A new book called The Company Store is reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, presumably given space (something that’s now in very short supply because of the demise of so many review sections) because it is a history of American business. But the book sounds like more than that, relevant to today’s debates about corporate social responsibility and to proposals for reduced commuting times.  I would love to know how these companies and their visions for social integration compare to some contemporary companies. And how intriguing to read this description: “communities enlivened by quirks and passions and idiosyncratic visions.”

via Book review: The Company Town – WSJ.com.

The exchanges detailed in this article in the New York Times involve money, which is frowned upon by some who think everything neighborly should be given away free. But barter as well as monetary exchange i’s traditional neighborhood behavior. Hiring the neighbor’s kid to mow the lawn or babysit, buying eggs from someone up the hill. In fact, small-scale interdependence like this does build a sense of community. The sites mentioned include SnapGoods, NeighborGoods, and ShareSomeSugar. Here’s a bit from the article:

Paul J. Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, says that participating in a community like SnapGoods, Kickstarter, Groupon or Airbnb can ease social isolation and flesh out our network of friends.

“There is an underlying notion that if I rent my things in my house, I get to meet my neighbor, and if I’m walking the goods over, I get to meet them in person,” he says. “We’re drawing on a desire in a fast-paced world to still have real connections to a community.”

Ping – Renting Out Home Belongings Over the Internet – NYTimes.com.

Online addiction worse when game brings “a sense of community.”

And while WoW differs from these social-farming games, in Van Cleave’s opinion, they’re not all that different. “In my mind, these games pose a bigger problem, because of that sense of community and belonging that they bring. Those are the games that are the most addictive,” he said.

via Virtual farm games absorb real money, real lives | Web Crawler – CNET News.

I guess this is the real-world issue with cults, too, and sometimes with religion. The world’s most eminent living world historian, William H. McNeill, author of the National Book Award winner The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, concludes in The Human Web: A Bird’s Eye View of World History (published by Norton, 2003), that our future depends on finding new kinds of communities to replace those of the past, and that the risk today is religious extremism driven in part by a search for community:

Either the gap between cities and villages will somehow be bridged by renegotiating the terms of symbiosis, and/or differently constructed primary communities will arise to counteract the tangled anonymity of urban life. Religious sects and congregations are the principal candidates for this role. But communities of belief must somehow insulate themselves from unbelievers, and that introduces frictions, or active hostilities, into the cosmopolitan web. How then sustain the web and also make room for life-sustaining primary communities?

Ironically, therefore, to preserve what we have, we and our successors must change our ways by learning to live simultaneously in a cosmopolitan web and in various and diverse primary communities. How to reconcile such opposites is the capital question for our time and probably will be for a long time to come.

William H. McNeill and J. R. McNeill 2003, pp. 326-327

Pets are all too important in some people’s lives, and as real-life community ties decline it seems that more people are getting dogs. I wanted to see what research there is about this, and was glad to find a rational discussion at a site for dog lovers – a dog blog. The writer says that of course it’s obvious that pets cannot satisfy our need for human companionship and community. So why do some dog owners insist that their pets are “just like people” or “just like family”?

. . . among people who live alone and have ”insufficient” social ties, high attachment to a dog or cat can serve to only increase the pet-owner’s likelihood of loneliness and depression.

People with limited community connections, the study shows, were more likely to humanize their dog — and to nurture their relationship with their dog at the expense of their personal lives. Typically, those people were more depressed, visited the doctor more often and took more medications.

via Dogs aren’t cure-all for loneliness, study says | ohmidog!.

As I write a book I describe as a tale of two villages, Camberwell and Great Barrington, I am glad to have yet a third village to use as another point of reference. And this one is actually called a village, though it’s even more urban than Camberwell, my London neighborhood. Over the past few years I’ve spent a good part of my time in what is now known as the West Village – really just part of the whole of Greenwich Village, New York City.

Not only is it helpful to have an American city for comparison, but I happen to have come to know a place that is particularly rich in stories relevant to A Smaller Circle and the search for community. And it is a neighborhood that has been written about a good deal, most importantly by the great proponent of city life, Jane Jacobs. Jacobs lived in the West Village, too, and wrote about it in her famous book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. A well-known photo of her was taken just round the corner, at the White Horse Tavern, and I frequently walk, in 2010, the streets she wrote about in the early 1960s. You can see the photo here:  Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York. Here’s a 2004 article about Jane Jacobs in The Villager and a lengthy interview by James Howard Kunstler. The changes in the area in the last couple of years, with the opening of the Standard Hotel and the Highline urban park, have been fascinating to watch. See the “More Jane Jacobs Less Marc Jacobs” sign that I first noticed in a window on Horatio Street.

Hardly a surprise that commuting leads to a decline in physical and social health, but the important point is that commutes are the result of how we design cities, site industry, and create new housing. Major political will is needed to make changes, and that requires a better understanding of community on the part of policy makers and citizens, too.

The Gallup polling organization reports that the “well being” of metropolitan Americans is apparently “lower among workers with long commutes.” The study, released this month, finds that “lengthy commuters are more likely to experience a range of physical and emotional conditions,” including “severe health problems,” such as neck or back pain (especially for those commuting more than 20 minutes) and higher cholesterol and larger “body mass index(es),” due, no doubt, to over-consumption of fattening fast foods.

via t r u t h o u t | Suburban Sprawl and the Decline of Social Capital. Thanks the Sprawled Out blog for this link.

I came across old listings some time ago and wrote to Random Century in London, asking them to tidy things up. This is better: there’s no cover showing up! But I am embarrassed to see those dates and to remember that I was supposed to have this book published in 1993. The 1999 hardcover is a mystery!

Amazon.co.uk: a smaller circle christensen.

I remember hearing from Sonya Solomon that Illinois had a lot of interest in rural revival, and here a program that is trying to address directly the demise of a sense of community:

Stewardson villagers are looking to mimic the success of other small towns in the area, such as Dieterich and neighboring Strasburg, in revitalizing their community.

The village has been struggling economically, and according to residents, has lost its sense of community. So, villagers are looking for ways to make it vital in the future.

In order to do that, community members have enlisted the help of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs in “mapping” out Stewardson’s future. MAPPING (Management and Planning Programs Involving Non-metropolitan Groups) is conducted by representatives of Western Illinois University, Macomb, and Illinois Commerce of Economic Opportunity. . . .

A series of five meetings will be set up to discuss the present-day status of Stewardson, plans for the future, how to get there, how to make it happen and how to keep it going. . . .

For Stewardson Steering Committee member Kristine Renshaw, the project also is an avenue for returning the village to the town it once was — a “true” community.

via Stewardson looks to revitalize community » Local News » Effingham Daily News, Effingham, IL.

My experience is that this is very difficult without a critical mass of people. Restoring community is just as tough as restoring an ecosystem–in fact, they’re really the same thing.

Activists have a Peter Pan mentality: they often think that if we just believe, it’ll come true. This is a nice idea but it is totally incorrect:

“The Berkshires are really on the cusp of breaking into a more sustainable economy, via local foods and agriculture,” she said. The result is not just an invigorated farming industry, she added, but an explosion of small, upscale producers.

via Journeys – In the Berkshires, Eating Locally Is a Tradition – NYTimes.com.

I’m finding terrific websites for my old, and former, neighborhood, including SE5 Forum for Camberwell.

Odd, isn’t it that Great Barrington has nothing like this? Maybe not: Great Barrington has a year-round population of only 7,700, where Camberwell has 37,000. Demographics matter. Density creates new possibilities and provides what we used to talk about a lot, in the days when I was part of the leadership team of a Berkshire technology business network–critical mass. A rural area like this hasn’t got the critical mass, the human or intellectual capital, of a city.

I was fascinated to read about the origins of Camberwell at Britain’s Hidden History, and here’s the website of Lettsom Gardens, which I’ll be writing about in the book.