Won’t You Be A Neighbor

Putting the Neighbor back in the ’Hood (red sweater optional)

From Neighborhood to ‘Hood: A Tale of Two Places

I love words.

More specifically, I love their capacity to illustrate the present & illuminate possible futures.

As we diligently work to create the Anti Fragile Neighborhood Wealth Production Prototype in East Austin, I’ve been considering the meaning of the word ‘neighborhood’.

My parents bought their first house in Southwest Houston in 1967. The first thing my sister & I did was go door to door asking if there were any kids we could play with; Laura was 6 and I was 5. This was pretty standard practice at the time, because this was a neighborhood and we needed to meet the neighbors.

One year later, in 1968, the iconic television show Mr. Rogers Neighborhood began broadcasting. Though the street I lived on in southwest Houston looked quite different, Mr. Rogers messages made sense to me and reinforced the story of the importance of knowing your neighbors, because without them there is no neighborhood.

Sometime in the following decade, the neighbor was removed from the message and we were left with the ’hood.

The formal definition of ‘hood’ is