Housing and CommUNITY

As a quote “Individuals cannot be studied without considering the multiple ecological systems in which they operate (116)” states, a structure or a design need to be harmonized with its surrounding environments. Before reading this article, I have been thought as an architectural designer, I only need to design a space or a structure, but it is not right. There are complicated relationships between neighborhood and community. Community consists of physical, place-based, and social, people-based housing issues. In other words, it is not simple to study neighborhoods and communities because even though there is a well-designed house, it cannot exist by itself. The neighborhoods mean geographic location and the communities mean social interaction.
There are several theories to study the social aspects such as social contagion theories, collective socialization theories, neighborhood resource theories, and relative deprivation theories. As the Korean proverb says, "a mother moved around a lot to offer her son better surrounding environments." These theories are emphasizing the importance of harmony of people and their surrounding environments.
The physical community development includes planning commissions and comprehensive plan. The planning commissions are the force to define a character of local area and the comprehensive plan is about land use and zoning. Also, there are tools to make physical community development easier and effectively such as zoning ordinances, appeal process, subdivision regulations, and so on. In other words, there are some restrictions to build a house and a community such as the limit of material and the way of organizing community.
The neighborhood satisfaction combines personal factors, physical factors, social factors, neighborhood segregation, and safety factors. These factors work as the critical elements. Let us suppose that there is a community which is consist of several awesome houses, but this community does not satisfy the critical elements. Would you like to live in this community?
As mentioned categories above, there will be more points to be duly considered after finishing the design process. It is necessary to cooperate with a design itself and its given surroundings to fulfill the designer's duties.