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.