Although communes existed, in some form, in all areas including urban communities, they were mostly found in rural settings. Water was drawn from wells, electricity from a generator (and used sparingly), food was grown in the ground and people shared everything with each other.
Our text book describes Horizontal Giving as characterized by "reciprocity, cooperation, and interdependence" (467). Many forms of sharing tangible goods as well as valuable services like child care, elderly assistance, emotional support and the security of community members is offered, without deliberation, simply for the greater good of the community writ large.
Rural communities adopt this type of Horizontal Giving spirit out of necessity, tradition, and a sense of real relationships with those who's lives they are so closely intertwined with as well as a commitment to the maintenance of their ways of life. They are one step beyond the primal simplicity of the loose structures found in hippie communes, mostly manifest in the fact that people have jobs, maintain private ownership of their homes, and participate in the political process where it relates to local concerns. However, the communal spirit is not far removed in many cases.
I spent the first years of my life first in an urban commune, then on a farm in rural Maine, in the northern part of the state. I have vivid memories of neighbors kids coming and going without parental constraints, people coming over to borrow sugar, flour, or baking soda for making confections to bring to a school event, and dads doing "odd jobs" around the town mending fences, building backyard decks for the summer months, and other quaint tasks of similar utility.
It wasn't until I moved to the affluent suburb community of Falmouth that I realized how people were still ostensibly connected to each other through community features and activities, but were also paradoxically stratified by class which was usually identifiable simply by noting their address and the specific neighborhood where they live in relation to other, less affluent community members.
Horizontal Giving was not as pure and freely practiced there. People were more inclined to try to leverage each other in often subtle, and often overt ways through their acts of giving which made it less "horizontal" and a bit more "vertical" in nature. In other words, it was not uncommon for there to be a winner and a loser resulting in a zero-sum game for the community members who are interlocked in these exchanges.
And then there's Las Angeles.
Not only do people not engage in Horizontal Giving in this large, metropolitan sprawl, they are vastly cut off from one another by seemingly infinite boundaries ranging from personal, socioeconomic disparities, language and cultural barriers, and race.
Giving is transactional and conditional. Cheating is commonplace and trust is rare between strangers. But, other than sheer population, why is it that the larger the communities, the more people become isolated from each other? It is, indeed, counter intuitive.
References:
Weil, M., Reisch, M., & Ohmer, M. (2013). The Handbook of Community Practice. 2nd Edition.
