Be The Change You Wish To See In The Cul-de-Sac, Neighborhood, World

October 2, 2016 2:58 PM

101 small ways you can improve your city Feeling cynical? Ground down by the divisiveness and pervasive hate? Just feeling blue about your surroundings? All politics is local. (So, too, are parks and recreation and community building.) Take a page (or 101) out of this post for sparking joy.

Fix up your porch.
Add to Walk Your City.
Build a pop-up playground.
Get to know your neighbors.
Report potholes, broken traffic lights and infrastructure issues.
Vote.

Some steps involve banding together to create a movement, but there are options for solving problems from the comfort of your own home, even from your computer, ostensibly clad in PJs and bunny slippers.

posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese (6 comments total)

These are great ideas! I'm definitely going to share them with our neighborhood partnership and the county land bank. We've did Project Pop-Up last weekend and have other weekends planned. It was so much fun and made me feel such solidarity.
posted by chainsofreedom at 4:19 PM on October 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oooh. My Girl Scout troop is going to start planning their Bronze Award project soon; there are some things on here that would be good starting places. (Also things that would be terrible, terrible starting places.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:22 PM on October 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

My mother has turned the fence along the side of her yard into something she calls a poetry fence, which has become something of a local icon in the neighborhood I grew up in. Way #102, perhaps.
posted by biogeo at 6:11 PM on October 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

I joke that one of my hobbies is using the 'report problems' app for my city to report traffic signals that are out. It's gotten to the point where I'm delighted to notice the problems because it means I get to report it.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:17 AM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

102. Pick up some litter once in a while.
posted by Paul Slade at 5:45 AM on October 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's not possible for me to perform number 2, green my parkway. I have no word for that little sliver of property.
posted by Rob Rockets at 8:18 AM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]