David Sloan Wilson is undertaking an interesting project to try to learn the rules for evolving cooperation while improving his community (Binghamton, NY), a city of 47,000 in upstate New York that has fallen on hard times with the industrial flight of corporate mainstays. A March 2011 Gallup poll found Binghamton to be one of the five least liked cities in the US. His effort is change all that is called the Binghamton Neighborhood Project (BNP). It raises all the usual interesting questions about being dispassionate and objective in one’s research, and not attempting to alter the very metrics one is measuring.
BNP has done interesting mapping work (relevant to those of you that are interested in doing the same thing in your areas). For example, students dropped lost letters in different parts of the community and measured the percentage that reached their destination. They charted the density of Halloween and Christmas decorations as an indicator of community pride, participation, and goodwill. And they mapped their data in interesting ways, using krig maps to show pro-social peaks as well, peaks. [See: Wilson, D. S., O’Brien, D. T., & Sesma, A. (2009). Human Prosociality from an Evolutionary Perspective: Variation and Correlations on a City-wide Scale. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30: 190-200.] [See great sample of 3-D visualization of crime data for San Francisco here.]
Efforts include: a design your own park effort, a Regents Academy for at-risk youth where students are incentivized for good behavior and cooperation, the Binghamton Religion and Spirituality Project to survey and map Binghamton’s religious diversity.
The Design Your Own Park initiative seeks to transform abandoned lots into community playgrounds. Groups submit ideas and the community votes on the idea the most like. The United Way of Broom County helps secure funding for the transformation and community groups agree to maintain the park. The goal is to foster parks throughout the city and there are 5 park projects underway including a BMX bike park and a dog park.
At Binghamton’s Regents Academy, a higher percentage of at-risk students took and passed state tests than in other Binghamton schools, but no formal assessment has been done of the school. Moreover, at least as of June, the regime of rewards was still changing weekly and the principal, Miriam Purdy, while believing in the importance of the incentives, did not believe that the incentive program is about evolution.
The Religion and Spirituality Project is motivated by Wilson’s belief that religion can play a central role in producing community cohesion and giving residents a sense of life meaning.
Wilson believes that community residents (using his biological training) can behave either like water striders (which pursue their goals single mindedly, ignoring others) or wasps (which work together subconsciously for their collective good). Pro-social groups can outcompete those lacking social cohesion, so he believes there is an evolutionary element to encouraging prosocial behavior. He believes the seven key elements to more effective collective efforts are: 1) a strong sense of group identity; 2) proportional costs and benefits for all residents; 3) consensus decision-making; 4) monitoring those who are anti-social; 5) providing graduated sanctions (ranging from minor slaps on the wrist to more serious sanctions for chronic infringers); 6) fast, fair conflict resolution system; and 7) autonomy/authority, nested within polycentric governance (which links these localized efforts together). Above and beyond these factors, he believes that residents need lots of practice at cooperating, and often our affluence buys us out of community, in the same way that David Brooks refers to the Haimish line.
Listen to NPR story ‘Can Evolution Breed Better Communities?”
Interesting Nature story (9 June 2011) on this called “Darwin’s City”
Read “The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time”; excerpt available here.
Social Capital Blog 
Wow, what a wonderful blog. I did a blog/paper on Empowering the Community, and it fits in perfect with Using evolution to improve neighborhoods: The Neighborhood Project. I do believe that being involved will better a persons outlook on life not only for themselves but others as well. I, myself belong to local church, and it has helped me mentally and physically, by being involved. Since being active in church, I now what to get involved in my own community and with the city as well. One step at a time, is what I say. Too often times we commit ourselves to so much, then something goes lacking because we have overbooked ourselves.
I was pleased to see the link on this post to religion/spirituality and social cohesion. Most of the case studies I feature on my Models of Unity website (www.modelsofunity.net) feature people who have come together across religious divides to pursue “superordinate” goals related to building and developing their communities. And, I do think the spiritual values/links give people the motivation to do this work together.