Discovering a Community in the Projects :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

Discovering a Community in the Projects As I was driving through my hometown of Any Town, USA, I began thinking of the community and how it compares to other communities. Then an area of the town caught my eye. It is an area shunned by the citizens who do not live there. It is referred to as the "projects" or low income housing. This area has a bad reputation in the community. The children who live there are thought of as trouble makers, the adults, lazy. However, I noticed something different, something that the "outsiders" seem to neglect. It was neighbors that act like neighbors. The children were playing together and the parents were sharing events with each other. This conversing and playing is something I do not see much of in the other parts of Any Town. In my opinion, this detached housing development was a closer community then all of Any Town. There is closeness between the people who live in those buildings that I have not seen in my own neighborhood. That bond between neighbors is what everyone says we have lost due to computers and other technology. As a result, low-income housing neighborhoods may benefit from not being able to afford things like computers. They benefit because the people of the neighborhood need each other for help, even with things as simple as homework. The richer the parents, the less interested they were in time at home. The poorer they were, the more interested (Snell 28). So these neighborhoods are built around people with low income, yet they prosper because of that. I believe that our society is dying due to computers and other things we now rely on. Things so materialistic as beepers, cell phones, and voice mail have become part of our survival. We do not even have to drop in at home to say hello to our family anymore, we just send a quick e-mail. People who do not rely on these technical things rely on each other for entertainment as the children do by playing together outside, to inform each other of current events, or even to chat face-to-face rather than computer screen-to-computer screen. It is thought that it takes a community to raise a child, and a small community can accomplish that more so than a large one (Nelle 9). The small community within a larger one is able to prosper on its own because it has to, in a sense. Discovering a Community in the Projects :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers Discovering a Community in the Projects As I was driving through my hometown of Any Town, USA, I began thinking of the community and how it compares to other communities. Then an area of the town caught my eye. It is an area shunned by the citizens who do not live there. It is referred to as the "projects" or low income housing. This area has a bad reputation in the community. The children who live there are thought of as trouble makers, the adults, lazy. However, I noticed something different, something that the "outsiders" seem to neglect. It was neighbors that act like neighbors. The children were playing together and the parents were sharing events with each other. This conversing and playing is something I do not see much of in the other parts of Any Town. In my opinion, this detached housing development was a closer community then all of Any Town. There is closeness between the people who live in those buildings that I have not seen in my own neighborhood. That bond between neighbors is what everyone says we have lost due to computers and other technology. As a result, low-income housing neighborhoods may benefit from not being able to afford things like computers. They benefit because the people of the neighborhood need each other for help, even with things as simple as homework. The richer the parents, the less interested they were in time at home. The poorer they were, the more interested (Snell 28). So these neighborhoods are built around people with low income, yet they prosper because of that. I believe that our society is dying due to computers and other things we now rely on. Things so materialistic as beepers, cell phones, and voice mail have become part of our survival. We do not even have to drop in at home to say hello to our family anymore, we just send a quick e-mail. People who do not rely on these technical things rely on each other for entertainment as the children do by playing together outside, to inform each other of current events, or even to chat face-to-face rather than computer screen-to-computer screen. It is thought that it takes a community to raise a child, and a small community can accomplish that more so than a large one (Nelle 9). The small community within a larger one is able to prosper on its own because it has to, in a sense.