Community Matters

29/03/2025

Pastel-colored curtains drift lazily in the afternoon breeze, occasionally parting to reveal slipper-clad feet as a stronger gust pushes the fabric aside. On the island of Burano in the Venetian lagoon, time seems to stand still, with residents retreating to their living rooms to escape the scorching midday sun.

These gently flowing curtains evoke a Venice of the past — a city once defined by continuous interactions with neighbors, where curtains swayed on every block and doors remained open. Today, however, Venice is steadily losing its inhabitants as more apartments are converted into short-term rentals.

This fate is not unique to Venice; it is shared by cities worldwide. Neighborhood interactions have grown fragile, and homeownership is increasingly out of reach for many. Corporate-owned rentals often reduce tenant relations to impersonal email exchanges, handling pressing matters with distant detachment. Neighbors have become transient strangers, their lives and connections scattered across cities, the internet, and even the globe. As a result, communities in many parts of the world are quietly being dismantled.

Since the late 14th century, community has referred to “a group of people residing in the same locality” and “the common people” as opposed to rulers or clergy. The word comes from Old French comunité (Modern French communauté), derived from Latin communitatem, meaning “society, fellowship, shared by all.” The related term commune appeared in the 12th century from Medieval Latin communia, meaning “a large gathering sharing a common life.”

Community has taken on various meanings in history. By the 16th century, it described religious societies, such as monastic orders. The 18th-century rise of natural sciences introduced its ecological sense—a group of organisms sharing a habitat (1746–). By 1813, it signified communal living based on ideological or political principles, linking it to the commune, historically tied to collectivist movements like the Paris Commune (1871) and medieval Italian city-states during the età comunale. Between 1400 and 1795, it was also used to refer to the common people as opposed to the privileged classes.

The Latin word communitatem originally meant “fellowship” but later in Medieval Latin referred to “a society or division of people.” English adopted similar meanings, with community also signifying “common possession or enjoyment” (c. 1400) and “a society of shared interests or occupations.” Old English had gemænscipe for “community, fellowship, union,” related to mæne (“common, public”). Middle English later introduced commonty (14th c.), meaning “the common people” and, later, “land held in common” (c. 1600).

In the digital age, community has taken on a virtual meaning, referring to online spaces for discussion and information sharing (1988–).

But why do we speak about communities, and what do we mean by the term?

In sociology, the concept of community is foundational, encompassing multiple dimensions and representing diverse forms of human association, interaction, and shared identity. Communities may be anchored in a specific place, where members work together to organize social life, or they may transcend geographic boundaries, united by a shared sense of belonging, often virtually. The cohesion and resilience of a community are influenced by the strength and quality of interactions among its members—whether through face-to-face encounters or digital communications—particularly within dense social networks.

The term “community” is multifaceted even today: it is used reductively to refer to specific groups, such as black and brown communities. In contrast, majority populations or white people are typically viewed as part of society rather than a distinct community.

Companies and institutions often use “community” to evoke feelings of appreciation and togetherness, yet this often neglects the democratic decision-making and shared goals that define communities whose members’ interactions aren’t transactional or commodified.

Finally, despite its broad application, the term “community” is conflated with “neighborhood.” However, simply living in the same geographic area does not automatically create a sense of community—in reality, no single group can fully represent an entire neighborhood. As socioeconomic factors dictate the possibility to live in a given neighborhood, belonging to a perceived community formed by geographical boundaries is less voluntary and constrained for some.

When architects speak of communities it is important to demand specificity: who do you mean when you are speaking of a community? Who is part of this community? Whose voice is represented in local groups and organizations? Local organizing efforts are imperfect attempts to reflect the voice of a community. However, as imperfect as they are, they are important frameworks for locals to find power in the collective. Being part of a community requires constant accountability and determined efforts to build and represent a consensus of a neighborhood rather than a collection of individuals.

We see communities playing a vital role in challenging the neoliberal perception of society as merely a collection of individuals driven by personal gain, which reduces people to passive consumers. As a collective force, communities hold more power than individuals, while also playing a crucial role in weaving resilient social networks.

Peggy Deamer (2020) critiques how neoliberal policies have severed social identities from their historical, material, and political roots, transforming identity into a market-driven competition. Deamer argues that when political struggles are reduced to individual claims, the emergence of lasting collective interests and alternative hegemonic projects becomes impossible.

Collectivity fosters what Britany Utting, in Architectures of Care (2023), describes as a “form of co-existence” that is aligned with the belief that the individual’s well-being correlates with the well-being of the entire community. In the face of future ecological challenges, such as energy management and resource depletion, Markus Miessen (2024) emphasizes the importance of the local—and the assemblies of people that are informally or semi-formally organized, working as catalysts for an imminent socio-ecological transition.

In community work it is important not to limit oneself to the small sphere of a locality, but to see communities and neighborhoods as part of larger societal processes.

Jesko Fezer (Miessen 2024) warns against a political design perspective focused solely on the immediate needs of supposed communities, as it often overlooks deeper contexts and power structures. Fezer asserts that concepts like community, neighborhood, and locality can only become meaningful and politically powerful in design if they avoid essentialist or neoliberal framings.

”Local neighborhoods may be useful as strategic sites for the exploration of social problems, for the piloting of new commissions, and for the effective binding of design processes to alternative protagonists and issues,” Fezer writes. However, he continues, ”they do not constitute a plausible framework that promises social relevance per se.”

Dean Spade in his 2020 book highlights the importance of mutual aid frameworks to not only provide for the needs of local people, but to identify why people lack what they need to begin with. The local action and support systems must exist within an understanding of the societal context that makes mutual aid necessary, and be paired with demands for political change.

Participation and participatory planning have become buzz-words with little accountability being enforced for their adoption. Is community work only data collection to support the work of planners? Or is it building capacities for communities to enact change in their environment and demand for better conditions be it in planning or social policy.

When cities implement participatory practices by collecting vast amounts of data from residents via the internet, they miss a crucial aspect of communal living: face-to-face negotiation. Allowing for individuals to meet in a physical space, discuss, and negotiate, or just be, building capacities for taking part in democratic processes and emphatizing with view points of their neighbors.

We believe that community, as imperfect and misused as it is, is a helpful framework for a group of people to organize, negotiate and build consensus. Architects and planners should approach localities through existing communities and organizations rather than dividing people into individuals or data points. Understanding local people within relations to each other offers a way to engage communities as equal partners. Community work is an attempt to acknowledge and dismantle asymmetries of power between planners and the locals. At its best it builds capabilities in the community to enact change without community workers and architects.

Deamer, P. (2020). Architecture and Labor. Routledge.

Miessen, M. (2024). Agonistic Assemblies. On the Spatial Politics of Horizontality. Sternberg Press.

Spade, D. (2020) Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). Verso

Uttin, B. (2023). Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common. Taylor & Francis.