I collect conspiracy theories for fun. They amuse me. As such I dip into the fringe of the political spectrum. (yes, even liberals have fringe groups that are just nuts.)
Today I was hitting the survivalist area of the interweb. I found this statement "Community only starts with you. If you are not talking to your neighbors you are not building a community."
Then the discussion was about getting out and walking about your neighborhood, see if you know who lives in the houses around you. If you can't even name or remember the last time you even saw them outside, you are not living in a community. They suggested several things to do to build community: bring over a plate of cookies, give away some of what your garden produced, have a BBQ and invite one or two neighbors over, organize a block clean up.
Don't talk politics or religion or such, talk about them - who are they, what do they do, what do they like about the area, etc. (actually it was don't talk about survivalism or religion)
I'm willing to bet, we all could do more to build a community around us. Sadly I did not pass the walk around the block test suggested, I only new the name of 5 of the 17 homes that have people living in them.