ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the various ideological views of the leadership on the subject and then traces the debate over the meaning of community through the story of the collective experiences of the residents of the Route 2 corridor. The citizenry of the community is bound together more by common participatory activity toward a common goal than any underlying contract or formal membership. The question of the role of heterogeneity versus homogeneity in community has been very important throughout the Route 2 project's history. The early populist leadership helped organize the heterogeneous group of residents into a self-interested collectivity to fight Caltrans, but they did not see themselves as working toward a community based solely on self-interest. Their political community was less the dialogic community of the populists than a place in which equal rights are practiced. In the pluralist community the non-participants are either ignored or confronted as another faction.
