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I’ve been thinking about the importance of geography in maintaining the urban tribe. As anyone who has read the book knows, I openly struggled with the definition of these groups. (This was Many people contacted me to tell me about their online community or their high school friends who keep track of each other by phone but only see each other once a year. As much as I wanted the definition to be inclusive, these groups were not the thing I was trying to describe.

It is only through geography and time that these groups maintain the momentum to remain the central support structure in someone’s life.

Living near each other seems central to the easy flow of these groups �� the sense the you can show up a friends door at the end of a bad day and know you will be welcomed in.

Some groups, of course, have this momentum and then lose it. Graduate school seems a particular hotbed for tribe formation. Unfortunately, the end of graduate school scatters people around the country. What these groups are left with is more of a tribe alumni association than an urban tribe itself. I don��t mean to give these groups second-class status for they can be extremely important. To have a group of friends who you see once a year provides you a remarkable perspective on the course of your life. Those friends I see infrequently are often the ones I trust with the task of discussing the course of my life. When I drop by a friend’s house at the end of the day I usually just discuss that day. When I see my best friend from high school every two to three years, we discuss the meaning and path of our very existence.

Groups that exist for five years or longer often have the best of both worlds. A portion of the group stays in the same city while individuals wander away. Some holidays (Thanksgiving and New Years Eve in particular) or someone’s birthday becomes the reunion weekend for group members to come back to town and talk about the course and meaning of the year that has passed.

Comments 2 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.

Epistemographer,

November 12, 2003 at 4:23 pm

This definitely makes sense to me…the interesting thing is that in the course of my decisions of where I’m going to be next year, the density of Hopkins people in a given location is a factor, and I know some of them are thinking the same thing. Right now, it looks like there is a critical mass forming in Chicago, but there’s also the possibility that some of us will wind up in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, my girlfriend’s tribe (of which I’ve now become a peripheral member) is based in NYC, so that’s a consideration, too. It’s almost as if I’m in the midst of a diaspora, but not sure where the promised land is (or if it even exists anymore)…

James,

November 13, 2003 at 11:54 am

I’ve thought about this a bit. I’ve always felt that Americans seem to move around a lot more than we Canadians. Almost every American I meet isn’t from the city they work in, and has usually gone to school somewhere else, too. It may just be because I’ve always lived in the largest Canadian city and that there was no real incentive to move, but I think we stay put more than you do.

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