The low birth rate and new relationship models cause families to become increasingly closer and more distant from each other. This distancing is often accentuated by globalization, growing professional mobility and long journeys and travel times in cities where a large part of the population is concentrated. If we add to this very extended working hours and frenetic and often individualistic lifestyles, the result is that today it is not easy to have a family network to draw on immediately in case of need or with whom to interact and socialize daily.
And future projections show that this panorama, far from being corrected, will worsen. According to INE estimates, in 2037 a third of all households will be single-person; That is, someone alone will live in them. And by 2050 it is estimated that one in three people will be over 65 years old.
We are therefore moving towards an older and more lonely society that will make it difficult for the cornerstone of a person’s socialization and care to be their family relationships. Hence, more and more voices from the public and private spheres speak of the need to reactivate other proximity links that worked very well as a support network in past times and still continue to do so in rural areas: neighborhood ties.
“It is not about contrasting the family with the neighbors, but rather about thinking that society and cities have changed and that it is likely that we will not be able to have as much support from the family as before; “If one day you have an emergency and your child lives more than an hour away from your house, everything will be easier if you have someone you trust on your doorstep or in the neighborhood to turn to,” explains Mercedes Villegas, director and co-founder. of Grandes Amigos, a volunteer foundation that works by weaving social networks to improve the well-being of older people.
And it emphasizes that the pandemic showed how positive neighborhood support and close social relationships can be to develop emotional bonds and trust between people in a certain environment, to promote socialization as a healthy daily habit and thereby avoid situations of loneliness. Unwanted.
“If we have learned anything with the covid, it is that when there is a situation of need or crisis, mechanical solidarity (which is what occurs in towns where everyone knows each other and if a person misses two days to buy bread, someone is surprised and “he’s going to see what happens to him) it also resurfaces in the cities,” agrees sociologist and Deusto professor María Silvestre.
He believes that it is important to learn from those relationship dynamics that are established in towns to choose what is good about them – “that people can know and recognize each other, have meeting points and decision-making points for neighbors…” – and not the bad – “excessive control over what others do” -.
He assures that in this fostering of the community and activating solidarity, public administrations play a fundamental role: “we must educate in values ??so that we care about what happens to our neighbors, encourage assembly frameworks in decision-making, shorter schedules flexible use of schoolyards to serve as neighborhood meeting points, day centers for seniors, parks, civic centers and spaces where meeting is easy…”
However, Silvestre emphasizes that promoting social commitment with neighbors and community support and care networks does not imply subtracting responsibility from the public sector in this area. An opinion that is shared by Oriol Nel·lo, expert in urban geography and professor at the UAB.
“In our society, support and care have always been based on family ties and proximity, and this has entered into a crisis due to the reduction of family units, the difficulty of housing several generations in the same home, and because the population is increasingly fluctuating and diverse, so we have to think about other forms of support for aging at home such as the neighborhood network, but without this being the excuse to forget the need to increase institutional support, from the public health system. well-being, which is the only one that ensures equality and that reaches everyone,” reflects Nel·lo.
Martín Zuñiga, professor and researcher at the University of Deusto who has studied the role that community dynamics play in the social organization of care, assures that, today, “they have a reduced function” that requires a public impulse to move from small volunteer initiatives and pilot projects in certain municipalities or neighborhoods to more general structural changes.
“We can get involved at an individual level with small gestures such as applying a more appreciative look at the vulnerability or fragility of those who live in our portal or in our neighborhood, but what is truly transformative is reforming the services we have now (from day centers to residences, community housing, or health centers) from a more relational logic so that they interact with the community and associative fabric that exists in each neighborhood, opening spaces and forging relationships so that they work in a more collaborative way with each other,” Zuñiga explains.
There are various ways and models to do it. In Pasaia (Gipuzkoa), for example, they have managed to integrate into a “one-stop shop” the support resources of the social services of the city council, the provincial council, health centers, foundations and volunteer groups, which are coordinated between them to respond to the specific needs of each elderly person, whether it is support, health care, care, public aid or friendship, explain sources from the Gipuzkoan Provincial Council.
There are initiatives to support certain specific groups in many cities and neighborhoods, but they are often not coordinated or connected with other services or activities in the area. Nel·lo mentions, for example, the Let’s Get Down to the Street program promoted by the Barcelona neighborhood plan to break the isolation of people over 65 years of age who have problems leaving home due to architectural barriers, to whom weekly outings are offered. with the help of volunteers and a wheelchair that allows you to go up and down stairs. Or the Radars program, also promoted by the Barcelona city council to involve businesses, pharmacies, residents and health centers in the neighborhood in detecting risk situations for older people in that area.
Zuñiga emphasizes that the key to developing the community and neighborhood ties is to “connect” people with the available resources, which are different in each environment, which is why it is essential to incorporate the figure of the community connector in towns or neighborhoods, “ a professional who acts as a link, for example, between those who go to the day center and the radio or the local library, or who brings together neighbors to exercise, or to have coffee, or connects them with the batucada group…”, he exemplifies.
Katherine Villegas, head of the Nextdoor platform, considers that technology is a great ally when it comes to facilitating this connection between neighbors, businesses, public organizations and volunteer organizations in a neighborhood.
“That is precisely what we do at Nextdoor, a free service that allows you to automatically connect with all the neighbors who live in your neighborhood to interact with them in real life, because your neighbors are the best help you can have whether you need to find the dog that has been lost, how to find a babysitter, knowing which is the best park to take the child to or a professional to repair a piece of furniture,” he explains.
Because the need to establish contact with the people and life of the neighborhood and to seek support from neighbors is not exclusive to older people. “Studies indicate that there are many young people who feel alone; and families that migrate from neighborhoods or cities and do not have relatives who live nearby and have to rely on the closest social network; and Nexdoor provides tools and excuses for them to get to know each other and request or offer mutual help,” says Villegas.