what is a community?
A community can mean different things to different people. Sometimes a community can mean a place, and other times a community can mean a group of people who have similar interests, background, or common practices, but do not share location. Each one of these communities is important and relevant in our lives.
In the Rural Communities Explorer we think of a community as a group of people living in the same locality and under the same government, having common interests, and who share participation and fellowship. To us, communities are places (these are towns, villages, and cities) and counties.
Based on the Rural Communities Explorer’s definition of communities, a community has several components: the people, the place, the structure (governance), and the inter-personal relationships. Though the ultimate focus is on groups of people who live in the same geographic area of places or counties, we recognize that within these geographic areas a community of people also shares interests, practice, and social relationships. The reason for the focus on geographic communities is so that visitors to the Rural Communities Explorer can access and use information about the social, environmental, and economic attributes of communities in rural Oregon.
why care about communities?
It is often helpful to have specific information about the people, the place, the governance, and the social relationships linking people together in a community. This information can be used to find out if the perceptions about a community are true, to examine what factors are driving changes in a community, and to plan for the future in the community. You can use the Rural Communities Explorer to gather this information about communities across Oregon.
