“A number of recent American writings indicate that the nostalgia for the small town need not be construed as directed toward the town itself: it is rather a ‘quest for community ‘ (as Robert Nisbet puts it) – a nostalgia for a compassable and integral living unit. The critical question is not whether the small town can be rehabilitated in the image of its earlier strength and growth – for clearly it cannot – but whether American life will be able to evolve any other integral community to replace it. This is what I call the problem of place in America, and unless it is somehow resolved, American life will become more jangled and fragmented than it is, and American personality will continue to be unquiet and unfulfilled.”
Lerner, Max. ”America as a Civilization”
Quotation taken from the beginning of “Chapter One: The Problem of Place in America” in Ray Oldenburg’s “The Great Good Place”