Otis, My Man!

The Journal has a piece today, The Death of Diversity, that references a recent study by Harvard Professor Robert Putnam that calls into question the actual value of diverse communities. Putnam first gained notice for this topic with his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

The study, Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century, finds that:

Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.

What of LA, New York, the Bay area, and all those cities striving to creative diverse communities attractive to what Richard Florida calls the the "Creative Class"? Florida has gained acclaim in the economic development realm (my general career field) for the notion (and book) that knowledge workers are attracted to diverse, open minded communities and that will drive economic progress.

So Putnam runs counter to the efficacy of that strategy. While there may be some truth to Florida's thesis, how much of it is like the road trip in Animal House in which the Deltas (and their dates for the night) come across Otis Day & the Knights. Sure, you can pop into another community, but do they want you there? And isn't the difference with LA & NY that each ethnicity has their own little enclave? When everything is mixed together, are people more likely to retreat?

We're not all that involved in our neighborhood--we say occasional hellos to the residents of the homes immediately adjacent to ours, but I've never spoken to anyone else on the cul de sac. And that wasn't the case when I was growing up--I (and my parents) knew a fair amount of people on our block. But part of that might have been demographics--my brother & I were young and other families were near by. Not having kids yet makes me wonder if that's the key feature that draws neighborhoods together.