A Shared History

What makes a human settlement into a community? A suburb of culturally diverse homeowners may be a community but mostly they are not. In any population of approximately 5,000 people who live in a set of suburban subdivisions may attend as many as 50 different churches, buy groceries at a dozen different supermarkets, bank at a dozen different banks and have children who attend a myriad of public and private schools. Each new arrival came from a unique origin and settled there for the wide open yards and greater distances between front doors. In those residential land uses, people come and go isolated in their automobiles and may not know the names of the families even as close as two doors away. They all share a physical location but they do not have a shared history.

Swissvale, Pennsylvania is a small urban center now incorporated as part of the City of Pittsburgh. It was originally settled by Germans and Scandinavians who arrived from Europe to work in the steel mills on the Monongahela River Valley far below the bluffs where the streets of houses were built. So common was the employment in the valley and residence on the hillsides that several electric streetcar companies laid tracks through the neighborhoods and pointed them straight at the mills. It seems that everyone went to the mills each day to earn a living. They all spoke the language. They all had something in common: Emigration and working in the mills.

The next town over is Braddock. It was home to a large population of Polish immigrants. Their churches and fraternal association buildings still give testament to their former dominance of the area. The level of homogeneous character has since diminished considerably after the exit of steel making in the valley. These towns were sustained by the common history of the people who lived there. Today, Braddock is dying while Swissvale still lives. Both towns rely heavily on the pensions and retirement income of the people who still live there. The difference is Swissvale did not see the influx of lesser unskilled people who replaced the original population that left when the mills closed.

Railroad workers, lumberjacks, farmers, miners, steelworkers immigrated here from all over Europe and found work in company towns where they shared a past and the present. Wilkinsburg, another urban area just outside of Pittsburgh's city limits, is the town of churches. There are cross streets in that borough where each corner has a church. Although there might be a common employment in an area, people of diverse cultures did not mix well and formed their own communities. Irish and Chinese men and their families may live adjacent to each other and interact on an economic basis, but they lived apart. Still they share a common situation as cheap labor to a young growing land. And when the railroad was done they all shared the same fate of abandonment.

Today towns and rural areas struggle to find purpose that will keep their dreams alive. If they do not have an income stream on which to levy taxes then they need people to move in and bring with them the incomes and saved capital they have. If the newcomers still spend their money at distant stores then the community is still without revenue to maintain their physical presence and institutional needs. Newcomers don't have that shared history that is essential for "community" to exist. Efforts to gentrify a distressed community suggests that there is a reason to be renewed or that one can be created. Generally, though, there must first be a reason. That reason might be that it is suitable as a bedroom community to a larger urban area, new public transit options are expanded to the area, or that a large employer is locating nearby. In this latter example the jobs would need to be far better paying that a big box retail store or catalog fulfillment warehouse. Failing those requirements, the revitalization efforts will surely fail. They fail primarily due to the lack of a shared history where people will join together and assure the community success.

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Other blog posts that are related in a Series

Community, Reasons to Exist, The Making of Place This is the introductory section

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reason-to-exist Every town, village city and region originally had a reason to exist.

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todays-reasons-to-exist Every community needs a a reason today for its continued existence. Otherwise it will wither and die.

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factors-that-are-missingThe economic system we use today removes critical factors tat allow a community to stay vital.

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a-shared-historyThe people of a community need a shared history to stay cohesive as a community.

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sustainable-community all of the essential factors must remain present for a community to continue its existence.

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sustainable-unemployment As manufacturing and the services industries continue to evolve, human labor and attention is diminished. We need to devise a society where most people do not labor for their living.

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sustainable-consumerism A balance between product durability and its replacement needs to be reached in order for an equilibrium to be reached.

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sustainable-populations The human population cannot continue on its present trajectory without a terrible price to pay in the coming decades and century.

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suburban-sprawl Sprawl is only possible when there is ample buildable land and ample resources available to service those locations.

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complete-streets Our transportation ways are not just for the automobile. People must walk, bike, and use other modes of transport on those public rights of way.

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