A refreshing opinion in the DiRienzo article is re-evaluation of approaching community planning by first defining what it means to be a community.  In a quest for returning power and democracy to the community unit, it is crucial to understand a community in its basic make-up, inspirations, potential, and capacities.  I think it’s a simple, yet innovative perspective that many overlook, often trying to rush large and complicated programs of re-development or zoning in hopes of repairing what seem like slummy, low-class poor areas, when often times, a little simple solution, based in the deeper analysis of a community entity, is what really makes a difference.

DiRienzo defines the community with three principles: commonality, interdependence, and collective capacity.  A community is not a neighborhood, although it may occupy or be occupied by one.  Rather than focusing on the physical housing, their proximities, similarities, and services, a community is about the people, what they share in common that unites them in their efforts and desires, and some inherent ability to accomplish these goals.  DiRienzo makes an interesting point about this final statue; collective capacity .  He states that this can be gauged by merely looking at how much of the community’s institutions are owned by the residents, rather than outside resources.  As a judgement of health, this predicts a lot of other signs that if a community is involved in its programs, there is a greater sense of unity.  This makes me wonder if such an idea can really be unifying if it is so defining.  Sure it seems great to allow a community complete ownership of those forces which govern their way of living, but then doesn’t that just continue to create many inward-turned communities that don’t then branch-out to each other?  If all communities are completely self-sustaining, then what is created is not a working system, but a hierarchy of groups.  DiRienzo’s idea of interdependence then makes an interesting presence; same situation applies to the economic capacity that must be reliant on relations amongst members to improve the quality of the community.  I think there is something beautiful about the way that New York has many different communities, but that it’s important that they too connect with each other, otherwise, it is an inevitable border war.

In the end, DiRienzo argues that grand, elaborate plans are not necessary; a deeper evaluation can yield even more success from plans that aim to promote human values, “reverse destructive isolating dynamics, marginalize them economically, disenfranchise them politically.”

I think Angotti would agree with this perspective, but he also makes more arguments for what other features regarding communities are important to take into consideration with planning.  Angotti presents a strong point that is the origin of many struggles and hardships with housing; security.  We live constantly in flux; by the time you buy the newest, most advanced technology, there will be an even better model in the works coming out tomorrow.  Building homes for longevity is an easy concept to grasp, but when thinking about neighborhoods and communities, one needs only ask a resident who has been living in any one home in the city for more than ten years, and will hear about the constant change in the community.  Community dynamics shift, and influence a landslide of other features of living.  This isn’t always organic growth and decay, however, but the result of forced displacement in the process of seemingly “improving” a transient neighborhood.  One of the greatest insecurities of the homeowner is not having tenure, of buying a home, or getting a home, living in it, but soon being faced with displacement for some urban plan that hasn’t taken them into account.  It is a basic housing right to have tenure, to be able to live somewhere and not be faced with forced displacement that not only unearths a community, but destroys it, and each lifestyle engrained in it.

Angotti’s ideas on planning continue with first understanding those key features that make a community what it is, and those must  be taken into consideration for successful plans, of which, displacement is never one.