The role of empathy in the achievement, and maintenance, of a high-functioning neighbourhood

I recently attended the annual general meeting of the Sea Point, Fresnaye and Bantry Bay Residents and Ratepayers Association and was fascinated to witness, first-hand, the vast differences there can be in perceiving and appreciating a place.

One man stood up and emphatically declared that his neighbourhood had become “like a war zone”, and how he felt he had to dodge bullets just to leave his house or return home.

Another resident I spoke to after the meeting mentioned how she hadn’t visited Sea Point’s celebrated Promenade in more than 2 years because of how unsafe the neighbourhood had become.

Although I’ll admit this is seldom a useful emotion, my immediate feeling was one of anger – just how entitled were these people?! Who did they think they were?! ?I was at a complete loss in understanding how radically different their perceptions could be of a place that I found to be so safe and well-functioning.

Sea Point must surely be one of the highest-functioning, safest neighbourhoods in South Africa. ?My wife often walks the Promenade at night on her own.?Children walk home down my street after dark back from judo practice in the Scout Hall next to my block of flats. For me, this is a neighbourhood that, in a South African context, so neatly symbolises the “sidewalk ballet” that Jane Jacobs refers to in her infamous book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”.

It certainly has many of the features of the high-functioning neighbourhood that Jacobs talks about – just the kind of mix of uses, density and “eyes on the street” that produces activity around the clock and means that our streets and public spaces are being passively surveilled almost all times of the day and night, making it safer for people to walk and know someone will be around to help in the case of need.

The Atlantic Seaboard is also one of the wealthiest urban areas in South Africa and has recently been named one of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world . Semigrants are flocking here from the rest of the country no doubt because, compared to many other places in South Africa, it’s a relative bubble, an outlier in a country with massive urban challenges.

Sea Point is also, without a doubt, home to a sizeable population of people who live, and sleep, on the street. ?And it’s these street people that seem to exist as a symbol to some residents, supposedly generating in them these feelings of the area being a war zone, of becoming a place so unsafe that one can no longer freely enjoy the area’s amenities.

And of course, there is crime, including (some) violent crime – in no way do I want to be dismissive of that.?In a country with the highest inequality in the world, how can there not be??Certainly not, however, crime so pervasive that it would warrant descriptions of it being a “war zone”.?[Never mind what an insult this statement is to the millions of South African who actually live in environments not dissimilar to a war zone.?Where parents are actually losing children to stray bullets on a daily basis].

In a country with an official unemployment rate of 34,5% (63,9% for those aged 15-24 and 42,1% for those aged 25-34 years), the only option, unfortunately, for a great number of South Africans, is to rely either on charity or crime. There are simply no other options.

The obvious question, then, is, are views like this (that the Atlantic Seaboard is truly and materially unsafe) sincerely held??Do those holding these views genuinely live in a material state of fear (rather than these “concerns” about safety merely being politically acceptable doublespeak for a frustration about having to live in proximity to addiction and poverty)??Assuming they are (and do), how can we best, as a community (and as communities throughout South Africa) work toward best addressing those fears, toward making our neighbourhoods safer?

Is this achieved by pursuing mainly the “law & order” approach, apparently premised on the strategy that street people should not be allowed to become too comfortable in any one place and should therefore be discouraged, through a constant back and forth of moving them about and making their lives a hassle (and which, at the worst times, involves fining street people and confiscating their belongings), rather than accepting the reality of homelessness, addiction and poverty and seeking to somehow find the best way to co-exist with those who have found themselves in these circumstances)?

A truly safe neighbourhood must, surely, be a place of empathy.?And an empathic neighbourhood cannot be one that turns a blind eye to a person on the street. ?It is unpleasant and uncomfortable living and being in real and tangible proximity to poverty and desperation. ?It is horrible seeing someone who is filthy, who smells, rummaging in bins for food (remembering of course that it is no doubt worse for that individual). It is often tempting to want to remove ourselves from the visible reality of inequality.?But it is, nevertheless, a reality.

I realise this must sound woefully condescending and patronising. Another holier-than-thou leftie treatise. But I, too, feel the same displeasure and discomfort living in constant proximity to poverty, to those who have been rejected by society.?I, too, get irritated when someone, who is clearly high, shouts obscenities outside my window at 3am!?I would be an absolute hypocrite to judge these feelings.?

I don’t believe any rational person wants to see people living outside on the street.?And I don’t believe we should simply resign ourselves to a situation where some in our community feel they are no longer able to enjoy a world class asset like the Promenade due to a lack of safety. This is neither good for the person feeling fearful nor for the hypothetical street person he/she is so scared of.

We have to find ways to live less in fear of people and to increase our levels of trust. ?We also have to realise that the individual living outside on your street in all likelihood experiences even greater violence and also lives with fear.

Whatever your view on how best to achieve it, we all want to achieve (and maintain) a safe, high-functioning neighbourhood with high trust levels, high levels of empathy, where people are comfortable having difficult, but respectful, conversations with one another.?

So how do we best achieve these sorts of communities given the realities we are faced with? ?I don’t know the answer, but perhaps, collectively, we do. ?For some it might involve being a little bit more forgiving, maybe making extra food to hand out. ?For someone more enterprising it might involve finding a small private space for a public portable toilet, or a heated shower. ?For others it might be striking up a conversation for the first time with the person who has lived for months on the same street.?

Being kind and charitable does not mean opening the floodgates to homeless from all corners of our city. The rest of the city will continue to face their challenges.

Reciprocity is a key principle necessary for all functioning societies. Once I’ve shown myself to consistently have your back in small ways, I am in a better position to discuss (for example) how we can keep our street neat and tidy or to be deemed worthy of information that might help my safety in future (that guy over there is dangerous, look out for him).

Whatever it might be for any particular individual, let’s push the boundaries of our comfort and discomfort just a bit so that we can anonymise and generalise less and increase trust levels. We can then feel more at ease engaging with one another in the knowledge that we’re all trying to achieve the same outcome, a neighbourhood that is safe, and where we can look out for one another. ?