Book Review: Rebuilding Community in America: Housing for Ecological Living, Personal Empowerment, & the New Extended Family • •
Paperback: 406 pages Publisher: Shared Living Resource Center (February 1995) Customer Review 10 of 11 people found the following review helpful Designing community By GENE GERUE on May 8, 2000 Format: Paperback There is no definitive book on community. This may be because each author sees something unique, but it may be that community defies narrow definition, indeed, encompasses all of life's values and activities. What some call community is simply a neighborhood of people with little in common but geography. At the other extreme are cyber groups of individuals with only a common interest and the equipment to communicate with each other, yet they perceive themselves as a community. Co-author Ken Norwood was born in 1924, enjoyed a large family living throughout Southern California when each town was separate and distinct, served in WWII as part of a B-24 crew flying missions out of Britain, spent one year as a Nazi POW, became an architect-planner, worked in several intentional communities as carpenterarchitect, founded the Shared Living Resource Center in Berkeley, California. So he has seen community from many perspectives. Co-author Kathleen Smith also chose the field of architecture, has traveled widely, has pursued a career in community design. Therefore this book focuses on the role of habitation in community. Most designs presented are for cities. The one chapter about rural community design is titled Rural Communities, the Romance and the Reality, which shows urban bias. But--country living advocate that I am--their material is inclusive and their arguments are sound. Country life is not for everybody--in truth, most Americans prefer to live in cities and suburbs and the current social and political climate favors and facilitates urban and suburban living. The anguish over loss of community has been expressed in a plethora of public polls. When community ceases, bureaucracy increases. Can citizens rebuild community and take back those parts of their lives that are now controlled by government ? The authors of this work go a long way in showing how that can be accomplished.