What's Happening in Your Village?

It has been a while since I have talked about the villagey-ness of Columbia. While I write primarily from an Oakland Mills perspective, I do wish there were other folks out there writing about their own village experiences. If you live in Columbia, how much do you identify with your village designation? Does it matter to you? Is it relevant?

For those who don't live in Columbia, or have trouble keeping them all straight:

Have you been to every village? Do you have friends in every village? Have you shopped in every village center? (For some reason, I have spent the least amount of time in Dorsey's Search.)

Some people feel it's important to patronize only those shops in their "home" village center. Others, looking for more variety, bypass the Village Center experience altogether. The stores they really want to go to aren't in village centers, and don't want to be.

The listing above is taken from The Columbia Association web site, where I also found a nifty little PDF which explains what your Village Community Association does, what CA does, and what Howard County does. I don't know how long it has been there, but I can say from personal experience that many Columbia residents are in a state of perpetual confusion about who does what.

So here's a call for news: if you live in any of the Columbia Villages, will you report in the comments about what's happening in your neck of the woods? And if you have no idea, tell me that, too.

There are a lot of exciting things going on in Downtown Columbia. But, if we are also to retain the spirit of ten Villages making up one New American City, how do we keep that alive? And, do we need to?

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Village Green/Town²

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