True, but it’s also not a requirement to own a home in order to be “settled down” – you can raise a family in a rental just as easily as you can in a home – with the added bonus that you can rent in areas with very good school districts often at much less than owning in that area would cost you.

http://joshlavik.blogspot.com/2009/04/ownership-improves-our-community.html

Every generation brings a different focus because it grows up seeing a different picture of the world/environment and the changes that are occurring as they grow up.

Yet, I say learn as much as you can, everywhere you can, regardless of what generation it’s from.
E.G.
I have learned so much about online connections and yet I still love meeting people face to face.
I travel all over US for my business yet I also have ties to my local community.
I work hard toward things that I want as I was taught yet my niece Mary Kate has taught me many things from her Gen Y view.

If we all stay open to the talents of people in all ages — we can soar.

@KateNasser

I think we need to separate the argument about community from home ownership. While home ownership might be one small reason for a lack of local community, it certainly isn’t the only one. I think it’s also important to ask if we can replace LOCAL community with some other sense of community. In some cities or in some neighborhoods within some cities, you see a very strong sense of local community. I lived in Austin and in the Ballard neighborhood in Seattle, and in both places, I felt the local community was very strong. However, I’ve lived in other cities–Minneapolis and the suburbs of Portland–where I feel like a sense of community is utterly lacking. I feel in these different places, in a lot of ways, a sense of community is divorced from the notion of home ownership, and perhaps home ownership in some places even encourages people to separate themselves from the community and instead to focus on THEIR home, THEIR family, and to ignore what is outside it. Perhaps what we think of as local community is changing, and is less about neighborhoods of people who live close together but rather groups of people in a local area who share common values, ideas and interests.

Anyhow, provocative topic. I just feel like 1) it needs a more in-depth treatment, 2) community and home ownership should be treated as separate entities, and 3) we need to look at where “community” is growing and how we can encourage more localities to model themselves after those areas.

Sense of community? Is that, “I’ll take advantage of all the stuff everyone does for free, as long as it benefits me”? Or how about, “No, I don’t have any money to donate, because I spent it all on my new house, Blackberries (plural), the three foreign trips I take every year, going away every weekend. And I can’t help with that community project because I’m too busy (see above). And my neighbors are such idiots for shovelling my sidewalks for free so that they don’t slip and fall while I’m on my trips; I’ll let them keep on doing it for free if they want to be such idiots.”