The stronger the community, the stronger a nation

The importance of the community unit is becoming more and more recognized by all who view our world as the sum of its parts. With our environment facing peril and our economies proving to be unsustainable, we need strong communities to produce strong people because as we now see our survival depends on our ability to adapt, think, and act. But as this unpredictable equation plays itself out we cannot forget people exist as individual variables; parts of a collective variable: the human race.

The evidence of the effects of our race on our planet have mounted. Our advancing technologies create infinite avenues of possibilities no equation can measure, this phenomena might also be our greatest hurdle. An over-reliance on technology to save this planet ignores the fundamental catalyst or change-agent needed to moderate our cultures, politics, economies, and environment: us humans (the only variable we cannot measure). What we need now is the convergence of a culture focused around unity and advocacy, and a practical design of urban and rural settings prioritizing the balance of public and private space. The overwhelmingly public rural space needs more private landscaping work, while the extremely private urban space needs public works to mark informal meeting places.

The issue is founded on the recognition that a strong community is of mutual benefit to both the individual and group. The stronger the individual, the stronger the community and vice versa. Thus, we must work for the strength of our communities thereby strengthening our nation.

How do we calculate the strength of our communities? Or better yet, why should we? Because inevitably the direction of our nation is determined by the direction of the strongest communities. There exists an infrastructure or blueprint for strong and weak communities. What each of us must do is determine our roles in this calculus because after all humans are the variable on which the entire equation depends.

This equation plays itself out everyday and hinges on every mundane or dramatic moment of interaction between community members. Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, describes it as such:

In speaking about city sidewalk safety, I mentioned how necessary it is that there should be, in the brains behind the eyes on the street, an almost unconscious assumption of general street support when the chips are down--when a citizen has to choose, for instance, whether he will take responsibility, or abdicate it, in combating barbarism or protecting strangers. There is a short word for this assumption of support: trust. The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts...
The sum of such casual, public contact at a local level--most of it fortuitous, most of it associated with errands, all of it metered by the person concerned and not thrust upon him by anyone--is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust, and a resource in time of of personal or neighborhood need. The absence of this trust is a disaster to a city street. Its cultivation cannot be institutionalized. And above all, it implies no private commitments, (56).

Our communities have reached the point where our peers are anonymous. There rarely exist connections enough to establish communication let alone trust. What we all must understand and embrace is the requirement to develop a trusting relationship is an investment of time and care. The return for all those individuals looking for reciprocity is a community invested in you.