Square 1: The Community and Why It's Important

Photographer: Gruffi

They say you are what you eat or what you do.  But they don't often say you are where you live.  But we all know it's true.  Just think about your community.  Which is the good side and which is the bad?  Think about the communities around where you live.  Which would you rather live in and which are you glad you don't?  These thoughts add up to a mental sketch of not only how we see others but how we see ourselves.  Community is therefore profound but salient for many of us.

Of course, local is not destiny.  We have broader social structures such as schools, religious institutions, workplaces and others that contribute strongly to our individual psychological being.  There's nothing that says the kid from the wrong side of the tracks is damned and should just give up.  But, I'm convinced that those can only mitigate the impact of community (or the lack thereof) to a degree.  We learn our region's accent and keep it for life in many cases.  We develop and grow in our first neighborhood(s).  When we're adults, our choice of friendships is often geographically limited (who's going to drive more than an hour to see a causal acquaintance?).  The more we dig into the issue of location, the more we see a series of contingencies that depend on location, for better or worse.

And that's why community is important.  Sure, there is the actual city we live in.  The level of service it provides and the quality of that service matter, but so does our willingness to interact and contribute to it whether directly through participation or indirectly through volunteer work or joining local organizations.  These things matter, and I'm worried that we're losing sight of that.

It's pretty accepted across the board that social capital is diminishing rapidly.  Ideas attached to social capital such as "third places," seem to be either increasingly scarce or nonexistent.  Volunteerism is down and voting, though somewhat stable, seems to revolve around hot button issues and not routine elections.  Simultaneously, partisanship is up as is distrust in government.  This should be distressing for all of us.  If our social communities fall apart, our actual communities aren't far behind.

I want this blog to be a place to discuss community and the surrounding issues that it intersects: urbanism, social capital and actual municipal and regional planning and operational issues that interplay with it.  I am a strong proponent of investment in our communities and not simply because I'm a municipal employee.  I've cared about community no matter what my job or location.  I'll draw on my experiences periodically, but I want the conversation to be much broader than me.  I want to have an actual dialogue on community, what is it and where it's going.  So, I'll hope you'll join me and let's get building.