Big Trouble in Little Edmonton

                So much of our day-to-day depends on finding balance between perception and imagination.  Even though this precarious equilibrium is often achieved subconsciously, it actively affects the way in which we associate with communal living.  Growing up, a child understands their neighbourhood as a representation of the whole.  Their house, street, and school, for example, generate a primitive understanding of how the community interacts with the broader socio-economic atmosphere of the city.  As such, the child’s neighbourhood becomes a microcosm of the spaces he or she will interact with later in life.

                As a child grows, so, too, does their relationship with the world.  From riding bikes, to driving cars, to air travel, the world slowly unravels in concentric circles—still, the community remains.

                Community, however, means different things to different people.  Although the sense of community arguably exists more intimately in small towns and rural communities, the city (and by extension suburbia) will remain the source for this argument.  In this respect, the space within the city one was raised seems significant.  Even though the socio-economic environment of the suburbs is certainly not the only catalyst in the development of normative behavioural patterns; space, nevertheless, certainly relates to one’s imagination and perception.

                Take a child who was born in the comfort and security of suburban life, for example, this child arguably (though certainly not always) associates with communal space in a positive manner.  That is to say, this child ostensibly does not worry about injustice, crime, and punishment—he or she is free to move about the neighbourhood with relative safety.  As such, this individual matures with a positive perception of communal space, which is wholly dependent on an imagination formed during childhood.  On the other hand, a child born into the dereliction of housing projects, which are characteristic of many major urban centers, has to deal with the socio-economic atmosphere of such a neighbourhood.  Inherent to this environment, moreover, is the very real possibility of crime and poverty, which may instil an entrenched insecurity with respect to social space.  In other words, the child, conditioned by his or her surrounds, may be susceptible (for better or worse) to the socio-economic niche their neighbourhood has come to represent.