Keith N Hampton an Assistant Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, has published comprehensive research on how the Internet and social networks impact local communities.
The highlights:

  1. Neighborhoods host the private realm, the home, as well as the public and parochial realms of street and community.  (There are a lot of family websites and a lot of town information websites.  TownConnect is both and helps saves your family time by connecting you to the people, events and activities in your town.)
  2. Larger local friendship networks are associated with greater community attachment, greater empowerment, lower crime rates, watchfulness of neighbors, reduced fear and mistrust and lower levels of mental distress and depression.
  3. Those moving to single family homes and the suburbs are more likely to have frequent neighborhood interactions than those downtown or in apartment buildings. 
  4. Of the three neighborhood settings (suburban neighborhood, gated community and apartment building) tested through the e-Neighbors study, only one neighborhood widely adopted the interventions for use as local media: the suburban neighborhood.
  5. However, the benefits…are only available to those who actively participate, by sending messages to the neighborhood list. Lurkers experience no change in their network size as a result of observing.

The study is in depth and loaded with sources like this one –”In the formation of local social ties, homophily is a driving force…”  (I would have said Birds of a feather flock together).

It was great to see the TownConnect concept backed up by years of sociological studies and research.   I recall an interview given by Pierre Omidyar, the eBay founder, when he said he built eBay to help his wife buy and sell things.  He designed it for her needs first, knowing that there were others out there with similar problems that needed fixing.

While anyone can use the site for their neighborhood or group– TownConnect is currently Rockin’ the Suburbs.