Community in the Cities

Although the definition of community is subject to interpretation, both academic discourse and popular culture generally use the term to connote a shared connection or a sense of belonging, based on personal and family values, including cultural, religious, or political beliefs, to the national society and culture. Given this notion of community, it is no surprise that locating and historicizing communities in American cities, which can be places of great social interaction, diversity, and exchange, is a complex task. Over the decades, many scholars, including historians, sociologists, and political scientists, have endeavored to make sense of the meaning, extents, limits, and overall experience of community and community life in the American metropolis.

In the late 19th century, Ferdinand Tonnies, a German sociologist, examined the change in community from a traditional villagelike society connected by bonds of kinship, friends, and neighbors to the impersonal, modern, and urban world where social roles are dispersed among various people. He labeled this process of community decline as the transition from Gemeinschaft, or society characterized by strong mutual bonds of sentiment and family, to Gesellschaft, or society distinguished by more distant relationships and best represented by modern cities. Tonnies's theoretical framework, which culminated in a 1938 article in The American Journal of Sociology by Louis Wirth, dominated the historical scholarship on community life for years. But in the mid-20th century, scholars began to challenge Tonnies's dichotomy by unearthing stories of community ties in urban centers, particularly among African Americans and other minority groups. In recent decades, new scholarship and discussions about the significance of urban communities have continued to complicate the Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft binary as well as its authority. Still, the debate between proponents of the community decline theory and those who argue for the endurance of community ties remains central to any discussion of the role of American cities in the modern world.

The impact and longevity of Tonnies's theory can be in large part explained by the change in community life over the centuries. The contrast between the colonial village communities in the preindustrial 17th century and the diverse, urban neighborhoods of modern America raises questions about the evolving form and function of communities. In the 17th century, Europeans who migrated to the New World established tight, local villages, each with distinct cultural values and communal life. Centered on institutions such as the church and school, these small villages were contained social units and constituted the center for economic, political, social, and religious lives for their residents, often a homogenous group within an increasingly heterogeneous continental culture.

The era of the American Revolution forever changed colonial life by bringing together different local communities into towns that collectively formed the United States. Although the local communities formed by European migrants remained bound by kinship ties during the course of the 19th century, new market forces as well as the acceleration of westward expansion, geographic mobility, and interpersonal correspondence changed the American landscape and thus the configuration of communities. At the end of the Civil War, social and political life in America was still oriented around a local community or a small town. But in the postbellum period, as urban centers increased in size and population, traditional conceptions of idyllic community life would give way to new brands of communities in diversified city spaces.

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