Ranting to /dev/null

Hardees, Trenton, before lunch-->One bonified community center. However Hardees is part of a chain, just like Wal-mart.

Interesting thoughts, but I'm confused about your view of the source of community. What does economic prosperity have to do with the formation of a community center? Josiah seemed to be arguing for the existence of thriving communities in small, rural towns. Would you want to contend that there really is a causal relationship between the size/economy of a city and its community center?

I was getting at the fact that though there seem to be plenty of small, rural towns in the South and West Coast that seem to be doing okay, the same small rural towns in the North have absolutely no viable economic activity in them. Most of the industries that were originally responsible for the towns' existence have either left or gone out of business, and you can't really make a living as a family farmer anymore: you have to be a multi-thousand acre conglomerate. As a result, people are moving away as fast as they can, and no one's really thrilled about living there.

Ryan,

the bigger the city, the harder it is to see the communities, but they do very much exist in Chattanooga...and I suspect the "community" is bigger in Chattanoooga for whatever reason. I just think you haven't been here long enough. Many of us know the Mayor, representatives, restaurant owners, our barbers, gas station employees and on and on and on. St. Elmo is definately some kinda weird community, with the fact I say hi to Dr. Hesselink every morning as he walks his dog...

But of course that's just surface community stuff. The real stuff of comunity is the thing called "social capital" that putnam talks about, or what I like to call real Christian sin and redemption relationally. Now, I don't have that with the Mayor, but I do have it with a good group of folks, not just in my church, but in my neighborhood, and hopefully it will grow.

Now, it does exist even better and more clearly I think in more rural parts of the South. I remember visiting Highlands with April. Much of the neighborhood went to church there, folks worked together, and there's nothing more beautiful that sitting on the front porch of an old rural georgian farmhouse drinking sweet tea with a buncha church families...anyways. All that to say, the communities are there.

Heck, if more of my friends owned small businesses, I'd always shop there.

So... people are moving away from cities that are not economically strong, the remaining squatters are unhappy, and this explains the lack of community in the North?

It seems as though you are assuming that a large number of happy citizens is necessary for a 'community' to exist. And yet Josiah (among others) argues for a different idea of 'community,' one that includes groups of different sizes, and one that may or may not require its members to be content (thoughts, Josiah?). Maybe your disagreement stems from the fact that you simply aren't talking about the same thing. How'sabout a definition of community?

I definately don't think contentment is a pre-requisite...if anything, starting as discontent and growing to contentment would seem to me to be something that could really strengthen a community.

Further, economic prosperity I think has little to do with the strength and well-being of a community, at least not in any boolean fashion. Often times, the strongest communities are the dirt poor communities (rural south, urban neighborhoods), unfortunately though that situation hasn't obtained in the dirt poor old coal mining towns of the northeast...

and I think that's beacuse there is other factors, more pervasive factors, contributing to the lack of community (And culture) in the northeast (Pennsylvania, Jersey, parts of NY,).

Katie,

Most sociologists tend to evaluate the strength of a given community by the level of engagement from its citizenry. In other words, how much and how intimately are people involved in one another's lives? I don't think either happiness or economic prosperity are needed for engagement to take place. Robert Putnam's research suggests that the latter is not a crucial componant.

I live for the first time in a city with a sense of community...a jealously guarded one at that. Proposals for Walmart were flatly refused and shunned, small businesses thrive, everybody reads the local paper, buys local food, supports local art and music. Heck, we even have a community supported radio station. I don't know what it is about New Orleans that gives it that community. Granted down here there's a distint black community and a distinct white community. But without its community this city wouldn't be the place it is. (And don't go looking in the French Quarter...thankfully tourists are sequestered off there unlike in Chatty). It needs its community because otherwise nobody would want to live here...it's effectively Third World.

btw. The radio station is not NPR. It's the local jazz and heritage station... see wwoz.org