ancient cities

174 Community
social capital networks, the withdrawal of social
services, and pervasive stigmatization have all
combined to prevent the emergence of community
in poverty stricken areas of the city. The rise of
gated communities and fortified urban enclaves
(ranging from São Paulo to Los Angeles) has only
served to exacerbate this discrepancy in socialeconomic
and psychological division through the
production of mere simulacra of community.
Indeed, the idea of community as a gated or
defensive enclosure intuitively contradicts the
positive connotations that often accompany the
inclusion of the notion of community in planning
and policy discourse.
International migration has also fundamentally
altered the constitution of community in the contemporary
global city. Characterized by the maintenance
of transnational personal and economic
networks, contemporary immigrant communities
avail of the communicative and technological
innovations of globalization to forge links between
homeland and host country. In a study of West
African street vendors in New York, Paul Stoller
and Jasmin McConatha demonstrate how religious
and ethnic affiliation form the basis of the
maintenance of the transnational spaces that
increasingly typify community diasporas in the
contemporary city. Furthermore, revitalized “ethnic
enclaves” (e.g., Chinese and Korean communities)
have adapted to the morphology of cultural
and economic globalization to become dynamic
transnational communities and catalysts of urban
growth.
The Revival of Community
Three broad trends can be discerned when considering
the utility of the concept of community in
contemporary urban studies. A first trend is contained
in communitarian debates regarding civic
engagement. If identification with a particular
community is dependent upon the cultivation of a
sense of belonging, the revival of civic associations
and local community networks are deemed essential.
Such imperatives as the maintenance of social
capital networks, public participation in decision
making, the ongoing provision of goods and services,
and the facilitation of economic activity and
growth all resonate with the emphasis placed upon
community in communitarian thought.
Combining an emphasis on the importance of
community with a stress on citizenship, the communitarian
position is most clearly understood
when conceived of as a position that challenges the
liberal emphasis placed upon individual autonomy
and achievement of personal fulfillment. The perceived
decline of a culture of volunteerism, coupled
with an increasingly atomized urban order, has led
many communitarian scholars to lament the passing
of a strong sense of civic engagement. Influential
political scientist Robert Putnam has suggested
that the decline in the strength of social capital
networks can be reversed by investment in community
building civic initiatives and increased levels
of democratic participation. Such community
building imperatives, however, often posit an idealized
rather than actualized model of civic cooperation
and thereby fail to empower marginalized
social groups. As a result, the communitarian position
has been subject to considerable criticism with
regard to what is perceived as a limited, nostalgic,
and somewhat retrogressive interpretation of what
constitutes community. It is in this sense that critics
of the concept have cited its frequently ideological
usage and tendency to depict the changing nature
of community in modern urban life in strictly
pathological terms. Notwithstanding these criticisms,
communitarian thought continues to exercise
significant influence upon government policy
and community development initiatives.
A second trend suggests that the nature of community
has become a far more voluntaristic means
of social engagement as individuals come together
on the basis of similarity of ideas, taste, lifestyle,
and niche interest. In this view, community is
heavily circumscribed by the nature of the particular
identity or interest pursuit, and characterized
by relatively fluid and transient criteria of membership.
Accordingly, community members come
and go as levels of commitment wane and differ.
The political implications of this can be seen in
social movements that evoke the semantics of community
as a rallying call. Although such social
movements can be either liberatory or conservative
in their stated aim, the sheer abstractness and complexity
of contemporary society often compels
individuals and groups to seek solidarity and membership
in such voluntaristic collectivities. When
considering that these new forms of communities
are certainly not as cohesive or obligatory as those