The People of Columbia

By Jean Moon

June 16. 1977                      A commemorative magazine

A city is not buildings, it is people.

By themselves, innovative institutions, visionary planning, a beautiful environment and an abundance of amenities do not make a community. They can only foster community by removing some of the obstacles common to the American experience-isolation, inconvenience, ugliness, disregard for individual rights and needs, disrespect for natural resources.

Vance Packard says we are a "nation of strangers," but he singled out Columbia as an exception to the rule. And so it is. We are a community, a community of diverse people involved in an exciting experiment.

"People's journeys are fascinating," says a therapist living here. The journey of the people of Columbia is particularly fascinating because we are breaking new ground, trying to live in a way different from the way we were brought up.

The people here are special, if for no other reason than that they are involved in a collective experience rare in our lifetime. We hove an identity, on identity so distinct that a teen living here observes it is almost as if there is an invisible "fence" around the city.

All of this community-building, ground-breaking and experimenting, of course, may be invisible to many of the people who chose to live here for other reasons.

In the process of putting this magazine together, the Flier interviewed hundreds of people. Over and over, people said, "Columbia is where our roots are now." It is not perfect, many say, but it is better than anywhere else.

If Columbia is better than anywhere else, the credit goes to the people who have been building community since the day they arrived. It is to the people of Columbia that we dedicate this magazine. We hope we have captured something of their diversity, their character, their commitment and their beauty.