I think what is happening is that the 'scale' of physical communities is being expanded and homogenized into a "City" community rather than a "Parish" community. The needs of the majority are being considered to take into account the minority: ie the big retailers stock organic, but still provide mass produced. Schools are being consolidated, but specialist schools are being built. Emergency call centres are being 'centralised', but workers are being assigned 'localities'.
Instead of a hundred nodes; each providing a smaller service, all inter-connected with each other; we have ten bigger nodes, providing a more 'uniform' service with a larger connection between each other.
In terms of "community", the result is that there are too many people to know - one face lost in the crowd. So everyone builds their own 'communities' around common interests. The location of the social community becomes more important than the location of the 'home' where the traditional community was established. This leaves a vacuum around the 'home' where there are no social ties, no ethical rules of community, no friendships; everyone is a stranger in a location I live in that has nothing to do with "me".
Where does it end? Conclaves of "real" communities being built with common social interests. The "home" being transitory and moving where either the greatest social need is or the greatest working need - working & 'sleeping' in one place and socialising & 'living' in another. The drugs, weapons and shadow life being lived between these two places and being inhabited by the social outcasts, the lawless and the poor.
{Perhaps there is a novel there }
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