Last Wednesday morning, a water main broke down, leaving the whole of
Tilburg without water for a couple of hours. In a country like the
Netherlands, it's an unusual experience not to be able to flush the toilet, have a
shower, brush your teeth, make tea, clean, and have access to so many other
necessities you are usually at most only semi-conscious of. Of course,
in theory we all already know how dependent modern mass society is on, normally
invisible, infrastructure like roads, utilities, and the Internet. Still, it's good to
be reminded the hard way once in a while how little it takes for all of these
unrecognized marvels to break down, big time.
It made me think: what are the "water mains" of communities? What are the weak spots that, once broken, bring a whole community to its knees? Are communities more resilient to such breakdowns than mass society, because they are usually smaller, more tightly knit, and have that sense of community to sustain it through rough times? Or are they perhaps even more vulnerable, as there is usually less formal capacity and assigned responsibility to resolve crises? What is the role of communities in resolving societal (infrastructure) crises? Vice versa, how, if at all, can societal governance capacity be put to good use to repair communities in trouble?
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