community

Of course families have fallen apart in every generation. But even a few decades ago children from broken homes had communities, they had neighbourhoods. Now our families fall apart and there is nothing, nobody, to catch us. We live far from extended family. We are more estranged than ever. And I can’t get across how little familiarity Gen Z has

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Our collective idea of “community” has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades. Tectonic societal and economic shifts, as well as blindingly fast advances in technology, have caused each of us to periodically erase and redraw our own definitions and expectations of the communities around us.

For much of history, if you asked someone to define “community,” they’d give you an answer that involved a physical location — a school, synagogue, church. Today, the word community invokes something more intimate: identity. It’s not something we’re born into, but something we choose.

this was probably amongst the biggest challenges to helping US neighborhoods come together: most people don’t have good reasons to meet their neighbors.

The Belonging Barometer survey by the American Immigration Council also found that 74 percent of Americans don’t feel connected to their local community.

That sentiment correlates with changed behaviors: today, people spend an average of 24 more hours alone and 20 fewer hours with friends each month compared to two decades ago; involvement in... See more

For most of human history, the notion of community was tied to a physical location.

these days, the art of hanging out seems to be waning in cities.

Americans used to live within “place-based networks” of clubs, churches, schools, commerce, and recreation that overlapped, wrapping individuals in social support. Local networks protected individuals from isolation and loneliness.

Those networks have largely disappeared, replaced by networks based outside the local community. We shop and interact... See more