Neighborhood merchants and rooted residents knit stable urban areas into villages

Evidence

Most urban neighborhoods are, of course, not so gemeinschaftlich as those I have been describing. But neither are they all as anonymous and unconnected as popular imageries of the city might lead one to expect. Wherever there is a fair amount of residential stability, combined with stability among the area’s commercial establishments, some approximation of the urban village may be achieved. People will perhaps not know all their neighbors, but they will know some of them. And they will know about a good many more. They may be connected to one another through certain core people, a long-time inhabitant of the area, for example, who makes it her business to know and know about everybody else. Or, a merchant may serve as well. In the city, owners of neighborhood grocery stores often act as the cement that holds the inhabitants together-introducing them to one another, providing a locale where they can meet, circulating the gossip. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 798

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Simmel’s blasé attitude and the reader’s core question: Lofland shows the village pocket within the metropolis, the precondition against which urban anonymity’s detached observer emerges. — connects to: Recovering local history through research and museums strengthens village identity and cohesion. — Emil Sandström and Ann-Kristin Ekman and Karl-Johan Lindholm, Commoning in the periphery – The role…, 57