iv Questioning community

The basis for ‘community’ has commonly been considered residential spatial proximity, however, the concept has also been criticised for its “fuzziness” (Völker, Flap, Lindenberg, 2007:100). Its spatial extent has rarely been explicitly stated in past definitions, leading some to identify different spatial scales of ‘community’, ranging from “the whole town or city” to “the territory within which the inhabitants are considered neighbours” (Prezza, Amici, Roberti, Tedeschi, 2001:30-31). Nevertheless, the latter of these appears most common with

community conceptualised as a “local entity” (Völker et al., 2007:99) and connections drawn to traditional notions of ‘neighbourhood’, although the relationship between these two concepts has remained largely unspecified (Forrest, 2008). However, the changes in urban lifestyles discussed in chapter 1, coupled with changes in technology, have led to a number of alternate conceptions of ‘community’, most notably ‘virtual community’.

Virtual community, derived from ‘online’ or ‘virtual’ interaction, does not retain the need for spatial propinquity as they are founded on shared interests rather than shared space (Warde, Tampubolon and Savage, 2005). There has been some debate as to whether these virtual entities can truly be considered communities when individuals “never see, smell or hear each other” (Wellman, 2001:2032) and, authors such as Doheny-Farina (1996:37, quoted in Crang, 2000:306) have emphasised that “you can’t subscribe to a community as you can a discussion group on the internet”. However, Crow and Allan (1994:3) have stressed that “basically

31 ‘community’ refers to people having something in common” and, if this is the case, then it seems entirely valid to consider virtual interactions capable of generating ‘community’. Evidently, there are, however, many different forms of virtual interaction in which individuals have more or less in common and this, by extension, can be considered to generate weaker or stronger versions of community. It should be noted, for example, that not all virtual

communities are without a geographical root and while some online communities are founded solely on shared interests, this is not the case for all of them (DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman, and Robinson, 2001:317).

Debate has developed around the scope for new forms of community to replace local social interaction and, despite the emphasis placed in sociological theory on the importance of “weak ties”; that is, more casual interactions with acquaintances in the neighbourhood (Granovetter, 1973), authors such as Forrest and Kearns (2001:2126) have suggested that “a new virtuality in social networks and a greater fluidity and superficiality of social contact are further eroding the residual bonds of spatial proximity and kinship”. Alternative forms of communication do not, however, automatically lead to the substitution of earlier forms and evidence on this point appears to be mixed. Katz, Rice and Aspden’s(2001) study, examining the social impacts of the Internet in the US between 1995 and 2000, for example, found evidence of some level of replacement. this work suggested that Internet users were more likely to meet regularly with friends, were more likely to be away from home as part of their social life and knew fewer neighbours (Katz et al., 2001). Others have, however, found

evidence to the contrary and authors such as Graham (1998; 2002) and DiMaggio et al. (2001) have stressed that online communication, and the communities derived from it, can in fact complement traditional communities and help to sustain neighbourhood networks. This complementarity has, nevertheless, been noted to vary by social group, with women more likely than men to “employ the medium as a complement to other channels of social interaction (DiMaggio et al, 2001:317).

In spite of this, discussions abound about a decline in community in western societies and, while, authors such as Crow and Allan (1994:3) have noted that these discussions have “a very long history”, the rise of alternative forms of community has reignited this debate. It is, however, difficult to speak of a decline in community unless it is conceptualised as a local entity (as with traditional residential community) and, where the alternative forms of

32 the scale of ‘community’ rather than its loss. Nevertheless, even a change in the scale of community may have had a marked impact on the importance and use of local facilities. Even in the mid-1980s, authors suggested that the passive roles of green spaces were more

important than their social functions (Bradley and Millward, 1986) and, given the social trends discussed above, this study’s focus on the value of these spaces for local people appears very timely.

If public green space no longer retains an important interactional role for residents then this raises questions regarding the ability of individuals to substitute their use with that of other green spaces, most notably private gardens. Barbosa, Tratalos, Armsworth, Davies, Fuller, Johnson and Gaston (2007) suggest that social substitution can only ever be partial as private and public green spaces serve distinct social roles in that interactions in gardens are associated with private social networks. Evidently, however, if interactions with neighbours are becoming less dominant, then this substitution may become more complete. Ward Thompson (2002:66) has suggested that public parks serve as an arena for “the meeting of strangers”, however, recent research has thrown this into doubt, noting that people use these spaces only to meet those that they already know (Peters et al., 2010). Where this is the case, then the scope for substitution of social activity in public green space with that in private gardens is relatively high. This is not to say that a private garden can fully substitute all roles of a public park. As noted above, Coolen and Meesters (2012) have, for instance, emphasised a divergence in their affordances and meanings. Furthermore, even where the same benefit derives from a public and private setting, there can be subtle variations in its nature. Hammitt (2002), for example, stated that the form of privacy gained from the use of a public forest is fundamentally different to that obtained from spending time in one’s own garden. This substitution nevertheless has the potential to represent a limit to the direct-use value of urban parks.