We must 'build a community of common interest'!

Here's a look at an article from the Post Gazette about building common interest, before building buildings.

What are your thoughts on the article below?


By Diana Nelson Jones / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


After seven-plus years on the city neighborhood beat, I've gotten a postgraduate education in community development. I'm starting to understand tax credits, federal-to-state-to-city funding formulas and why some people burn out and others thrive.
If neighborhoods are the best subject for a newspaper reporter to major in, Pittsburgh is the best school in the country.
Covering neighborhoods sometimes takes me to conferences, mainly to catch a lot of people on my contact list in the same room. I come away with story ideas and tidbits to follow up on.
The Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group's recent second annual summit, "Making Complete Communities," gave me a lot more than story ideas. The breakfast keynote by Michael Bennett, a senior fellow at the Egan Urban Center at DePaul University, fed me some wisdom.
Mr. Bennett, who researches and analyzes community development policies and strategies with a focus on low-income and minority residents, talked about how we identify community. It is people who share common space, neighbors; people who share an affinity such as bicycling, and people who share characteristics, which during the election season becomes a perceived voting bloc: the women's vote, the black vote.


Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/morning-file/city-walkabout-before-the-buildings-we-must-build-a-community-of-common-interest-637977/#ixzz1xEZ2JbnZ