For over two hundred and fifty years, Americans have been joining and forming clubs.
Alexander de Tocqueville infamously noticed this when he visited in the 1830s, and it puzzled him: How could people who were so fiercely independent also be so thoroughly communal?
Walter Isaacson, in his biography of Ben Franklin, suggests that de Tocqueville had this exactly backwards. Americans are oriented around clubs and civic societies because we're so independent — a young nation of searching immigrants seeking connection, community, and conversation.
As Robert Putnam has chronicled in his books Bowling Alone and The Upswing, this spirit has ebbed and flowed through the history of the United States, and we once again find ourselves at a new low level of social capital. New challenges, like carrying always-on entertainment around in our pockets, and talking machines that want to be our best friend, also contribute to this ongoing erosion.
But here's what gives me hope: even now, a quarter millennium into this American experiment, our faith in our neighbors and our local communities remains strong. We've lost trust in institutions and in government — but not in each other. 72% of Americans still trust their neighbors to do the right thing.
That’s why New_ Public, where I work, is building Roundabout, an app for your neighborhood that’s not about holding your attention, it's about building stronger bonds offline. This is not Silicon Valley’s latest horror. This is a platform built by a nonprofit, informed by social science research, and led locally by trusted stewards.
On Roundabout, Steve from down the block responds to your post and recommends a barber, or a restaurant, or volunteer opportunity, and before you know it, you’re running into each other at the library, shaking hands. He’s not a stranger any more. Now he’s your neighbor.
To me, Roundabout is a profoundly American project, going all the way back to the colonies, through bible study groups, Masonic lodges, women’s clubs, cookouts … all the way back up to the Rotary clubs, church groups, and block associations of today.
We need solutions that fit these times, and new reasons to come together and build something. This is what we are good at. Connection, community, and conversation.
Happy Fourth of July.
Josh Kramer
Head of Editorial
New_ Public