rsely settled and may have a
radius of forty or fifty miles and yet be true communities, while on the
Atlantic seaboard a definite community with as many people may have a
radius of not over a mile or two.

Nor is the community a mere aggregation or association of the people of
a given area. It is rather a corporate state of mind of those living in
a local area, giving rise to their collective behavior. There cannot be
a true community unless the people think and act together.

The term "neighborhood" is very frequently used as synonymous with
"community," and should be definitely distinguished. In the sense in
which these terms are now coming to be technically employed, the
neighborhood consists of but a group of houses fairly near each other.
Frequently a neighborhood grew up around some one center, as a school,
store, church, mill, or blacksmith shop, which in the course of time may
have been abandoned, but the homes remained clustered together. Or the
neighborhood may be merely six to a dozen homes near together on the
same road or near a corner. The school district of the one-room country
school is commonly a neighborhood, but as there are no other interests
which bind the people together it cannot be considered a community.
Likewise people associate in churches, granges, etc., but church
parishes overlap, and the constituency of any one of these associations
is not necessarily a community. Only when several of the chief human
interests find satisfaction in the organizations and institutions which
serve a fairly definite common local area tributary to them, do we have
a true community. In many cases the neighborhood, particularly the
school district, forms a desirable unit for certain purposes of social
organization, and, indeed, in many cases it may be necessary to develop
the neighborhood as a social unit before its people will actively
associate themselves in community activities, but the neighborhood
cannot function in the same way as the larger community which brings
people together in several of their chief interests. The community can
support institutions impossible in the neighborhood, such as a grange,
lodge, library, various stores, etc. The community is more or less
self-sufficing. A community may include a variable number of
neighborhoods. The community is the smallest geographical unit of
organized association of the chief human activities.

Bringing together these various considerations concerning t