Community Leadership Peter Hall's "Symbolism, Ritual, and the Deep Structure of Communities" provides an in-depth analysis of the forming of communities in the United States. The author considers the beginnings of communities from the outset of the country's inception, and discusses the fact how early on communities were centered around religious and cultural values -- especially with the pilgrims and their puritan lifestyles. What is key about this early version of communities in the country is that they were based around economic, religious, and political factors; in the south, for instance, there was less structured community in the form of churches and schools than there were in the North due to the autonomy afforded by plantation lifestyles.

The notion of community was threatened country-wide with the newfound freedom of the victory in the Revolutionary War, in which the south represented a liberal vision whereas most federalists were gathered in the north. The author provides an extended case study in New Haven (largely based around the restructuring of Yale) in which federalists took systematic action to enforce community by designing towns and residences in such a way that people could still share collective values. Yale would play the biggest role in doing so, as it produced...

47), so communities became more egalitarian and less based on social standing. Eventually, the notion of communities spread to neighborhoods in cities, which became largely corrupt at the outset of the 20th century due to big business, immigration and crime. However, a dedicated effort to cleaning up cities and restructuring the school system helped to reinforce civic and communal values.
Ronald J. Hustedde's "Seven theories for seven community developers" explores the realm of community building theory. As the title of this work implies, there are seven eminent theories that are readily applicable to the process of building community. These theories are inherently related to a specific set of concerns. Although these concerns are not mutually exclusive, they do tend to dominate the viewpoint of the theorist and of the theory that they each represent.

Prior to outlining the particulars of the concerns and of the theories that this chapter is based upon, the author provides a critical…