At 02:14 PM 2/8/99 -0000, Duncan Fuller wrote:
>'There is something about the word 'community' that ought to ring alarm
>bells. The credit union story is just one example of the sort of misguided
>good intentions that have plagued social policy for years, offering the poor
>highminded good ideas that none of the rest of us would bother with.
>For example, we urban dwellers don't live in geographical communities; we
>live in cities, not claustrophobic villages, so we can choose our friends
>from far and wide.
This may be true and rational, but don't we and our urban places suffer as
a result of all this space-time compression?
Tom
>Similarly the only thing that binds the inhabitants of
>worst estates together is their desire to get out. Yet social planners get
>amazingly sentimental about 'bonding', wanting poor people to get together
>in ways the rest of us rarely have time, energy or inclination to do.
>Whoever worried about the lack of 'community' in nice middle-class areas?'
>
>DF
>
>
>
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Tom Bulten, Geography-Urban Affairs
Michigan State University
5 Lyon Street NW, Suite 110
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
ph: 616-458-6805
fax: 616-458-6665
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