Building a Stronger Community

What does a sense of community mean to you? Is it a physical place, one in which you live and work? Perhaps it consists of only your neighborhood. What aspects really make it a community, though? Today, many forget about the social interaction of communities and tend to focus on the physical environment. How is this lack of social aspects hurting our neighborhoods, and what can we do to make our communities stronger?

Community as defined by Merriam-Webster is “a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society.” This implies that simply living close in proximity doesn’t make a people a community, however, sharing common interests and goals does. The expression of these goals between the members of the community defines its strength, but this can’t be done without social interaction. When we look at so called communities in the city of Memphis and its suburbs, there is a large lacking of social interaction. Why? Who or what is to blame?

For decades our neighborhoods have been built with the American dream in mind; we want a nice house with a big lawn. These neighborhoods were built with one intention in mind: to create a place for people to live and sleep. A neighborhood full of nothing but housing does not promote interaction between the residents. Along with highways making it possible for people to live far away from their work, the popularity of national food chains and retail took major nodes of social interaction away from the homes. The average American spends 87 minutes behind the wheel each day. Why is this a bad thing?

Aside from being better for the environment, healthier to walk or ride a bike, and giving one more free time each day, living close to one’s work allows one to get to know members of the community better. Similar businesses usually operate close to one another, so one is more likely to live near those with common interests and goals, reinforcing the idea of what community really is. This is just one step closer to building a relationship with others. To really bring everyone together, we must figure out how to combine live, work, learn, eat, and play in the same place. This isn’t to say everything must be provided in a community so one has no reason to leave it. There will always be other reasons such as large city parks, sports facilities, museums, or any other type of entertainment. However, we should strive to provide most of these needs to build community.

Many articles cite that happiness is not affected so much by the quantity of social interaction, but more by the quality of that interaction. While someone who lives far away from their work may interact just as much throughout the day with others, the quality of that interaction may not be as strong if the relationship with those people isn’t as rich. People who live, work, and are entertained in the same area will have more common interests on which to build a relationship. General happiness is just one benefit of a stronger community. Safety is another. As relationships are built, so is trust. More interaction brings more awareness.

With this idea in mind, it is easy to plan for this type of environment for new developments. How can we change the state of our current neighborhoods, though, to encourage this type of social interaction between the residents? We must look at whose responsibility it is to build our relationships with one another. It is ours. Despite conditions working against us, we need to reach out and support our local businesses and institutions. Forming community organizations to address issues and concerns of the residents will bring people together and promote growth within our communities through volunteering and cooperating together to meet common goals. Social services such as a fire department can play a key role in building community relationship.

The city of Memphis has the tools in place to assist with community building such as the Urban Land Institute, which offers workshops to institutions, nonprofit organizations, and the general public. The city is working towards implementing bike lanes such as on Madison Avenue to bring our communities closer together, however, future planning should be done with social interaction and multiuse in mind. The stronger our communities are, the better our overall wellbeing will be, and the greater the city of Memphis will be.

Sources:

Langer, Gary. (2005, February 15) Poll: Traffic in the United States. ABCNews. Retrieved October 11, 2011 from http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/story?id=485098&page=1

Roehlkepartain, Eugene C. (2007, December) Benefits of Community-Based Service-Learning. National Service-Learning Clearinghouse. Retrieved October 11, 2011 from http://www.servicelearning.org/benefits-community-based-service-learning

Urban Land Institute. (2011) Retrieved October 11, 2011 from http://memphis.uli.org/Community%20Building.aspx