Kat and I might as well have stayed the night in Mapperley. We were up and back in our patch first thing this morning for a tour of the ward with Notts Mayor Mo Munir and our ward cousellor Mike Edwards.The two cruise the area every month or two to identify problem areas like grafitti that needs cleaning and potholes and such. Thrilling? No. But Mike managed to add a bit of dialogue to the tour by guiding us historically from street to street.
Here he's pointing to a crop of neatly carved out bushes along a public boulevard. The ornamental shrubs were added to this otherwise shanty housing area by a well-intentioned resident. You might say its tacky. You might say he broke the law. But what harm could a bit of landscaping do?
It might actually do a lot of good. I wonder if the gardener guy realises the impact that aesthetic value has on attitude and behaviour.
In the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell uses the example of the NYC underground cleanup a few decades ago. The chief of police at the time tackled rampant crime in the subway by increasing regulation at entranceways and tidying graffitti from subway trains.
Remarkable.
Primping and pruning the shrubs might simply be a hobby for this green thumb. What he might not realize is that he's also doing a lot of good for his hood.
