The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Neighborhoods

    By cmaukonen on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 12:30pm |



    We as humans don't do Big very well and it seems that current and past research bares this out.  This article presents a few of the reasons why this is true.

    The other day, I read a short article by Clive Thompson entitled “In Praise of Obscurity” in the February 2010 issue of Wired magazine. In the article, Thompson talks about how socializing doesn’t appear to scale. He highlights Maureen Evans, a grad student and poet, who built an active twitter following by tweeting recipes condensed down to 140 characters. Her social network grew into a very active community – a large but close knit group of twitter-ers engaged in many conversations. But then as her followers increased, she recounts that the sense of community died when her social network got up to around 13,000 followers. People just stopped talking to each other and stopped talking to her apparently.
     
    It appears that when a social network grows too large, people start to feel estranged and that their contributions to the community are not useful anymore and so the conversation stops. In addition, when there is a large community, people tend to self-censor their remarks adding to that lost sense of community. So that is the phenomena that Thompson was referring to when he wrote that socializing doesn’t appear to scale.

    So we do have a maximum capacity of how large a group of people we can handle at any given time.  And the article goes on to site areas other areas where this is shown to be true.

    And of course there are examples of this Social Channel Capacity. In combat military organizations, the hierarchy is often setup so that any functional fighting group is less than 200 people to maximize cohesion and effictiveness. The average village size of many hunter-gatherer tribes around the world is around 150. The Hutterites, a religious group, strictly maintains a population of 150 because they have found that this is the most effective number of people to function as a group. I’ve also seen some analysis of online gaming guild sizes and they tend to max out at around 150.
     
    A modern example is found in the company, Gore Associates, who created the water-proof outdoor fabric, Gore-tex. When the number of employees reaches to about 150 people, they split it off as its own functional division. In fact, they only buy buildings that can comfortably accommodate 150 people with 150 parking spaces. And with this business practice, they are a successful multi-million high-tech company and they've won many "best place to work" awards.

    So the magic number is 150. Of course YMMV since with humans nothing is set in stone and others may have a higher/lower capacity. Which kind of bring me to the topic of this post.  A couple of us were chatting the other night about communities and communes and such. I do not like the term commune or even community much. Oh the idea is just fine but personally I do not think it practical to form a commune as such and the term community is over used and to vague. I much prefer the term neighborhood but used in the more traditional sense. Like Mister Rogers. (Please not to many chuckles here)

    The more colloquial definition. It can mean street or road or a couple of blocks etc. Where I lived in Ohio, in the country was a neighborhood. On our road and the road that intersected it, we knew nearly everyone and they knew us. The kids played together and the parents knew each other and everyone knew what was going on. And people more or less helped each other out when needed. And when something was not quite right, people were concerned.  There was a Village of Burton Ohio - we lived in the township. It was not and still is not very big but had different neighborhoods. Where my grand parents lived was kind of a suburb.  Suburbs don't lend them selves to neighborhoods for some reason. We knew the kids there and played with them but the families not so much.

    Where my aunt and uncle on my fathers side lived in Cleveland was a neighborhood. It had a market a little over a block away, the kind with a meat counter and fresh produce. Further down, at the end of the street was a Woolworth 5 and Dime and a bit further was a drug store with a soda fountain. Neighborhoods were kind of self contained. You generally did not have to venture far to get what you needed.  Most people were from the same or similar backgrounds. Like most neighborhoods, the people there were blue collar workers of one type or another.

    I miss neighborhoods. They were generally a lot more friendly. I think we need to bring them back.

    Comments

    There are places with neighborhoods and there are places without  ---

    In those places, community and church are much more meaningful than neighborhood.  

    Community means more to me personally because my first was a group of mostly interrelated families that had immigrated to here at about the same time a couple of centuries ago.   There are pluses and minuses that come with that degree of community.  Sometimes I miss it; mostly not.   I would like to see something totally new evolve.  


    by EmmaZahn on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 3:58pm

    This I suppose is true. As to something new...well I believe that somethng new will come along, when we are ready for it.


    by cmaukonen on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 4:14pm

    My current "neighborhood" consists of 73 houses on lots that are between 3 and 5 acres. Walking is done for walking's sake; there is no market or meeting place. On the other hand, one might spot Pileated Woodpeckers, Blue Birds, Hawks of all varieties, owls, deer, opossums, raccoons, (and if you are really lucky) a skunk! The nights are also very, very dark, which is great for stargazing. I love the quietness, broken by squirrels jumping through leaves; and also the noisiness of the tree-frogs and Cicada of the summer. Despite all kinds of strange noises, and the fact that I live alone (and my dog is deaf as a post) I have never been afraid in my house. That said, I want a change. I want to be in a neighborhood where I can walk to a movie, a coffee house, a pleasant restaurant. My house is on the market, and I have a contract on a house that is within walking distance of those things I mentioned. Wish me luck!

    by CVille Dem on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 7:49pm

    On the other hand, one might spot Pileated Woodpeckers, Blue Birds, Hawks of all varieties, owls, deer, opossums, raccoons, (and if you are really lucky) a skunk!

    I suspect ones luck with the skunk would largerly depend on how one spots it.

     

    Good Luck CVille


    by cmaukonen on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 8:21pm

    So we're pre-wired to live and work with a fixed number of individuals at any one given time. I wonder if the mind is capable of multiple-tasking groups of 150? I suspect it does...neighborhood being one, work being another, sports participation and so on. And I suspect it's really tricky how the mind differentiates between groups when there isn't any overlap of members between them and when there is.

    Aside from the mental exercise, I completely agree. When I was in the US, the neighborhood wasn't anything like I remember in my youth. Here in Germany, I'm in a small farming town of less than a thousand, if you don't count dogs, cats, cows, sheep and horses. It has two small, one room banks at either end, two small pensions, a single restaurant, a hair stylist, a small but full service garage, a small (by US standards) lumberyard that harvests the trees from the nearby woods, a small grade school, a kindergarten, a church with an historic 900 year old chapel, a small food and beverage shop opened 3 to 4 days a week, and is along a bus service route that makes runs between two major cites east and west as well as one that makes a run to the Mosel and Rhein valleys. You can easily walk to any point in the burg to conduct your business or pleasure. And the burgs within a 2 to 5 mile radius have those extra services not available here. One has a pasty shop, a full service grocery store, a butcher shop and a gas station. Another has a medium sized bread and pastry bakery  and another has a full service beverage shop with water, soda, bier and schnapps. Life is good and simple and relaxing, and everyone knows you and where you live and go out of their way to be neighborly regardless of the language barrier.


    by Beetlejuice on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 9:04pm

    Sounds really nice Beetle. You are fortunate to live there.


    by cmaukonen on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 11:19pm

    One can imagine the move the US made to the middle-class in the late forty's and early fifty's required them to sacrifice their neighborhoods for the greater good.


    by Beetlejuice on Sat, 02/26/2011 - 4:25am

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