The word community has been buzzing round my head for a while. What it means, what it does, how it works. There’s a phrase I’ve heard parroted back so many times over the years, I’ve never thought to look at it critically. So many people say “There’s no sense of community in the City. You need to get out to the country to really see community work.” This has been buzzing around my head for a long time. And now, I would like to call bullshit.

Perhaps I should be more charitable. I’ll concede that community is easier to see out in the sticks. But it’s a singular idea, that runs on similar lines to the Hokey-Cokey. You’re either in, or you’re out. And you’re certainly not in if you shake it all about… That simple, polar in-out community model is the one that’s dominated most of humanity since we climbed down out of the trees and started using tools. The image of the pack or the family as the basic root of everything.

There’s a lot less of that style of community here in the City. It doesn’t really work well in an urban environment. The image that springs to mind when looking at the various communities around Edinburgh is that of a complex, ticking machine (That would be a clock, come to think of it…). There are dozens, hundreds of little communities, all spinning away in their own little orbits. And sometimes, they spin into each other, and combine, or swap members. People jump from one cog to another while the machine ticks away. And all these little ticking cogs add up to the massive and monumental edifice that is Edinburgh. Yes, some of these operate on the old in-out dialogue. But most throw themselves into the storm. People move around, and the communities are equally flexible.

Because we can look at the small communities, and see community. Moreover, we can look at the whole ticking, vibrant machine, and see something else. Something beyond community itself. A kind of super-community, operating on different level to the old in-out communities. This is the level at which communities themselves become part of a wider community. A community of communities. There’s some Inception-like shit going down right there.

Because anything can be done by a group of communities, if each can get what they need from that anything. People will work together, disparate tribes and groups will pull together and move together and work together to make something fantastic, that has value for all of the communities that are a part of it. And then those parts will spin away to their own little part of the machine again.

In that image, the image of the super-community, perhaps there is an image of the future. It’s not a type of community that has existed easily anywhere other than the cities. The reason being that you need a big enough mass of bodies. Anything smaller than a city, and we go back to clans and packs. In the city, we’re more like a hive.