Things fall apart

The bulk of Bowling Alone traces the decline of American social capital through a web of contributing factors, looking for the largest culprits. Putnam identifies these as generational change, pressures of time and money, television, and sprawl. Each of these are key explanations, but they don’t capture the full complexity of this decline.

the companies do little to encourage accountability, institution building, or integration with existing community structures

this was probably amongst the biggest challenges to helping US neighborhoods come together: most people don’t have good reasons to meet their neighbors.

The changing dynamics of the American economy — from corporate consolidation to the decline of private unions — as well as dramatic changes in immigration policy, are noticeably missing from Putnam’s story.

In 1995, Alan Ehrenhalt wrote a book on three Chicago neighborhoods called The Lost City , observing:

In the 1950s they [residents] considered the streets to be their home, an extension of their property, whereas today [1995] the streets are, for many people, an alien place. A block is not really a community in this neighborhood anymore. Only a hou

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Environmentalist Michael Lockhart identifies four damaging forms of economic growth: “ jobless growth, where the economy grows, but employment doesn’t; ruthless growth, where economic growth benefits the rich; rootless growth, where economic growth starves people’s cultural roots; and futureless growth, where the present generation squanders resour... See more

Collectively, they lack the gravity necessary to reestablish a sense of responsibility for the people and places around us.

I realized that this was probably amongst the biggest challenges to helping US neighborhoods come together: most people don’t have good reasons to meet their neighbors.

there has been a far larger decline of neighborhoods that has little to do with material conditions. We are less likely to have personal connections with neighbors on our street, teachers in our kids’ schools, our local pastor or rabbi, or leaders in our community. Classmates don’t visit each other’s homes as much as they used to. In many neighborh... See more