The Community Course
Part 1 - The Significance of the Community
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7. The Creation of New Communities

The Need for Communities
In a period of transition and flux like that of the present, when men are groping for opportunities and footholds for significant living, opportunities for the creation and development of communities which shall be dominated by the aim to achieve a quality of good proportion, such as is characteristic of a well-developed human body, are as great as they were in pioneer America.

Historical New Communities
Throughout the course of history the planned creation of new communities has occurred oftener than is generally realized. The Greeks definitely planned new colonies. Sometimes they had ideal legal codes developed by specialists and had the lands laid out by professional planners. The Hebrew nation was a colonist enterprise. Eastern Europe is dotted over with cities populated by people from other regions--chiefly Germans--who came as members of organized colonies. For centuries the Teutonic Knights followed the policy of extending German-Christian civilization through colonies. Millions of people in East European cities are descendants of these colonists. In the history of India and the East Indies the planning and creation of new colonies and communities sometimes was a major element of national policy, and some of these new settlements grew into great empires.

Beginning New Settlements
In the South Seas, when an island became fully populated, it was customary to prepare large double canoes that would hold fifty to two hundred people, with food for two or three months and with seeds and animals for beginning new settlements. These, manned by young men and women, would start out into the unknown ocean, hoping to discover new lands before their supplies were exhausted. Sometimes they were fortunate enough to come to islands in the vast expanse of waters, and then they would begin as integrated communities, with customs, traditions, and arts, and with a beginning of domestic plants and animals.

Planning New Communities
The planning and founding of new communities has been a common American undertaking, as it has been the world over. Thousands of American communities have been originated deliberately as new creations. There is an impression that planned communities in America generally have failed. Such is far from the case. Of the thousands of American communities which were deliberately created, very many in large degree realized the picture of their founders. The most influential single element in the formation of American life, that of New England, began as premeditated new communities, and not as an unorganized movement of individuals. The founding of Pennsylvania also made a deep impression on the national pattern. Many semi-idealistic communities, such as Oneida, New York; Greeley, Colorado; Amana, Iowa; and Fairhope, Alabama, have lived for a long period. Some, built from an economic motive, like Gary, Indiana, and Pullman, Illinois, also have continued to grow. The original Mormon colonies have multiplied and increased significantly. Much of the quality of American culture has been the outgrowth of community efforts. In many cases, whether they originated with idealistic purposes as did Oneida, New York, or primarily with economic motives, as did Gary, Indiana, there has been lacking a mature and well-proportioned concept of the community as a fundamental element of human culture.

But also there are scattered over our country the vestiges of many communities which were built by enthusiasts or by one-track minds.  Even where these have taken root and have grown and prospered economically, which is true of many cases, there has resulted a narrowness of life and a provincial outlook which must be outgrown before a community can become a significant factor in cultural evolution. The soundly designed community undertaking is somewhat like the differences between the methods of the literary character Darius Greene, and his flying machine, on the one hand, and the methodical and analytical, though unconventional, work of the Wright brothers on the other.

Failed Communities
Many American undertakings to create new communities have been tragedies because there was lacking a spirit of inclusiveness and a sense of good proportion. Brook Farm had only dreams and transcendental theories. It had no economic roots. Its members lacked patience, steadiness of purpose, and self-discipline. Fairhope, Alabama, had little more than single-tax and a good climate. New Harmony depended unduly on a theory of social organization. A thousand vigorous Americans have created as many villages or cities with economic production as their principal inter­est. That is, they built mill towns, factory towns, and mining towns. Often these were dreary aggregations of families, housed in sordid shacks, assembled with no hint or vision of human dignity. Sometimes industrial men built model towns, such as Koehler, Wisconsin, but often their ideas went little further than provision for physical conveniences and architectural design, and too often the creators of these paternalistic communities were made bitter by the ensuing "ingratitude."

Shortcomings of Community Entrepreneurs
Each of these industrialists embarked on the most interesting adventure he knew. Had such a man possessed a more lively imagination, had his cultural inheritance included more understanding of people, more respect and good will for them, more of friendly interest and neighborliness, a greater range of cultural appreciation, he would have sought for his community a greater range of satisfactions, including greater participation on the part of the community members in directing their own lives and that of the community. He would have broken through the prevailing indus­trial habits and interests of the day and would have seen that by including the whole range of human values in his concern, rather than financial profits or physical convenience alone, he would have had a more interesting life along the way, and would have left behind a greater residue of human values, and for his children better char­acter and greater prospect for social and political security.

A Basic Purpose
Fundamental to all living is a philosophy of life which gives it content, direction, and a sense of worth. Without it people are only educated animals. Communities in which this quality of life purpose was strong have survived much better than others. A common way of putting it is that communities with a religious purpose and motivation have maintained their original quality much better than those which lacked such purpose.

Vision Limitations
The limitations of American communities have not been primarily that they have not fulfilled the dreams of their founders, but that those dreams were commonplace. Adequate design is not spontaneous; it must be worked for, and practiced for. It is because those pictures as a rule were rudimentary and lacking in imagination that American communities have no more character.

Although community making sometimes is looked upon as an escape process for people who shrink from rough-and-tumble competition, that is an inadequate view. The determination to build a favorable social environment would seem to be more reasonable than to create a great estate for one's children while leaving them in a social setting, which does not stabilize or refine their characters. The creating of new communities always has been one of the ways by which people have tried to begin again to realize their hopes for a good society, and there is no reason to believe that the process will not be used in the future. The chance for like-minded people to work together to realize their common aims is too alluring to be abandoned. Such a course makes possible to an unusual degree the securing of unity of purpose in community life and work, and the achievement of new values. It may provide happier and more productive adventure than political or financial ambition.

Need for New Communities
From time to time in America opportunities or necessities occur to create new communities. The establishment of new industries, public need for reducing unemployment, or desire to create better social and economic conditions, may provide the occasions. For such projects to be restricted to minimum housing and economic needs is a waste of opportunity, and as in the case of Pullman, Illinois, Gary, Indiana, and other industrial towns, may fail to result in best conditions for economic production. The writer has found in several cases in his work as engineer and as administrator that even the special economic purposes of such communities can be better assured by looking beyond the immediate utilitarian requirements and by making possible well-proportioned community life. For persons determined to make such occasions yield their fullest possible economic and social values, they offer opportunity to create and develop new communities which, both in the people who compose them and in the concept of what a community might be, may provide opportunity for originating community types of widespread significance. Few contributions to our national culture would be more important than actual cases of communities in which all major human needs and interests were recognized and developed in good proportion. Few experiences would be more satisfying to the persons involved and to their children than participation in competently designed undertakings of that kind. Only rarely are people creative. Far more frequently they are ready to imitate whatever of excellence may appear. Wherever people of competence and creative intelligence are willing to pay the price in preparation and in the difficult, persistent effort which creation always involves, the designing and developing of new communities is a worth­while field of effort, though a most difficult one.

Types of Community Builders
One of the first difficulties encountered in undertaking to build a new community is that such an undertaking tends to attract persons who are misfits in society, or single-track minds searching for a panacea, as well as those who deliberately and competently seek to create an environment favorable to significant living. In this we see a repetition of the incentives which brought about the settlement of our country. Comparing the temper of life in an American community with that in most small European communities, I get the impression that America to no small extent was settled by individuals who were ill-adjusted or discontented. In most cases, each person or family emigrating from Europe to America was so dissatisfied with home conditions as to be willing to pull up by the roots and remove to an alien land. Both the strength and weakness of America lie in that fact. With some who came, discontent was largely due to personal maladjustment, while the dream of a promised land was naive and undisciplined. With others, the discontent sprang from mature imagination and disciplined purpose.

A deliberately planned and created community has the best prospect for all-round success if it is a neighborhood of people who have in common enough of cultural life, of social purpose, and of capacity for mutual understanding, to be good neigh­bors, and who have in common such discipline of life and refinement of purpose that children growing up in that community would find the cultural influence of the family supported by that of the neighborhood. In the development of such a community, or in the regeneration of those already existing, there should be effort to provide variety in economic undertakings and in cultural interests, so that young persons of differing tastes and abilities could find opportunities for their lives. There should be wholehearted commitment to a spirit of free inquiry and of critical open-mindedness, as a recognized quality of a good community. Otherwise some form of pro­vincialism and atrophy will appear. There should be range and variety of cultural contacts. Even where the occasion for the creation of the community is economic, as the development of a new industry, or educational, as in case of a “college town,” no one factor, such as economic self-support, or religious uniformity, or political or social views, should dominate, but rather there should be effort to recognize and to develop in reasonable proportion all the major interests of men and women. The analogy of the highly developed systems of stimuli and of controls, of checks and balances of the human body, with the aim of maintaining good relations and good pro­portion in structure and in function, is especially applicable to a community. It is not any single kind of excellence but diversity and balance and good proportion of excellence, which make a good community.