What Is Community?
Several theories, many distractions, and one touching moment that changed my definition.
Real community will surprise you.
Real community is observation. It’s noting the quiet flow of your surroundings, finding a home in its waves. I live in an apartment on the Lower East Side neighborhood of downtown Milwaukee, an extremely walkable zesty stew of a neighborhood glittered with parks and bars and local coffee and thrift stores and night life and breweries and the closest proximity to an impressive body of water — Lake Michigan — than I’ll ever again likely afford. It takes 10 minutes to get to that lakeshore. Again, all walkable, baby. Yay for me.
This is not where I get on a high horse about urban reengineering for walkability. Or push for more accessible third spaces, or locally owned small businesses, or constraints on private equity within the housing market. Or a major reshuffling across the entire city’s infrastructure investment piggybank.
“Community” is not really about any of these largely physical markers. Buildings and infrastructure are what often splatter across our brain canvas when we first think of a vibrant neighborhood. All these physical components are layered and important and nuanced. But they are not under this moment’s microscope.
*Hot take!* Community is also not…
…shoveling your neighbor’s sidewalk because you’re up early and doing it anyway. Or the barista at the nearest coffee shop who knows you by name. Or smiling at the passerbyer walking their dog — or rather smiling at the dog, with the owner getting the residuals.
These things feel good and are good — they are a spiritual lifeforce — but they’re transactional. You know what to expect during these interactions. You know how each launches, the lines to its scripts, and can follow along comfortably to each exchange’s orderly end. Everyone has played their part.
Transactions are by definition temporary, closed-looped. Real community keeps you open. Its hands reach out to squeeze your own as you pass by. It has its routine, and lets you have yours, knowing it all takes place on the same grand stage, knowing everyone moves in separate but concentric choreography.
Real community also comes with reality checks.
A list of non-romantic things about my neighborhood community that are important to the *plot*
In no particular order:
My next door neighbors redoing their roof. It is summer. I have no apartment-wide AC, so my windows are ever-splayed open. I hear everything.
Another neighbor frequently playing music way too loud. Objectively, carelessly, are-you-okay loud, day and night, often spliced by near-daily shout-match phone calls that have lasted at times almost two hours. (Not exaggerating, that may even be conservative.)
Strangers parking overnight in my parking space.
Cars vandalized in aforementioned parking lot.
Packages tampered with, stolen. Last year, I had to order a new medical boot for my left foot. I figured like so many others, the thing had been swiped when it never materialized even after receiving its delivery notice.
Unhoused persons occasionally napping in the apartment’s unlocked entryway.
There’s not much point centering yourself in these happenings much past your initial reactions. This is the balancing act, the tacit exchange. Some of it is frustrating and some of it’s inconvenient and some of it — like folks with nowhere else to go curled up for warmth and rest in a strange entryway — slaps you in the face with its wrongness. All of it is a tradeoff of existing in proximity with others.
That same list, flipping the script:
It’s just one man working on that roof. My living room overlooks his daily toil. I keep an eye on him because what if something happens? What if he hammer whacks his own hand? What if he falls?
I’m a nosy bitch, and I have fun eavesdropping. Also some of the music he plays is kinda good.
How humbling it is to be reminded how quickly senses of “ownership” over something as silly as a parking space turns one into a Karen. Also, I ended up learning this was my neighbor, and they’d likely parked there by mistake.
People are dumb but the world spins on. It must.
Fast forward a few days and I step out into my apartment hallway and there it is, box opened, packaging strewn, medical boot half-nestled but returned.
I’ve got it pretty nice. I don’t need to guilt-berate myself over this, but I also don’t need to turn alarmist or heave my head in the sand. I will try not to take all I have for granted. I will fail, always. I’ll keep trying anyway.
Real community will surprise you
I walk to and from my gym, exactly half a mile from my place, a routine worn out three to four times a week.
Just down the street and perfectly gym enroute sits another apartment building, all cream-colored brick and bland slider windows. For several reasons my assumption is this building is some kind of age curated or independent-living facility, because I only see nice older folks sitting on its steps. Sometimes someone is smoking, sometimes someone is on their phone. Mostly the nice older folks sit out there on the stoop in silence, taking in the ripples of that day.
It is a warm April afternoon. I’m walking home from the gym. Once again I pass by this cream-and-bland-slider building, once again walking back from the gym. My earbuds are in. They always are.
A woman stands on the stoop. She has just walked up the front stairs. Her body slouches slightly, one hand clutching a cane, the other the building’s front door. The afternoon sun beams off the cement. There isn’t a cloud in sight. Suddenly, she turns to address me.
“I haven’t seen you in a while!” She calls from the door.
Through my music I hear her. Through my skin the words sink.
“Are you enjoying the weather?” I wave around an arm, beckoning to the blue sky, the budding flowers, the sun, her.
“You know it.”
I beam at her. A real smile, because she deserves it. Because she should know I am touched. All these walks, all this time spent up and down this street, passing these same buildings, smiling at these strangers. I don’t even recognize this woman. I really don’t. But she recognized me.
Maybe this old woman says this to everyone who passes her on the street. Who knows. Maybe she just wants to exchange voices, remember the call of hers. I don’t care. I haven’t seen you in a while. This is community.