What gives a community vitality? Or maybe it would be helpful to list what robs it of vitality! (For the purpose of this post I am thinking of Europe and the United States):

– the most dreadful thing that can happen to any community is the “gated community”. This involves self-segregation according to income and class. It is exclusive by definition, and robs the area of cohesion. Gated residents drive from the shops to the golf club without stopping to talk to the peasantry.

– the advent of huge out-of-town shopping malls and the destruction of small traders (bookshops are a good example) by faceless national retail businesses. In the old, long-gone days people would gossip at the library or in the bank. Now they talk to each other less and less.

– Although I am not an admirer of most organised religion, the drift away from church-going is a threat to community life. The social aspect of church-going are its advantage from my point of view, which is maybe why it will survive, in the US anyway.

– home entertainment. You don’t even have to go to the cinema any more.

– concentration of banking. Now all decisions are made at national or regional level, and bank managers have no discretion. In the old days the manager would know the local businessmen and would know who was credit-worthy and worthy of support. The bank juggernauts have ravaged the countryside and the small towns throughout most Western countries.

– the arts are crucial to a community: the school concert, the local art sale, the community choir, they all bring people together. But politicians always want to reduce taxes for their friends and contributors,and the first thing they will cut, given the opportunity, is any subvention for the arts. To too many of them the arts are airy-fairy and won’t “get you a job?”. One despairs.