In the second place, the community may be conceived in terms of the effects of communal life in a given area upon the formation or the maintenance of a local culture. Local culture includes those sentiments, forms of conduct, attachments, and ceremonies which are characteristic of a locality, which have either originated in the area or have become identified with it. This aspect of local life may be called “the cultural community.” This relationship of cultural patterns to territorial areas has not yet been adequately studied unless in the phenomena of language. What, for example, are studies in dialect but one illustration of how local areas with their entailed isolation differentially affect customs of speech? Concrete materials for a wider study of culture in relation to location are increasing, notably upon preliterate peoples and upon retarded groups geographically isolated, as the southern mountaineers or the remote inhabitants of Pitcairn Island.
The immigrant colony in an American city possesses a culture unmistakably not indigenous but transplanted from the Old World. The telling fact, however, is not that the immigrant colony maintains its old-world cultural organization, but that in its new environment it mediates a cultural adjustment to its new situation. How basically culture is dependent upon place is suggested by the following expressions, “New England conscience,” “southern hospitality,” “Scottish thrift,” “Kansas is not a geographical location so much as a state of mind.” Neighborhood institutions like the church, the school, and the settlement are essentially cultural institutions, and recognition of this fact has far-reaching implications for the policies and programs of these local centers.
There remains a third standpoint from which the relation of a local area to group life may be stated. In what ways and to what extent does the fact of common residence in a locality compel or invite its inhabitants to act together? Is there, or may there be developed upon a geographical basis, a community consciousness? Does contiguity by residence insure or predispose to co-operation in at least those conditions of life inherent in geographic location, as transportation, water supply, playgrounds, etc.? Finally, what degree of social and political action can be secured on the basis of local areas? This is the community of the community organization worker and of the politician, and may be described as “the political community.” It is upon this concept of the community as a local area that American political organization has been founded.
These three definitions of the community are not perhaps altogether mutually exclusive. They do, however, represent three distinctly different aspects of community life that will have to be recognized in any basic study of the community and of community organization. A given local area, like Hyde Park in Chicago, may at the same time constitute an ecological, cultural, and political community, while another area like the lower North Side in the same city, which forms a distinct ecological unit, falls apart into several cultural communities and cannot, at any rate from the standpoint of a common and effective public opinion, be said to constitute a going political community. The Black Belt in Chicago comprises one cultural community but overflows several ecological areas and has no means of common political action except through ward lines arbitrarily drawn.
It follows that the boundaries of local areas determined ecologically, culturally, and politically seldom, if ever, exactly coincide. In fact, for American cities it is generally true that political boundaries are drawn most arbitrarily, without regard either to ecological or cultural lines, as is notoriously the case in the familiar instance of the gerrymander. Therefore it is fair to raise the question: How far are the deficiencies in political action through our governmental bodies and welfare action through our social agencies the result of the failure to base administrative districts upon ecological or cultural communities?[[72]]
This analysis of the community into its threefold aspects suggests that the study of social forces in a local area should assume that the neighborhood or the community is the resultant of three main types of determining influences: first, ecological forces; second, cultural forces; and third, political forces.
Ecological forces.—The ecological forces are those which have to do with the process of competition and the consequent distribution and segregation by residence and occupation. Through competition and the factors which affect it, as trade centers, etc., every neighborhood in the city becomes a component and integral part of the larger community, with a destiny bound up by its relation to it. In the study of the growth of the city it is found that the life of any neighborhood is determined, in the long run, not altogether by the forces within itself, but even more by the total course of city life. To think of the neighborhood or the community in isolation from the city is to disregard the biggest fact about the neighborhood.
Studies of urban growth reveal that the city grows outward from its central business district (1) in a series of expanding zones.[[73]] There is a “zone of transition” (2) encircling the downtown area. This is the area of deterioration, the so-called “slum”, created in large part by the invasion of business and light manufacture. A third area (3) is inhabited by workers in industry who have escaped from the area of deterioration (2) and who desire to live within easy access of their work. Beyond this zone is the “residential area” (4) of high-class apartment buildings or of exclusive “restricted” districts of single family dwellings. Still farther, out beyond the city limits, is the “commuters’ zone” (5) of suburban areas or satellite cities within a sixty-minute ride of the central business district.
Within these zones of urban growth are to be found local districts or communities, and these in turn subdivide into smaller areas called neighborhoods. In the long run, geographical factors and the process of competition fix the boundaries and the centers of these areas. It is important that neighborhood work be in accordance with, rather than in opposition to, these silent but continuous influences. A map of local communities was prepared to show the way in which rivers, railroads, large industrial establishments, parks, and boulevards divide the city into its constituent local communities—residential and industrial.
The centers of local communities are to be found at the point of highest land value in the intersection of two business streets. These local community centers are also characterized by the concentration of retail business, of banks, of restaurants, and of the large and magnificent palaces of amusement, like motion picture houses and public dance halls. If high land values indicate the center of the community, the lowest land values generally define its periphera.