Keller, S. (2003). Community: pursuing the dream, living the reality. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.
Through the case study of a planned community in New Jersey, Twin Rivers, this book explores complex processes of community formation and argues for the community 'as a counter-force to the TV-directed lonely crowd in the mass society of the twenty-first century'. (p. xiii) The first part of the book situates the study of community in the context of historical and contemporary theories of community. The second part presents the empirical case study of the planned unit development, including residents' relationships with their environs, the struggle for self-government, community participation, sociability, private and public obligations, governance and leadership and sources of unity and division. The final part discusses the implications of the empirical findings for understanding community. The study is based on mixed longitudinal methods to capture the transformation of the community over time: observations of behaviour, participant observation, repeated surveys of residents' attitudes and reactions from the 1970s to the late 1990s, and photographic analyses of the changing landscape of the planned community. This book would be interesting to read in combination with a study of a master planned estate in Australia by Rosenblatt et al*.