Neighborhoods Make Our Lives
We all want to live and play in nice neighborhoods. It only takes a few nice neighbors, stores, businesses, or surroundings to make a great neighborhood. And it only takes one of any of those features to make life miserable.
Long Beach Innovates wants to put neighbors and neighborhoods in contact with each other so that they can learn what they love about their neighborhoods, what problem areas they have, and what they would like to see added to their nearby surroundings.
We do not intend to replace other neighborhood based websites. Most of those sites have become over-run by mean-spirited comments and people and have very few positive comments.
We want everyone to love our great city of Long Beach. Help us do that!
Our neighborhoods are our homes. The entire neighborhood belongs to us collectively. If we are happy with our homes and neighborhoods, the odds are the neighborhood is happy.
We should be able to drive down nicely paved streets, enjoy quiet time for an afternoon nap, have the children be able to sleep through an anytime nap, and be able to sleep at regular hours without being disturbed by loud, inconsiderate neighbors throwing parties until 4am.
Neighborhoods are geographically localized communities within the City of Long Beach. Neighborhoods are often social communities with considerable face to face interaction among members.
A neighborhood is generally defined spatially as a specific geographic area and functionally as a set of social networks. Neighborhoods, then, are the spatial units in which face-to-face social interactions occur—the personal settings and situations where residents seek to realize common values, socialize youth, and maintain effective social control.
Do not think that disconnected neighborhoods do not effect each other. Problems in one or two distant neighborhoods will draw the attention of city council people, law enforcement, the press, and other resources. These are resources and efforts that could be directed to improving your neighborhood.
Neighborhood watch programs and people's external surveillance cameras help keep our neighborhoods safe. But its not enough. We need to get the word out about how great our neighborhood is or the challenges, problems, and legal infractions that affect our specific neighborhood.
Make sure to check out possible resources on our Resources page.