Community: Pursuing the Dream, Living the Reality

封面
Princeton University Press, 2003 - 334 頁

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 pioneering 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 Tönnies, 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 in-depth 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.

 

內容

COMMUNITY THE PASSIONATE QUEST
3
HISTORIC MODELS OF COMMUNITY
16
KEY THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
37
A COMMUNITY IS LAUNCHED
49
TWIN RIVERS TIME LINE 19702000
51
TWIN RIVERS THE FIRST PLANNED UNIT DEVELOPMENT IN NEW JERSEY
53
THE RESIDENTS APPRAISE THEIR ENVIRONS
75
SECURING THE VOX POPULI THE STRUGGLE FOR SELFGOVERNMENT
87
SPACE PLACE AND DESIGN
149
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC WHOSE RIGHTS WHOSE RESPONSIBILITIES?
168
GO FIGHT CITY HALL THE FIRST LAWSUIT
190
LEADERS AS LIGHTNING RODS
202
UNITY AND DIVISION CONFLICT AND CONSENSUS
216
SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS
233
OLD IMPERATIVES NEW DIRECTIONS
245
THE CONTINUING SALIENCE OF THE LOCAL COMMUNITY
247

B CREATING A COLLECTIVE SELF
109
JOINERS AND ORGANIZERS COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
111
SOCIABILITY IN A NEW COMMUNITY
123
A COMMUNITY IS LAUNCHED
147
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
265
IS THERE COMMUNITY IN CYBERSPACE?
291
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關於作者 (2003)

Suzanne Keller is Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Princeton University. She was the first woman in the history of Princeton to receive tenure. Her many writings include The Urban Neighborhood and Beyond the Ruling Class (both Random House), the pioneering textbook Sociology (McGraw-Hill), and hundreds of articles on a wide range of subjects.

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