Neighbor-to-Neighbor: What makes a community truly vibrant?

I was a bit leery when my parents told me of their decision to sell our home in southern Connecticut and retire to an old farmhouse in the northwest corner of the state.  I was pretty worried, in fact.  An active couple having raised their children in a suburb of New York, they were used to a certain pace of life and certain conveniences, like grocery stores and drugstores around the corner, neighbors a stone's throw away and roads that are plowed before three snowflakes hit the ground.  Now they had decided to move to a town where the nearest hospital is a good half-hour drive, cell phones work when they choose to and the only neighbors in site are two fuzzy black bears.  How could I feel good about their decision to grow old here?
   
It wasn't long after their move, that by some ironic twist of fate, (or the economy) I found myself living with them for a period of time.  Interestingly, during that time, my anxieties about their choice were assuaged, and in the process, I learned quite a bit about the meaning of community.
   
If we boil it down to the basics, a community is really just a group of bodies.  To take it a step further, one could say that a community generally forms around a common interest.  There are neighborhood communities, religious communities and athletic communities, to name a few.  These groups of bodies choose to live in a geographic area, explore a new religion or play a particular sport.  Once a community has formed, this group of bodies with a common interest begins to act.  Local officials are elected, worship begins and games are won or lost.  While acting as a group certainly meets the criteria for being classified as a community, there is a difference between being part of just any community and being part of a truly vibrant one.
   
My parents were lucky enough to move to an area where, as sleepy as the little country town may look from the outside, there is in fact a vibrant community at its core.  Weekly, if not daily, my parents were out and about, urged by friends and relatives to go hiking, attend lectures or participate in the endless search for the perfect New York pizza—leaving me to fend for myself.  "Neighbors" from a few miles away regularly dropped off homemade sweets, maple syrup, and word on the street was that if you left your car unlocked your trunk would get filled with zucchini from local gardens. This neighborhood community caught me totally off-guard.  I quickly realized that running with an iPod was not a normal thing in these parts; no matter how focused I tried to appear on my run I was regularly stopped for an invitation for a glass of wine or even in one case, a job offer. 
   
It was obvious my parents were even more active in this neighborhood of a mere thousand than they were living in their previous neighborhood of 60,000.  Their former neighborhood was a community, but what is it that made this new community more vibrant?  Obviously, this had nothing to do with the number of people. 
   
Ironically, even with the lack of cell towers, it was clear people were more connected.  There was a genuine sense of concern for one another—not just for common decisions affecting the town.  Perhaps precisely because there were fewer community members, people came to the realization that it was beneficial to really engage with one another, listen to one another and care about each other.  Because the nearest hospital was a long distance, I watched community members come to each other's aid in emergencies.     
   
In my experience the key ingredient for a vibrant community is not the number of members, or common interest, or even additional impact of many hands, but the engagement of the members with one another.  We are such social beings.  As I crane back to remember Maslow's theory, I fuzzily recall that a sense of belonging and friendship comes right after our basic safety needs in the Hierarchy of Needs—even before our own sense of self-esteem and confidence.  We crave and are fulfilled by human connection. These positive connections make us want to be part of a community and drive us to accomplish more as a group, thereby forming a more vibrant community.