Communities of the past embodied an economic “survival coefficient.”
That meant that most of the people who lived in the community worked there, making their own products and making a living there. Their lives and survival were dependent on the community.
Populations were more or less stationary with little or no migration on the part of its members.
Most suburbs today are not survival organs but more or less appendages of the city. People who live there are residents for the time they reside there. They usually are not born in the community where they live as adults nor are their incomes derived from within the community where they live.
In today's highly individualized society there is less dependency of neighbor on neighbor. The physical shelter is no longer a mere shelter. It is an economic element with changing market value and some suburbs have relatively short term occupancy with frequent turnover of ownership.
The suburb might be compared to a hotel that provides living quarters and services for a short period of the time, obviously on a longer term basis than a hotel, until it is time to “move on.”
“Moving on” has been a significant factor of today's suburb. Therefore the more permanent settlement-type community, when found at all today, is more likely to be in the small rural town. Community does not exist as an element or component of suburban living. .
Older adults whose family members may be dispersed over many places are now the first to understand that the dependency of neighbor on neighbor is difficult to maintain in our present mobile society.
And the older adults require this informal association as much school children do, although the school serves somewhat as a social community for children.
The digital age relying on electronic communication further separates individual from individual. E-mail replaces talking over the garden fence and a certain personal interaction is lost.
The various generations become more separated. As these human characteristics experienced in the past are lesser known they are not missed by the younger generations. Their absence however deprives older adults of the fuller lives experienced by previous generations.
Community has more meaning for those of age and who become more dependent on the nearness of others and they are the ones who are more likely to miss community.
Assisted living facilities and services are more like hotels and hospitals than neighborhoods past. More and more older adults prefer living in place, even though neighbors do not provide the social function they once did.
Therefore it is the mature and older adult today who seeks a reconstitution of former community-type living.
Shorewood is fortunate to have the assistance of a group, “Connecting Caring Communities Partnership” which is working toward organizing and implementing those elements of community required by today's elderly.
Its citizens shall be hearing more and more about the activities of this group as it works toward providing for today's elements of the “survival coefficient” for a significant group, the older adults of Shorewood..
