It's something we know almost instinctively, that what we see and hear in our neighborhoods affects how we feel in and about those neighborhoods. It affects our comfort level or the livability.

So, what do you do when someone or some family is doing something to make your community less livable? You try to talk it through, it doesn't work; you enlist the cooperation of other neighbors, it still doesn't work. So, what's left? Livability court, that's what. No, you don't have to be on a television show where the judge or the lawyers are the stars, and the fines get paid by the show itself. Livability court is what actually exists in Charleston, South Carolina.

American University's radio station, WAMU, in conjunction with the Urban Institute, held a forum on the concept of livability court.