Reinhardt: Yes, community is relative to size. Since a community demands a basic level of familiarity and interaction among its members, there are limits to just how big it can grow, though an actual number would be impossible to come up with. And there are certainly many, many small towns all across America that are well within the size range of a community. But size isn’t the only defining element. Membership, proximity, mutual obligations and responsibilities, value systems, and a veritable raft of rules on proper and improper behavior and ideals are also defining elements of thriving, functional community. And by and large, today’s small American town have lost quite a bit of those elements.
A host of historical forces contributed to the disintegration of American communities over the last two-plus centuries. The way people live today is just radically different from the way they did in 1790, when the first U.S. Census came out shortly after the ratification of the Constitution. So changes in everything from economics, to education, to culture, to work, to family life, just to name a few, all put pressure on communities, contributing to their demise over a long stretch of time. Those conditions remain in place today, hindering even a small town’s ability to function as an actual community. Though of course the typical small American town would be much more like a community in many ways than a large city with millions of people or suburb with thousands of disconnected nuclear families. And as I say in the book: far be it from me to tell someone that their small town, that I’ve never been to, isn’t a real community. But I do talk about many of the historic and modern forces that have challenged and continue to challenge even a small American town’s ability to function as a historic community.