By Seth Kaplan, lecturer at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University

Even though American economic growth continues to beat out the competition, most Americans report being unhappy with their lives as well as the direction of the country. While the United States is richer than its peers, it does worse on a slew of indicators, from life expectancy to prevalence of depression to suicide rate to life satisfaction. Why are incomes and satisfaction moving in different directions?

While there are many drivers of this dichotomy, there is a growing consensus concerning social breakdown—the fraying of the relationships that used to bind us to each other. Whereas we used to bond through institutions such as family, church, community, school, union, and a variety of associations, today we are disconnected from institutions and thus each other. Douglas Harris, a Tulane University economist says, “If there is one overarching theme, it’s that we’re pulling apart—economically, socially and politically.” Frederick Hess, an education expert at the American Enterprise Institute, echoes this interpretation when he notes how the disconnect between material wealth and our other outcomes is related to “the weakening bonds of community and the degree to which Americans feel less rooted in close-knit bonds of faith and family.”

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Strong social relationships foster greater individual well-being, as has been well documented in research on health and happiness. But even as experts connect the dots between social relationships and happiness, one aspect of what’s needed is left out: the value of place-based institutions. These institutions are embedded in relationships—marriages, families, networks, schools, and places of worship in our neighborhoods—and are produced by and contribute to the flourishing of these places. When the social structures that support these relationships weaken, the talented and well-off can compensate and move on, but most of us are left more fragile by the strain.

Government bodies, policymakers, philanthropists, nonprofits, and social entrepreneurs rarely view our wide assortment of social problems through this neighborhood lens. We might focus on creating broad material gains or delivering specific services to meet specific needs—such as better housing, youth mentoring, or access to better health care—at the level of the individual. Unfortunately, this individual-client approach ignores the social aspect of the problems that plague America today. We may talk about these place-based social structures, but we do so in the abstract. We assume we can craft a better, targeted program or pull a government policy lever in a way that is transformative. There is little attempt to bolster—or even engage with—the underlying social fabric in the particular places where struggling individuals live.

How might understanding place-based dynamics help us address the various social ills caused by social breakdown?

Neighborhoods have a direct and continuous effect on our formation, well-being, and capacities. This is especially true for Americans in their formative years. Life trajectories can be launched or limited by the nature of relationships children experience at home, on their street, and in their school. Only in-person relationships—not virtual substitutes—offer the support, guidance, practical experience, and risks that kids need. Just as the shift to virtual learning during COVID hurt many kids, so too has the shift from a neighborhood-centered, play-based childhood to a placeless, phone-based childhood.

The expanding bifurcation of America by neighborhood is a growing problem; too few places bring together people across classes and political differences. As a result, two U.S. neighborhoods can differ in expected life expectancy by as much as 41 years, a staggering range. There are similar gaps in access to everything from opportunity to neighborhood amenities to supportive social networks. Within cities and counties across the country, there is often a 20-year gap in life expectancy between neighborhoods only a few miles apart—and sometimes much more. Throughout our nation’s history, Americans mostly lived in mixed-income neighborhoods, with people working hand-in-hand and fraternizing across classes in local institutions. But today most working-class Americans live far from those who are more affluent and experience the country very differently.

Moreover, very few places have the abundance of hyperlocal institutions—social, educational, religious, civic, and economic—that used to be the norm. As the business sector nationalized, so did the nonprofit and philanthropic sector. Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol reports, “where once cross-class voluntary federations held sway, national public life is now dominated by professionally managed advocacy groups without chapters or members.” As a result, whereas once we regularly worked with fellow citizens to build up our neighborhoods and towns, today professional managers and organizations make decisions far from where we live for us. Few Americans participate in civic life or feel a sense of agency to address the many challenges facing society, leaving people alienated and mistrustful.

While many factors influence neighborhood dynamics, the wealth of “organizational life”—the various formal and informal institutions and neighborhood activities that bring people together—is especially important. This enables the informal social control and shared expectations that make up collective efficacy and the capacity to address various problems. Much of organizational life is unofficial, such as neighborhood watch groups, residential associations, and weekly children’s activities. But these wither if there are fewer mechanisms to bring people together.

When neighborhoods lack place specific institutions, they also lack the stewards that care about it and the people living there. This means fewer community leaders ready to step in when someone has a problem, fewer mentors for couples and children who need them, and fewer organizations that can organize residents to tackle common challenges. It means far fewer opportunities for Americans to participate as active citizens, denying them a sense of agency and belonging, and fostering the alienation that is so common today. The growing concentration of poverty in distressed neighborhoods resulting from the spatial class divide means that millions of Americans live in places where there are few good examples of successful marriages, careers, and civic engagement. The experience of a couple working in a high-poverty neighborhood in Shreveport, Louisiana captures the crisis. They had to put a framed picture of their marriage license on the wall of the neighborhood hub they run—part of Community Renewal International’s effort at restoring the area’s social fabric, no less—because no one in the neighborhood believed the couple were married. Such unions were so rare as to be inconceivable.

Neighborhood effects explain why many of our society’s problems seem intractable. Without strong neighborhoods, school systems cannot improve educational results, housing authorities cannot increase affordable housing, health care agencies cannot improve health outcomes, and police cannot ensure streets are safe. As David Edwards, who currently works as an adviser to the mayor of Atlanta, writes, “healthy neighborhoods produce healthy outcomes, because they contain the conditions out of which those outcomes can emerge independently.”

What would it take to restore the health of our neighborhoods? Some people are making inroads.

Stewardship of our places offers a way for every American to contribute to building up the country. Given the extent of our fragmentation and atomization today, this will require the steady build-up of local social bonds and place-specific institutions that enable such stewardship.

Civic leaders, policymakers, philanthropists, and social leaders could re-envision the social landscape around clearly demarcated neighborhoods and hyperlocal institutions. They could ensure that each neighborhood has its own primary school, civic associations, houses of worship, access to capital, and a commercial center—as is still true in many suburban towns built before the rise of cars around New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston, as well as in clearly demarcated urban neighborhoods such as Riverdale and Rockaway Beach in New York City. Together, these offer more than amenities; they provide both formal and informal means for neighbors to steward their places and catalyze place-based institutions to sustain them. In Lexington, Kentucky, CivicLex offers a unique blend of local news reporting, civic education, and hyperlocal convenings, encouraging stewardship and bolstering civic health across neighborhoods.

Greater investment in leadership development at the neighborhood level would help these initiatives. Universities could, for example, train a future generation of local leaders and social entrepreneurs, giving them credit for time spent working or volunteering in the neighborhoods most in need. Establishing neighborhood quarterbacks, anchors, and hubs to act as engines of change can be transformative in the most struggling places.

There are real-world examples of people applying this type of thinking to their own neighborhoods. Life Remodeled, a Detroit nonprofit, helped transform the former Durfee Elementary-Middle School building into a one-stop neighborhood hub, the Durfee Innovation Society (DIS). The DIS works with neighborhood leaders to develop the hub’s vision, recruit new stakeholders willing to commit long-term to collaboration and revitalization, and adopt a stewarding mindset. There is already a visible impact—including lower crime and increased connections to opportunity.

Decentralizing government such that it served and was responsible to specific neighborhoods would allow local authorities more scope for creativity and local residents more say in how funds are spent. Public servants would know social contexts better and adopt a deeper stewardship of them—especially if they were committed to a particular place for an extended period of time⎯the way its residents are⎯and evaluated on the performance of a place rather than the number of permits issued or housing units built. Inclusive planning, participatory budgets, and giving local associations a role in managing resources and budgets would all empower neighbors and neighborhoods.

These efforts should be as locally targeted as possible. Governments, philanthropists, and businesses should develop or expand small grant programs. These incentivize neighbors to cooperate to improve their blocks, micro entrepreneurs to jumpstart neighborhood economies, neighborhood leaders to launch new hyperlocal initiatives, and nonprofits to invest in programs where active citizenship takes root. Again, there are good existing examples to look to. The Oswego Renaissance Association has created significant momentum for positive change (and achieved huge returns on investment) in Oswego, New York, by simply offering matching grants of up to $1,000 per home as well as additional resources to blocks of individuals who want to cooperate to improve the look of their streets.

We also need to connect neighborhoods to one another—especially across class divides. Bolstering social ties across locales by either boosting transport links or establishing joint projects that enable greater interaction of residents can reduce disadvantage in our most distressed locales. Washington, D.C.’s director of planning, Harriet Tregoning, developed the original vision that has now become 11th Street Bridge Park. When it opens in 2025, it will connect the district’s poorest ward to one of its wealthiest. Tregoning says, “lots of people have ideas. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is getting something as wonderful and complicated and difficult as this to happen.”

What does it take to make something happen? Various public and private organizations can cooperate to advance a common vision of neighborhood change instead of working in silos. Our country is full of social entrepreneurs, government entities, and civic organizations that do good work—but they often don’t have a sustained impact on the social context in any particular place. Why? Because they are problem or advocacy driven and operate over a large geographical area. When we reframe our problems to see the potential in neighborhoods, we can reconnect with each other and empower active citizen-leaders and organizations to transform their communities.

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