One thing you notice, after you have lived in a home for more than one stage of life, is that at different times people have a little more time on their hands than at others. Take tending to the front lawn. Most people care at least a bit about how their home presents itself to the street. It’s the public side of the property.
Even the most fastidious of lawns can be seen with a dandelion or two when the owners are in the throes of elementary school children. It’s tough to get out and do the extra fertilizing when there is a baby to bathe, school lunches to make, and homework time. The crabgrass is green after all, so does it really matter that it is flouncing its long legs over the tender shoots of Kentucky bluegrass?
If you were trying to figure out the level of public capacity a neighbrohood had in its reserves, you might want to stroll the neighborhood and see if residents are pulling through on commonly expected maintenance. If the sidewalks are not shoveled in the winter it maybe because the residents are not home enough to make it happen. Or it might be because many of the residents are elderly or disabled.
Delve a bit more into a neighborhood and you might hear of complaints that an intersection is dangerous and ‘they’ haven’t done anything about it. Perhaps they don’t know how to get to a city council meeting and register a request to consider a stop sign at the intersection. Perhaps the they that do know how to get to the city council meetings are communiting across twon and are not around enough to work it into their schedule. It takes different they skills to keep all the different neighborhood amenities tuned up.
Answering some of these questions would help to determine why the store of reserves to perform typical neighborly duties is going missing. It’s always easier to identify the lack of state capacity than the abundance of it.
Home Economics 