Local Community
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Local Community
Many of the nation’s largest trading companies were headquartered in the coffee houses, and London’s stockbrokers operated within them for over a hundred years. Only when those establishments fell into decline did the brokers finally acquire their own quarters and establish an Exchange. For many years, the insurance institution Lloyd’s of London... See more
Ray Oldenburg & Karen Christensen: third places, true citizen spaces
the value of the coffee house - part to get coffee, but part to mix and mingle
come for the [coffee / news / something], stay for the conversation?
My own contribution to this has been to say that yes there is genuine and widespread despair in the US1, but the primary reason isn’t economic2, rather it is because human fulfillment requires more than material wealth, which in our quest for more stuff, we have forgotten. People need physical communities, and while the US excels at material... See more
Why are Americans Unhappy?
In other words, having your life bound up with those around you for its whole duration can support creating a culture of generosity, trust, and cooperation, rather than one of inequality and individualism. Being in conflict with permanent neighbors, while also living in such a communal culture, can prove costly and stressful. Learning to cooperate,... See more
Over the last 50 years, people have shifted away from meeting and volunteering regularly in associations and informal gatherings such as support groups and Bible study groups, choosing instead to engage through “checkbook participation,” where we outsource and pay local and national organizations who hire professional staff to do the good works and... See more
Alex Pentland • Rediscovering the Pleasures of Pluralism: The Potential of Digitally Mediated Civic Participation — Digitalist Papers
“checkbook participation”
"When you throw trash on the ground, you apparently don't see yourself as truly belonging in the world that you're walking around in. And when you fraudulently claim money from the government, you are ultimately stealing from your friends, family, and neighbors - or somebody else's friends, family, and neighbors" - Tribe, Sebastian Junger (p.112)
Donnelly and Schrantz are arguing for a major shift: “a long-overdue scaled investment in community organizing around the country.” I agree 100%, especially because I concur with them that how we do politics now, as a purely transactional process of extracting votes from people, has contributed to the crisis of democracy and the allure of... See more
“Our towns are where civic culture is created, for better or worse. As this polarized moment in our national politics has shown, civic culture can be poisoned from the top down. But it can be healed and unpolluted from the bottom up and the inside out. How the residents of Tulsa choose to make a civic culture will of course be different from how... See more