The term “community” is widely used by sociologists, neighborhood workers, and others, but often with widely divergent meanings. In research in any field it is necessary to define our concepts and to make relevant distinctions. In the literature of the subject there is a growing disposition to emphasize as one of the fundamental aspects of the community its geographical setting. Whatever else the community may be, it signifies individuals, families, groups, or institutions located upon an area and some or all of the relationships which grow out of this common location. “‘Community’ is the term which is applied to societies and social groups where they are considered from the point of view of the geographical distribution of the individuals and institutions of which they are composed.”[70] Upon reflection it is evident that markedly different social relationships may have their roots in the conditions of a common territorial location. Indeed, it is just these outstanding differences in communal activities, viewed in relation to their geographic background, which have caused much of the confusion in the use of the term “community.” For community life, as conditioned by the distribution of individuals and institutions over an area, has at least three quite different aspects. First of all, there is the community viewed almost exclusively in terms of location and movement. How far has the area itself, by its very topography and by all its other external and physical characteristics, as railroads, parks, types of housing, conditioned community formation and exerted a determining influence upon the distribution of its inhabitants and upon their movements and life? To what extent has it had a selective effect in sifting and sorting families over the area by occupation, nationality, and economic or social class? To what extent is the work of neighborhood or community institutions promoted or impeded by favorable or unfavorable location? How far do geographical distances within or without the community symbolize social distances? This apparently “natural” organization of the human community, so similar in the formation of plant and animal communities, may be called the “ecological community.”