Bowling Alone in San Francisco
Living through the story of collpase and renewal in Robert Putnam's classic on American community.
TLDR: Want good government? Get to know your neighbors.
There is a direct connection between the quality of your social life and the performance of our democratic institutions. Robert Putnam articulates this in Bowling Alone, and I discovered the same thing by accident.
Bowling Alone in San Francisco
I moved to SF in October 2020. It was mid-pandemic, and I didn’t know anyone. The city was in particularly tough shape. It wasn’t a great time. I had all the overhead of living in a city with none of the magic it was supposed to provide.
When the city began to open up, I started looking for friends and fun activities. Like a good millennial, I turned to Twitter. The Algorithm noticed I was in SF and began showing me SF people and SF events. Eventually, I found out about a group of my neighbors who were working to start a neighborhood association and decided to check it out.
Naturally, local representatives have a vested interest in staying tapped in to community activities. So, one week, our district Supervisor sent one of his staffers to our meeting to see how his office could support us. The meeting went well and the staffer was friendly. We agreed to keep in touch.
Some months later, I found a bug in a local law. In San Francisco, only the supervisors can change the law—and I just happened to know a guy. So I reached out, and now we’re working together to introduce an ordinance to fix that bug.
It’s not a stretch to say I showed up to meet my neighbors and ended up working to change the law.1
Social Capital and Democracy
This is, of course, just one small example. But what might happen if you got to know your neighbors? What might happen if 1,000 San Franciscans did? Or 10,000? I bet we’d have a lot more dinner parties—and a much better democracy.
This is because social capital sits at the foundation of democratic self-government. Putnam defines social capital as “the connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.” He details the many ways in which generating social capital is good for you individually, and I highly recommend the book. But for our purposes, let’s focus on government.
Have Fun For Democracy
Putnam argues that the social capital we accumulate by joining groups and attending get-togethers benefits democracy in two ways: through “‘external’ effects on the larger polity and ‘internal’ effects on participants themselves.”
Externally, voluntary associations help political information flow through social networks. They provide a venue for discussion and allow individuals to pool their voices, amplifying their impact.
Internally, groups (like neighborhood associations!) help to “instill in their members habits of cooperation and public-spiritedness, as well as the practical skills necessary to partake in public life.”
It’s wonderful news that making friends and spending time with your neighbors is a step toward better government. I’ve come to experience firsthand what Putnam meant when he riffed on Roosevelt’s famous quote2: “In a community rich in social capital, government is ‘we,’ not ‘they.’”
So if you want good government, get to know your neighbors.
Learning about how government works is also an essential ingredient in converting social capital into political change
“The government is us; we are the government, you and I."- Theodore Roosevelt. Banger.
Excellent article. There are over 90 neighborhood associations in Portland, Oregon. I bring this up because I spent over ten years looking at how they worked (or don't) in Portland, a city not too much unlike SF in population. There are two kinds of associations - small business, retail oriented ones and neighborhood ones. What I learned was that in highly commercialized, central city neighborhoods (banks, big companies, large retailers, etc.) the residents have little power or even involvement in the affairs of the neighborhood. It does not help that in these same neighborhoods there is a concentration of affordable housing, supportive/transitional housing, and shelters along with non-profit, charitable organizations who have been providing food and shelter for years - some faith based, some providing services on behalf of the City and County, others organized to address specific problems that no one else cares to solve. So, as you point out, getting to know your neighbors is very important especially in our core city neighborhoods. In the process residents (neighbors) will also get to know the workers at the many governmental and non-governmental organizations who represent a wide range of constituents and clients who sometimes overlook the needs of residents with legitimate safety and health-related issues. This has resulted in "we-them" relationships that are toxic and highly politicized. I have noticed that this reinforces negative feelings, misunderstandings, and stereotypes. Yet another reason to become involved as residents is so that neighbors can minimize this toxicity to bring safety and kindness to the multi-family unit, dense built environment in which many of our citizens now live.
My intention is to help The Civilization Lab continue focusing intelligence, hard work, and enthusiasm to educating and engaging San Franciscans in benefitting from an engaged civic life - both old and new timers.
P.S. So glad you brought Bowling Alone's Robert Putnam to the table as Vivek Murthy in a Surgeon General Advisory calls attention to the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country and we read of "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation."