Turn Neighborhoods into Communities or Communities into Neighborhoods?
The neighborhood where you live may or may not be a community.
Your neighborhood is a physical thing. It’s based on geography. It may even have legal boundaries defined by your HOA, the city, or county you live in.
A community, on the other hand, does not have physical boundaries. You often can’t draw a community neatly on a map. Communities are defined by emotional connections between it’s members. Committees are defined by culture.
Neighborhoods without Communities
When you live in a neighborhood with no community, politicians and businesses control the community.
Neighborhoods with no community are often defined by average to poor schools, bad zoning laws, high crime, as well as inefficient parks and recreation.
Communities without Neighborhoods
How about the reverse? A community that does not have a neighborhood…
A community without a neighborhood falls into two groups:
- A group of culturally or emotionally connected people who don’t share close geographic proximity.
- A group of culturally or emotionally connected people who do share geographic proximity, but don’t own their land and/or the means of production of their land.
Generally speaking, case one is better than than case two, especially if case one includes people with wealth.
In addition, case one requires technology and processes to enable a dispersed group of people to stay in constant communication. Case two is likely a situation of low income or poverty driving their lack of ownership. Case two is out of scope for me at this time.
The Question
My thesis is that a neighborhood with a community provides the highest standard of living for a family and the best outcome for future generations of a community. If this is true, it follows to ask the question:
Is it better to work at helping existing neighborhoods form into communities or instead work at helping existing communities find neighborhoods to co-locate?
My gut tells me it’s easier to change one’s location than it is to change’s one’s way of thinking or financial situation. I think research would show history support’s this. In addition, so called “gentrified” neighborhoods are an example of communities with wealth moving into a physical space and changing that space into what they desire. What’s more, neighborhoods that lack both community and wealth are vulnerable to gentrification.
Unless there is a efficient and effective way to go block by block to teach people in neighborhoods with no community how to become a community, neighborhoods with no community will eventually die. In addition, if these neighborhoods with no community occupy valuable land and resources, wealthy communities looking to expand will eventually take them over and hasten their demise.
What do you think?