The Rehabilitation of the Local Community

T 1HIS paper will be confined to an explanation of its title. By is meant what Snedden calls community, one of Cooley's primary groups. It is district-in those cities where it still exists-next larger than a block to which a man can say he belongs. Its radius is local acquaintance range of ordinary citizen. Frequently it corresponds to a school district and embraces a population of from 3,000 to 5,ooo persons. Its cardinal social characteristic is facility in formation of face-to-face groupings. It is a residential area in which propinquity relationships have not wholly been superseded by special interest associations. There is a feeling among some sociologists that local community is booked for discard. In a recent work Thomas says that the community is so weak and vague that it gives us no idea of former power of local group in regulating behavior. Snedden asks us to be resigned to fact that associate community processes are being replaced by those of federate communities. McKenzie, after his exhaustive study of a Columbus neighborhood, concludes that rehabilitation of community consciousness in modem city is a difficult problem. Other students, impressed by way automobile, world-wide news service, and radio are reducing significance of distance, have prepared their minds reluctantly, they confess-for a scheme of life in which there will be little of neighborly, face-to-face, and New England town-meeting kind of association. No one can deny existence of this tendency.