form the nucleus of a community which does its business at a railroad
station village some distance away, possibly over a range of hills. The
chief trading points cannot, therefore, be arbitrarily assumed as the
base points for determining community areas, but those points at which
the more important of the common interests of the people find expression
should be considered as community centers. It is not simply a question
of where the people go most often, but of where their chief interests
focus.

With this concept of a community it is obvious that the "center" of a
community must be the base point for determining its area. It would seem
that the community center is essential to the individuality of any
community: The community "center" need not necessarily be at the
geographical center of the community; indeed in many cases it is at or
close to one of its boundaries, though in an open level country it will
tend to approximate the center.

The term "community center" is here used in a literal sense of being the
center of the activities of the community. It should be distinguished
from the "community-center idea" which refers to a building, whether it
be a community house, school, church, or grange hall, as a "community
center." Such a building in which the activities of the community are
largely centered may be a community center in a very real sense, but in
most cases these activities will be divided between church, school,
grange hall, etc. No one of them can then be a center for the whole
community, but taken together they constitute the center in which the
chief interests of the community focus. Every community must necessarily
have a more or less well defined community center; it may or may not
have some one building in which the chief activities of the community
have their headquarters. Such buildings, of whatever nature, may well be
called community houses or social centers.

Although attention has been directed to the area of the community, the
community consists not of land or houses but of the people of this area.
Its boundary merely gives a community identity, as does the roll of a
company or the charter of a city. The community consists of the people
within a local area; the land they occupy is but the physical basis of
the community. The nature of the community will depend very largely upon
whether its people live close together or at a distance. In the Rocky
Mountain States many communities are but spa