Wired Communities

The Decline of Community

Since at least the mid-1850s, scholars have debated about a decline in community. Early community theorists worried about the effects of a complex division of labor, urbanization, and industrialization on community, predicting that people would become disenfranchised, impersonal, and self-motivated. The social network view of community, which came into prominence in the late 1970s, successfully demonstrated that supportive social relations continue to exist in the modern urban environment. They are not the folk-type community relations idealized from the past, and research has shown that modern supportive social ties, while present, tend to be dispersed throughout the urban environment and not grouped into neighborhood settings. The development of the automobile, the telephone, and other transportation and communication technologies has facilitated the formation and maintenance of social relationships at a distance. These technological changes have contributed to a decentralization of social relations. Indeed, most people usually have more friends outside their neighborhood than in it.

Even with the recognition that support social ties continue to exist in the modern urban setting, there is empirical support for the notion that neighborhood “social capital,” community involvement, and neighborliness have declined during the past few decades. American sociologist Robert Putnam suggested that during the last third of the twentieth century, there was a significant decline in America's social capital. People now spend less time with friends, relatives, and neighbors; they are more cynical and less trusting; and they are involved in fewer clubs and organizations. Those involved in the development of wired communities highlight the potential for ICTs to reconnect people and bring attention back to the neighborhood setting. At the same time, although not associated with the trend observed by Putnam, many community scholars fear that the growth of new ICTs may increase the trend toward home-centeredness and privatization, further undermining people's connections to one another and to their communities.

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