the neighborhood for myself. Bedford Stuyvesant in my opinion, has two different sides. The side the media portrays to us, the people, and the side people who actually visit/live in the neighborhood see for themselves. My visual representation above shows the two different sides of Bedford Stuyvesant. The first image shows the typical view of what people think of when they think of Bedford Stuyvesant, the projects. When people think of this neighborhood, they think of project buildings housing low income black families. The media portrays Bedford Stuyvesant as a
...g, Critical, Peacemaking, Life Course and Strain theories could also be used to explain crime in these neighborhoods. According to Emile Durkheim, mores are different depending on the type of community. On a spectrum, from organic or the lower socio-economic neighborhood to mechanical or the well-structured community in this case Chestnut Hill. In a mechanical society, there is greater cohesion, sharing common values or goals. As could be expected, crime is predicted to be higher in more organic the community is.
Although I feel that other things can contribute to there being crime in urban neighborhoods. I felt as though the three topics that I have stated could possibly be the root of these problems. Ultimately, the one thing that stood out to me, and what I emphasized on a lot was location. The area in which a person is brought up leaves a huge impression on a person. What I feel that Elijah Anderson emphasizes is that in different locations and especially in urban areas two peoples definition of normal and decent can be completely different because they weren’t brought up in the same
I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. I lived in a very welcoming neighborhood. As a child, I had many friends on my street. We would ride bikes, climb trees, visit the playground at the local park district, and stay outside until the streetlights turned on. The families on my street always looked out for each other, so we didn't worry too much about safety. All of my friends attended the same school and participated in the Chicago Park District's activities such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, music and dance lessons, and open gym events. The park district hosted an annual gym show so the kids could perform for their families. Residents would get together on most Sundays to talk about issues in the neighborhood and share meals and stories.
Compton, my hometown, was not the “ideal” place to raise a child. Gangs were always posted on street corners with red bandanas, blue bandanas, or long white tee shirts. The men would be covered with tattoos and would stare you down as you were walking down the sidewalk. I remember kids playing with a broken fire hydrant as though it were a garden sprinkler. At the time I lived in a, white one story home with a huge lemon tree in the backyard. Our neighbors were always friendly. Sometimes the corn man would come with a bike horn, squeezing it as he went up and down the streets, trying to sell elotes, which is Mexican street corn and duros, which is a Mexican snack made of puffed wheat topped with chili and lime. The ice cream truck made his rounds also. Kids would often chase the ice cream truck on bikes or by foot, trying to get him to pull over just so they can get ice cream. Due to the violence Compton seems a little frightening, but there is so much love in that city, which most people overlook.
Driving through Charlestown will take you just three minutes. The kids on street corners will stare at your car, while adults will yell out your name and wave. The friendly atmosphere can make you feel welcome if you are a part of the neighborhood. But it vanishes if you are an outsider or a local victim of a crime.
Poorly kept neighborhoods house more amounts of criminal behavior than other areas in the community because over time, everyone in the community stopped caring about the upkeep of the neighborhood’s appearance as well as the neighborhood as a whole. This lowers the social control of the neighborhood, or the strength of people holding each other accountable for the rules of society. According to Wilson, if the boys continue living in in the run down, poverty-stricken environment of Henry Horner Homes as they grow up, they will be more likely to engage in criminal behaviors when later in their
Very few people would want to live in a place where they don’t have security. Whether it be in cities or subdivisions, Jacobs, if alive, would ascertain that there needs to be a sense of connectedness to maintain communal safety. Public living “bring[s] together people who do not know each other in an intimate, private social fashion and in most cases do not care to know each other in that fashion” (Jacobs 55). Now that families typically center themselves around suburban lifestyles, residents should understand that the same connections that Jacobs says were to be made in cities need to now be made in subdivisions. Jacobs was scared that with houses being spread out in the suburbs, little interaction between neighbors would take place. In order to avoid this, neighborhoods need to promote a sidewalk lifestyle that they currently do not (Jacobs 70). With Kotkin stressing how urban areas are no longer preferable places to raise a family, saying only seven percent of their populations are children, he lacks compassion for the transients that now inhabit cities. Undoubtedly, those who now inhabit the city should also feel safe in their environments. Nowadays, members of a city isolate themselves from interactions with other citizens making it difficult to establish a social
Starting off the discussion we will start with chapter one. Chapter one is about Decent and street families. Decent families are families who live by society’s norms and try to avoid violence, drugs, confrontation, whereas street families embrace violence and fear because it is a way to stay alive within their neighborhoods. In the chapter they discuss how many families in the inner city actually have the decent family values, but can also harbor the street values. For example in the chapter they actually discussed an instance where Marge a women they had interviewed had a problem with others in her neighborhood. Her story s...
I have lived in the same neighborhood my entire life, a neighborhood full of white middle class families, with the exception of one middle class African American fam...
These communities should offer services and have available resources to help the families and there is a need for better relationships in these communities with law enforcement. It does not matter what is on the outside if there are values, respect, family support at home. I do not believe that my community is a description of who I am, because growing up my mom kept us involved in activities and off the streets. Today there are charter schools with smaller settings that help to improve the education for many, when I was growing up my mother sent my brothers and I to private school. I have always wanted to be a part of change in my community because so many young males and females are either incarcerated or being killed. I have three young sons and I want them to have more like most parents. And I believe from my own personal experience that what they are exposed to and influenced by begins at
Disadvantaged neighborhoods often present problems such as concentrated poverty, pollution, neglect of maintenance, vandalism, crime, poor mental and physical health and social isolation, which lead to a poor quality of life (Dekker, 2007; Sampson 2012). Many Western countries are trying to both approach and arrest these problems by designing area-based improvement policies (Gade, 2001; Andersson & Musterd, 2005). Before such programs can be implemented, however, one must be aware of which factors may be involved in the problems present in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Although research in this field suggests that there are many factors responsible for the above mentioned problems, this essay will only focus on the social dimension, and more specifically on social cohesion. Although debated, research suggests that Social cohesion may play a critical role in improving quality of life in disadvantaged neighborhoods, for example by reducing crime (Sampson, 2012; Dekker, 2007; Dekker & Bolt, 2005).
There are various influences on everyone’s lives while growing up. I believe the greatest of these influences is the neighborhood you grew up in. I grew up in a quite large, welcoming neighborhood. While living in this neighborhood, I was outgoing and remarkably talkative. Making friends became second nature to me. Playing outdoors from sunrise to sundown playing sports or exploring the outdoors with my friends became a daily routine for me. I was outgoing, talkative, and active. I believe this is the result of the neighborhood I grew up in.
Where I live is one of the greatest neighborhoods in the city to live in; however, it does have its drawbacks. Importantly, it has nearly everything a resident might want, beautiful picturesque scenery, proximity to shopping, and many of the cultural centers. Nevertheless, the roads can be some of the most congested in town, and the streets are not safe to walk late at night. Fortunately, I wake every morning to the most beautiful sun-lit house. I sit on my porch sipping coffee, while I drink in an atmosphere that steals my breath away.
I’ve been in many neighborhoods that were ugly and messy until one time in 1992 when we moved to Florence and Central. When I first saw this area, I felt scared and sad. I especially hated the black gate that made our street seem like a prison. The worst things were the bad neighborhoods, drugs, violence, and homeless people.