The Community Development Notebook, a view toward next steps

Ok, here is a moment of free time that coincides with my thinking about this project. Yey! Andy, my good fellow, I hope you are doing well.

Right; let's get on with it.

I'd say we have a good enough list of categories and examples to begin moving them around and fitting them together into some sort of order. I'm thinking a sort of typology; we'll just have to figure out the variables and a way of representing the emerging typological picture. But that's getting ahead of ourselves. Let's look back first, shall we?

The general categories are as follows:

• New Monasticism .
• Denominational Structure (i.e. the Salvation Army)
• Christian-Motivated: Undefined.
• New Urbanism .
• Online/Technology-Facilitated Communities.
• "Planned Communities".
• Theories of Community Development.
• Communal Asset Ownership/Management.
• Homeowners Associations

These were named in a rather arbitrary manner, so some may be helpful, some may be more distracting than helpful. In fact, it is yet to be determined whether the idea of putting these ad hoc categories to use in the collecting process was helpful or not. We'll see.

That is, we'll see once we start to articulate what we're trying to accomplish with this list. Once we establish a clear goal, this sort of evaluation should become possible. So, with this in mind, here's my "goal proposal" for this research project from here on out:

We are seeking to develop a broad network of typologies which describes the patterns of currently practiced of home+property ownership in the United States. Stated as a question, What are the kinds of ways Americans today are practicing home + land ownership?

The noun "ways" is quite ambiguous, yes. Can you think of anything more appropriate? I'm trying to get at the generality which includes everything from the stated motives (either in available interviews or legal contracts) for home+property ownership, to use of the homes and properties within the different arraignments, to the different legal arraignments we come across. So, for the time being, I've left it "ways" because it seems to include the whole package around this very human practice.

If this goal is acceptable, I propose we both do a bit of heavy lifting to uncover the different variables at work in American home and property ownership. I've listed a few ideas already (motive, use (though "use" is a meaningless term, needs to be broken down), and legal arraingment), but let's try to get as exhaustive as possible. Then, once we get the variables, we can start thinking of how to represent the typological map the matrix of variables creates. Then we can start plugging in our live data to this map and describing what we're seeing; what we like, what we don't, what we're inspired by and why, what we're wanting ourselves (where we'd like to fit in these contours and why). Throughout this process, we should keep looking for more examples out there in databases of cyberspace.

Why do this? Because there is definitely a dominant (default) pattern at work in and through our social class which will, if unchecked, simply become our own pattern of lifestyle if we leave ourselves without a toolbox for contrary choosing. This, my friend--this typological map I'm suggesting we work on--this is our toolbox of contrary choices!

Seem good? If not, other ideas for proceeding? Shall we proceed at all? I think so, I think it's worth doing. How about you?