Community : pursuing the dream, living the reality / Suzanne Keller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Keller, Suzanne.

Series:

Princeton studies in cultural sociology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Communities.

Community life--Case studies.

Community life.

New Jersey.

Community life--New Jersey--Case studies.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xiii, 334 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [2003]

Summary:

This book tells the story of how a human community comes to be and how aspirations for the good life confront the dilemmas and detours of real life. Suzanne Keller combines penetrating analysis of classic ideas about community with a remarkable and unprecedented thirty-year case study of one of the first "planned unit developments" in America and the first in New Jersey. Twin Rivers, this ploneering venture, featured townhouses and shared spaces for children's play and adult work and play in a society that stresses individual over collective goals and private over public concerns. Hence the timeless questions asked over millennia: How does an aggregate of strangers create an identity of place, shared goals, viable institutions, and a spirit of mutuality and reciprocity? What obstacles stand in the way and how are these overcome? And how does design generate (or deter) community spirit? Inspired by the legacy of Plato, Rousseau, de Tocqueville, and Tonnies, Keller traces the difficult birth and the rich unfolding of Twin Rivers from a former potato field into a vibrant contemporary community. Most community studies remain at a highly descriptive level. This book has both broader and deeper aims, endeavoring to develop principles of the common life as we enter the age of cyberspace.

Keller reveals the community of Twin Rivers through a multidimensional social microscope, having monitored the community from the day it opened by participant observation, attitude surveys, the study of collective records, and nearly 1,000 indepth interviews with homeowners. She offers fascinating insight into how residents maintain privacy, relate to neighbors, cope with social conflict, and develop ideas about the common good. She shows that Twin Rivers residents remain hopeful about the possibility of community despite variable success in achieving their desires. Indeed, she argues that the hard-won experience, more than the utopian ideal, is the true measure of community. Keller concludes that, despite the homogenizing effects of mass communication and globalization, local communities will continue to proliferate in the foreseeable future -- due to changing lifestyles and the continuing quest for roots. This important and engaging book will be appreciated by social scientists, architects, physical planners, developers and lenders, and community leaders as well as by the general reader interested in creating a bridge between individualism and community.

Contents:

Part I Community as Image and Ideal 1

1. Community: The Passionate Quest 3

2. Historic Models of Community 16

Part II A Community Is Launched 49

Twin Rivers Time Line 1970-2000 51

A. Creating Roots 49

4. Twin Rivers: The First Planned Unit Development in New Jersey 53

5. The Residents Appraise Their Environs 75

6. Securing the Vox Populi: The Struggle for Self-Government 87

B. Creating a Collective Self 109

7. Joiners and Organizers: Community Participation 111

8. Sociability in a New Community 123

C. Building the Foundations 147

9. Space, Place, and Design 149

10. Private and Public: Whose Rights, Whose Responsibilities? 168

11. Go Fight City Hall: The First Lawsuit 190

12. Leaders as Lightning Rods 202

13. Unity and Division, Conflict and Consensus 216

Part III Old Imperatives, New Directions 245

14. The Continuing Salience of the Local Community 247

Epilogue: Is There Community in Cyberspace? 291.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [309]-324) and index.

ISBN:

0691095647

OCLC:

49871918