Ch. 5, pp. 220–224

To Have a Community is a Resident Right

A community is not the passive state of people combining by living next to one another. Problems of whether the relationship between two people is good or bad can be surveyed and have no relationship to whether a space can be shared and this is related to the will of the participating [housing] bodies and including whether their progress is to be shared. In other words, it is the will to actualize. Actualization has the meaning of “clearly establishing onself” in a space that is shared with others. (Arendt, The Human Condition, p.334) It is an expression is that one is there and in that space. That a community shares a space with others and that people actualize themselves in that space are two things that are deeply related. Common sense is a perception that is shared with others. This is not something passive that is induced by the space but that a space is intended to be shared as a place for actualization of the self. Ardent also writes that “common sense” has an extremely high position in the hierarchy of political attributes. (ibid, p.334) In other words, a community is a place where one can exercise one’s will in the same space as others. It is the power [i.e, the exercise of the right] to decide for oneself what needs to be decided. One group of twentieth century architects reduced the community to a simple disposition of residences on a site and framed privacy as the struggle the residents had to passively accept. (ibid., p334)

A community is a space where residents exist along with the power. Such a space is what Thomas Jefferson (1743-1824) called a ward. “Jefferson called for the counties to be divided into wards.” (Arendt, On Revolution, p. 398) His model for the ward was the New England township. The township was of a size midway between the French districts the canton and the commune. In general, the population would be about 2,000–3,000 (Tocqueville, American Democracy, Volume IA, p.99) and a scale that is much smaller than the community units envisaged in contemporary urban planning. For example, Clarence Perry argued in his theory of adjacent [neighbourhood] units that school districts having such units be around 10,000 persons. (In passing, the number of persons in a community unit (phalanstére) devised by Charles Fourier were about 1,800.)

“The New England town has the twin attractiveness of independence and power.” (Ibid. p.10) It is the smallest administrative and living unit. The residents of New England have an attachment to their towns because of this strength and independence. The beneficiaries of this attachment are the businesses in which the residents manage. “Each political activity is tackled with a combination of ambition and leadership in order to govern the local society as much as they can” (ibid., p111) “and no doubt there are numerous public offices and roles” (ibid., p.109) “the town appoints the various public offices, and the residents determine the tax, collects the tax and apportions the receipts. In the New England town, legal principles are not brought in from elsewhere. As in Ancient Athens, all matters relating to gain or loss to everyone are handled by a general meeting of citizens in a public place.” (ibid., p.66) “In New England in 1650, there was already the definitive formation of a town [as an autonomous self-ruling body. The New England town did not have government by representation. The towns had lively internal political activity supporting political activity that was totally democratic activity.” (Ibid., p.66) “The town had commercial activity, prosecutors became defendants, and budgets increased and decreased but the bodies in charge of administration functioned without recourse to external bodies. (ibid., p.105) The town itself supported commerce for the sake of its residents and its interested party. Tocqueville wrote that there was not one person that recognized the authority of the state government in matters of related to the well being of the local region. “The only time it is recognized is when the losses and gains that I call social are shared with other towns. The units of these rights are small but powerful.” (ibid. p.66) “What does it mean when independence and rights [power] are merged?” Tocqueville, looking at the America of the time, saw a politics of a fundamentally different nature to the party and representative system in France at the time.

This short section has much food for thought about how much apparatus of government is actually necessary, and at what scale that apparatus of government should be. From just this snippet, Yamamoto seems to be saying that local government (for the people, by the people) is all that is needed and, from what we have read so far, that this leads to places that people feel connected to. It’s not just a question of the type of buildings in which they live. If we remember back to the beginning of this book, Yamamoto (via. Arendt) was saying that the architecture of Ancient Greece was designed to support the form of its government. Later, in the Industrial Revolution, we can say that the architecture of the new worker towns of the Industrial Revolution was designed to support the form of their government. It’s just that the type of government had changed. Mostly with reference to the provision of public housing in Tokyo, Yamamoto offers sufficient evidence to be able to say that the architecture that we are now saddled remains designed to support the form of government. In the case of Japan, that form of government is a bureaucracy concerned only with people breeding to sustain the economy. It’s not working. Japan’s birthrate is at an all-tie low. Refer to the header image where “in the red” means less than that needed to replace. This seems to represent a general pessimism regarding the future. Opting out, “alternative” lifestyles, off-grid, and other forms of autonomy would be, in Yamamoto’s view, defeatist rather than revolutionary. Yamamoto is an optimist with his focus on community, the nature of that community and, by extension, its implications for the architecture necessary to sustain that community.

When he wrote that “After the Revolution, France bought into the negative association of democracy with mob rule”, Tocqueville understood how much French readers were hindered by words such as democracy. “Each and every word of this chapter is intended to inflict damage on the various parties that are attempting to divide this country. I cannot say this strongly enough.” (American Democracy, Vol. I-A, p.51) Tocqueville was laying down a challenge to the party system. Tocqueville was saying that the system of government in a New England township was something very different from a political system having a party system in which representatives are sent to an assembly.

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2025/04/20 Ch.5, pp.221-224
2025/04/13 Ch. 5, pp.216-220
2025/03/30 Ch. 5, pp.210-215
2025/03/08 Ch. 5, pp. 208-210
2025/01/12 Ch. 5, pp. 201-207
2025/01/05 Ch. 5, pp. 195-200
2024/12/22 Ch. 5, pp. 187-195
2024/12/08 Ch. 4, pp. 179-186
2024/11/03 Ch. 4, pp. 175-179
2024/11/03 Ch. 4, pp. 169-175
2024/10/20 Ch. 4, pp.163-168
2024/10/06 Ch. 4, pp.159-163
2024/09/29 Ch. 4, pp.156-159
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.152-155
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.146
2024/08/25 Ch. 3, pp.135-1
2024/08/18 Ch. 3, pp.128-135
2024/08/11 Ch. 3, pp.120-128
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.115-120
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.108-114
2024/07/14 Ch. 3, pp.101-107
2024/06/30 Ch. 2, pp.92-100
2024/06/23 Ch. 2, pp.87-92
2024/06/16 Ch. 2, pp.78-87
2024/06/02 Ch. 2, pp.69-78
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.66-70
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.58-66
2024/05/05 Ch. 1, pp.46-55
2024/04/28 Ch. 1, pp.35-46
2024/04/21 Ch. 1, pp.23-35
2024/04/07 Ch. 1, pp.18-23
2024/03/31 Ch. 1, pp.14-18
2024/03/24 The Space of Power vs. The Power of Space: Preface pp. 7-11

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Revisited this week:

Let’s Dance!
Revisionist History
Aesthetic Efficiency