Reversing the Decline
in Communities

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Digested First Pages:.

Introduction by Richard Farson Greetings and welcome to all of you who are interested in what's happening to our communities and what we might do about it. It is my pleasure to be able to introduce author Ralph Keyes as the leader of this conference. Ralph is an old friend of WBSI's and an old friend of mine. In fact, he and I just co-authored a book, Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: Managing Innovation in a Changing Economy. Ralph is an accomplished author; this book is his eleventh. He has a long time interest in community, having written the groundbreaking "We, the Lonely People", and a number of his other books deal with contemporary culture. Pick up any of them and you will find him to be prescient, fascinating, informed, and entertaining. If you are a writer, or wish you were, you should read his critically acclaimed The Courage to Write, surely one of the best books ever written on the challenges of writing. We are lucky to have him moderating this policy forum. Welcome, Ralph.

1:2 Larry Solomon Ralph, it has been many years since we were together at WBSI. It is good to be back. I'm looking forward to your Forum; and I'll try to be helpful in supporting the conversational flow.

1:3 Ralph Keyes Dick and Larry, thanks for the warm welcome. I'm so glad to be involved with WBSI again, and dealing with one of my favorite topics: community. My next posting will be some thoughts on that topic to kick off our discussion.

1:4 Ralph Keyes Here are some opening thoughts about community. I'll look forward to getting yours.

Calls for "community" are in the mom-and-apple-pie category, an applause line for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush alike. Few question the need for a greater sense of community. At the same time, advances we cherish loosen ties that bind. Cars permit sprawl. Air conditioners make front porches unnecessary. Television-watching replaces board game-playing. Even as it connects us to more people than ever, cutting-edge technology can isolate us spiritually. As T.S. Eliot observed, "The amazing thing about television is that millions of people can laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely."

To understand 21st century man and woman, we must understand their longing for community. That longing can’t be squelched so easily. Just when we think it’s joined ice picks and Stanley Steamers in the dustbin of history, "community" keeps rearing its head: in support groups, raves, around water coolers at work, or within the Internet’s many gathering places. It’s as if we’re imprinted to be in community. Perhaps we are. For most of their time on earth, human beings lived cheek-by-jowl in small groups. Only for a speck of time have large settings populated by nuclear families and one-person households become the developed world’s norm. In the process our social ties have atrophied.

There are reasons to be concerned about this development. Isolation is a risk factor for a wide range of social maladies, ranging from depression through substance abuse to suicide. For society as a whole, the loss of social capital–ties that develop the glue of trust–degrades public life.

Scholars such as Amitai Etzioni, Michael Sandel, and Francis Fukuyama have sounded the alarm for years about the decline of civil society. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (the book and the article) did so in great detail. Legitimate questions have been raised about Putnam’s argument – as perhaps we’ll discuss –but the fact remains that his lament struck a chord because so many felt it to be true. They could see themselves alone at a bowling alley. They sensed a lack of community in their lives. Most of us do.

When push comes to shove, however, how much do we value community? We’ve gone beyond a time when vibrant neighborhoods could be bulldozed willy-nilly to make way for highways and high rises. But community is still part of the collateral damage for other forms of progress: consolidated schools, mega-stores, restrictive zoning. It’s not that we value community less but that we value other things more.

Being for community in principal doesn’t mean we favor a higher density of housing in our own neighborhood, let alone mixed use. In the post-Columbine era, small schools make more sense than ever, but who’s willing to pay for them? How much is it worth to us to take cops out of cars and put them on a beat?

It’s hard to quantify the benefits of such community-friendly initiatives. But does anyone doubt how much society gains when its members enjoy robust ties? Any number of institutions–from schools to civic groups–benefit from an overall sense of social cohesion. Certainly families function best in a context of community. A growing body of evidence also suggests that emotional and physical health alike are promoted by firm social connections.

What policies might restore ties of community? That’s the focus of our forum. Related questions include: Are communities of interest comparable to those of place? How does the design of our man-made environment promote or discourage social ties? Are there aspects of old-style communities that we can revive, or new ones we can invent? Can institutions be developed that foster rather than hinder social connections?

Something else we’ll need to consider is what exactly community means. The late Christopher Lasch called this "a term much in favor but not clearly understood." One way to clarify this issue might be to reflect on moments in our own lives when we felt–or didn’t feel–in community.

By choice I live in a town of 4,000 where I enjoy a muted but ongoing sense of community. A week on the Colorado River gave me a stronger sense of being connected to my raftmates, but not one that lasted. During religious observances I've felt bonded to others. During two years on Long Island I didn’t.

What about you? Can we develop a working definition of community based on our own experience as well as what experts tell us?

I’m looking forward to our discussion of these issues, as much for what I can learn as what I can impart. Perhaps we could begin with this question: How much is community worth to us?

This conference is available in its entirety as a downloadable MS Word document. Click here to transfer the entire transcript to your own system.

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