The concept of community, which originated in the traditional village communities of agricultural societies, has evolved through urbanization and industrialization into various forms of new community movements, which tend to seek social homogeneity and common purpose.
Agricultural societies were predicated on a socio-economic structure that was well-suited to naturally embody and reproduce the characteristics of village communities: locality, social interaction, and a sense of communal cohesion. Within this structure, people could rely on each other to survive and prosper. While community in the traditional sense could only be applied to groups that possessed all three of these elements, modern people’s desire and aspiration for communal life has pushed the boundaries of the original concept and led to new forms of communal movements that pursue common goals and ideologies. These changes have become more pronounced with the progress of industrialization and urbanization. With the rapid decline of traditional village communities, people began to seek new forms of community, focusing on laying the foundation for people from different social, cultural, and economic backgrounds to come together and cooperate and coexist in new ways.
An urban community is an intentional community, rather than a naturally occurring community, in which the facilities, resources, and institutions needed for living, working, and playing in a city are centered around the place where people live. Among these “intentional communities,” a commune is one in which members are geographically close together, interacting on a daily basis within certain boundaries, and are closely integrated emotionally. The commune is characterized by a communist system that prohibits private ownership of production and property, and communally distributes and manages everything, and its members voluntarily live together under an ideological banner from the beginning. In a commune, all economic activities, human relations, and cultural activities are solved jointly, and a self-sufficient system of living, such as housing and working conditions, is a prerequisite.
However, in cities, it is difficult to create a self-sufficient system of communal life such as a commune on their own. Therefore, they attempt to form a socially and culturally homogenized force with a strong communal element by utilizing the existing physical conditions, where opportunities for mutual contact are relatively high due to spatial proximity and it is relatively easy to discover common interests. For example, within urban residential complexes, public spaces or community centers where residents can meet frequently can be used to host a variety of programs that promote shared interests and interaction. These efforts play an important role in strengthening the bonds between residents and increasing community cohesion. These programs also give residents the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding and respect for each other’s lives, which ultimately contributes to improving the quality of the community.
There is also a tendency to form “cooperatives,” which are purpose-oriented groups of people with a single purpose or ideology based on a common interest in one or two of the most important areas of life. However, the nature of real-world urban communities is not easy to categorize, as they manifest in various combinations of communal elements. For example, a residential community, such as an apartment building, is characterized by the collectivization of residential facilities from the time of its construction, so it has a high degree of locality, or spatial proximity, but not a high degree of homogeneity in the members’ sense of purpose or values.
Cooperatives can be said to have a distinct value orientation to a lesser extent than ideologically united organizations, in that they gather people with a common purpose and seek to spread and deepen their unique ideology in the process of realizing that purpose. However, there is some flexibility in the sense that the locality may or may not be close to where the participants live. Communes are both local and ideological because they share most of their lives closely, whereas ideological associations do not emphasize spatial proximity.
As such, communal movements tend to promote social and cultural homogenization among members with heterogeneous values and attitudes toward life, while participants’ interests and thinking are not limited to individual interests or group selfishness, but tend to consider the good of the neighborhood, community, and civil society as a whole. If community movements are able to develop such individual consciousness and change their thinking, community movements can be said to promise changes in society as a whole, albeit very slowly. In particular, if they are successful, they will contribute to the formation of social capital and the building of trust, thereby increasing the overall level of well-being in society and laying the groundwork for further sustainable development. This, in turn, will play an important role in rediscovering the value of community and establishing a new culture of community in modern society. Community movements can also play an important role in overcoming economic inequality and social marginalization. In doing so, they can help create a more inclusive and just society.
