When members are in close physical proximity and work together for the community, they build a stronger community. As people run into one another, as they have to work with one another for local projects, social capital – as embodied in mutual understanding, empathy, and reservoirs of goodwill – accumulates. Social capital can be useful in building community institutions, overcoming ethnic divisions, as well as in filling in the holes left by more formal structures such as market contracts or social safety nets. Friendship will be what holds the communities of the future together when the
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Local commu ities in physical proximity
