Community Cohesion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Community Cohesion - Essay Example Some Major Housing Policies and Their Role in Community Cohesion: Choice based lettings or CBL is a social housing allotment system. Social housing allocations give individuals the right to practice their own discretion while choosing a social housing property. To apply for getting a house in a comfortable society is the main thing that strengthens the attachment between a person and the community to which he belongs. The policy is based on the idea of making the community more comprehensive, practicable and firm. Moreover, it aims at achieving a nationwide success by the year 2010. People belonging to every community have their certain choices and Choice Based Lettings is such a policy that enables them to choose property according to their tastes. For that reason the system automatically brings like-minded people together to a certain area establishing effective community cohesion among them. Currently, CBL makes the opportunity of choosing property not only available to the rich, but also to the lower middle class families. Houses are to be rent ed that have been brought under the coverage of CBL and this scrupulous step has been very constructive for people belonging to the above-mentioned group. For that reason, this policy has been able to bring people with equal affordability jointly resulting in the establishment of community cohesion from the perspective of economy. (Cantle, 2005) A number of the most underprivileged regions in UK have always made community cohesion a difficult task for the government. Therefore, it has always been the UK government's look out to solve their problems in an organized and intensive way. The main focus was to bring the complementary neighbourhoods as one. New Deal for Communities is an approach of UK government to tackle this...A call for community cohesion as a part of UK housing policy was felt soon after Bradford, Oldham and Burnley was beset by a series of ethnic disturbances in 2001. These localities have failed to establish Britain as a successful multicultural state in the eyes of the common man. The urban unrest in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley questioned the efficacy of housing departments and local councils in maintaining social and economic equality. The segregation of the traditional ethnic groups from the deprived communities indicated a ‘lack of community cohesion’. Soon after the London Bombings of July, 2005, the need for community cohesion to combat fundamentalism and terrorism became all the more indispensable. The Institute for Community Cohesion did not agree to the idea of fighting extremism as the only possible measure to promote community consciousness, as this overlooked the other divisive forces in society. (Wetherell, Laflà ¨che, Berkeley, 2007) The initial initiatives of the government to build community cohesion were looked upon as a measure to wipe out racial tensions and strife in the ethnically estranged communities, borne out of deprivation and lack of scope for spatial communication. While the authorities in favour of community cohesion to fight ethnic differences contend that expanding its scope would constrain its effectiveness in dealing with racial differences, there are others, who support the broader scope of community cohesion, argued that a variety of community differences required to be addressed, both within and beyond the community.