Image Source: http://www.champaignschools.org/science/images/foodweb.gif

What Is Community?

I recently joined a facebook group entitled “What community means to me!”. The concept behind this group is that community means different thing to different people and that a community’s sustainability is dependent on the resources available to that community. The group also poses an interesting question “do we define our communities or do they define us?”. There is a community sustainability survey available on the site as well that is being used for research purposes.

I believe that communities define us because as one person change usually cannot be made, but as a community change is more attainable. For example if 1% of a community are willing to take public transit but there is none available the municipality will not see it as a worthwhile investment, but if a large percentage of a community would like to use public transit then it is more likely to be established as it would then be a worthwhile investment. I feel like many communities are disconnected from each other because of their physical locations, different ethnic, cultural or religious characteristics, ownership, professions or goals and interests. I don’t think that very many communities are sustainable because of this, it seems that if one community is having a problem it is their problem and no one else’s although often one communities problem is another communities problem, which is another communities problem and so on. A good example of this are food webs, a fox community doesn’t depend directly on the herbivorous insect community but it does depend on the bird community which depends on those insects communities therefore if there is a problem in the herbivores insect community it becomes a problem for the bird community and the fox community.

I didn’t particularly like the survey as I felt the definition of community was narrow and only applied to the actual place you live in. I think of community as the groups you belong to not just the place you live, such as the mountain biker’s community.

Facebook “what community means to me!” group link:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8966689849

Survey Link:
http://www.crcresearch.org/survey.htm