"Real Communites" - Are they or Aren't they? - Second Blog Response

The importance of place in a neighborhood is highly important as Sampson suggests, however the globalization and correlations of this "neighborhood effect" showcase a common theme that could be happening in cities everywhere. On a different note, Sampson sheds light to an alternative ideal showcasing that "placelessness"is appearing as well. He provides facts to both sides and then presents us with his findings of what he has researched in Chicago and the similarities throughout other neighborhoods in the world.

I have recently moved to a home a couple blocks from the apartment I lived at previously. The home I live in now actually feels like a home. I have a sense of security and feel safe. It's the same feeling I had growing up in my small farming hometown. It's great, it really is. In contrast, at the apartment I lived at before this home, I didn't have those same feelings of place, so to speak. The feelings of "placelessness" were more present and I didn't have a non-spatial community to relate to as some social-network theorists have shown can cross-cut geographic ones. Why, since I have moved, is the feeling place suddenly there? Why do I feel place when I only moved 4 blocks away?

My thinking to the above posed questions is somewhat vague as I largely don't know why there is such a difference. I feel some major factors in the feeling of place is a psychological association with the word "home". I live in a home now. That phrase rings deep psychologically and I believe connects neurons in my brain to the feelings of security, safety and love which I have mentioned earlier. The feeling of being "home" (assuming home has a positive definition), means to me a feeling of place. I associate home as a place where I feel connected and accepted. Although, I do live next to many strangers (neighbors I haven't introduced myself to yet) I still feel a sense of place.

This may stem from a belongingness to my work and school environment where I spend most of my time in the day. It is indeed interesting insight as to how I feel connected yet spend very little time at my home. I feel that work and school are to me other real communities and also, I feel I belong to a group somewhere out there in cyberspace to a group of creative bohemian photographers. :) This group is where I passionately belong and feel the most connected. Oddly enough, this connectedness is largely internet-based and has little face to face real-world interaction. It taps into the irony Sampson states that the "implication of the decline of community" and that it is dying due to technology and "globalization" yet it has been a "longstanding narrative of public intellectuals and scholarly pundits preaching the places - especially as instantiated in neighborhoods and community."

Stories from those intellectuals and pundits tells us we just might be doomed as our "community is dying", however the historic event of this occurring over and over seems to be a wolf cry. I'm not saying we are becoming more connected or less connected, I'm trying to push the notion that we may be seeing a revolution of community to a more non-spatial community that cross-cuts geographical boundaries. I am simply following the layout of Sampson and playing cards from both sides to shed light on the interesting events happening in community here and there.