Small Town Essentials: The Groups of People Who Make Communities Work
Countries start with cities, and the cities start with the smaller towns. These towns are built and held together by people. When you leave your home and go for a walk, you encounter many people: the bloke who delivers the paper, the radio jock, the waiter at your local coffee shop, your local fishmonger and the countryside farmer. These are people of different denominations who contribute to your town.
In society, there are many groups of people who perform tasks —both broad and specific— to support society, but some particular groups are the pillars that create and maintain communities. These pillars are the essentials for any town to start and thrive, which can be likened to the needs of man. So, who are these people?
Food and Sustenance
The basic needs of the people must first be addressed and satisfied before it can reach any level of sophistication. For any small town, its foundations are built by the people who work the agriculture and food industry. These include the farmers of all commodities, such as grain, meat, cheese, etc. It is not limited to the producers. People who work to bring food and other commodities to the town are also included, such as market vendors, fishmongers and the like. The food sector also extends to the service dining and service industry, which includes the cooks, chefs and bartenders.
Social and Legal Occupations
With people having the food and infrastructure they need, the next step is to fill in the higher social functions. These include instating and enforcing laws, economic functions, public service and the like. By then, the town would need a form of government with its complement of public servants, lawyers, teachers and advocates. This is where a more diverse group of people will come. Kirana.edu.au says these professionals will have diplomas of community services, degrees in law, economics, education and psychology. It is this group of people that tie everything together to make up society.
Infrastructure and Technology
Man is inherently ingenuous; it is because of this that the first settlements where built. Moving on from the basic need of food and sustenance, what makes and maintains any town is its force of builders. These are the engineers, carpenters, technicians, plumbers, electricians and other professionals in the technical fields that build and maintain the houses, offices, parks, power lines, pipes and other infrastructures that deliver the basic services to the inhabitants of the town. The people in this workforce would have experience in their practices and even degrees in their profession, such as engineering and architecture.
