Hmm. When I said community, I was thinking less of local networks of friendships and connections and more the undifferentiated mass of people who live near enough to me to make an everyday difference in my life. I'd probably use the word community to mean both types of thing, which is maybe confusing. Or maybe they're not two different things, but degrees of the same thing? Hmm again.

I agree that it's possible to have some control over whether you have a community of friends and friendly acquaintances local to you. There can be barriers, definitely, as others have articulated, but it's not where I feel powerless. Where I feel powerless is all the people who affect my daily life simply by virtue of living near me. People who I have a connection with not by desire or compatibility but by circumstance. We're connected by the place and its vagaries (road construction, water main breaks, town politics, weather events, etc.), but beyond that are there any shared values? How would we even find out? What can we do about values which are incompatible, given that terminating the relationship (as you would with a person you had a choice about dealing with) is not possible?

I'm having a hard time getting at what I'm trying to get at, so will stop now and go to bed instead.