Learning about place and scale

This bit of the conversation is about the transition from Era 2 to Era 3, and how machine learning helps us to think about that transition.

So what are the gaps (not just in Rutter’s work but in all era 2 work of this type)?

Arguably the strongest contribution of this new way of thinking, this second era thinking, was in the analysis of impact.

When we agree on the definition we can begin to understand cause.

The starting point is epidemiology, the study of disease, its origins and sequelae.

One boy says to the other, ‘what are you in for then?’, generating the reply, ‘I don’t know, I haven’t got any problems’. To which the more experienced resident says, ‘Well you better get some quick otherwise you will never get out of here’.

Me in place, and the place in me.

Charles Booth drew the poverty maps of London, a detailed house by house assessment, marking the map of the most impoverished in black and the most wealthy in yellow.

We sit at a meeting and when somebody says ‘placed based system reform’ we all nod our heads as if we have a shared understanding of what that means. We don’t.

The settlement movement is the embodiment of place based work, fitting exactly with the definition proposed at the February meeting.