The Roseto Story
Due to the two books 'The Two Rosetos' (1974) and 'The Power of the Clan' (1993) Roseto, a small town in the mountains of Pennsylvania, became famous for its tight knit community life and its positive effects on the health and happiness of the community. In 1930, 1523 immigrants came from two villages in northern Italy to settle in Pennsylvania and the town of Roseto was born.
These people brought with them, from Italy, their culture and strong bonds as a community. Rather than building their homes in the typical American style the people of Roseto built their homes as close together as possible, as they did in Italy. Each evening the verandas and porches became the hub of social interaction among residents and was a source of vitality for the community.
Even though the first generation had many smokers, a high calorie diet, enjoyed a fatty meat diet full of carbohydrates they nonetheless had a very low incidence of heart disease and heart attacks compared to a similar demographic living in other cities with less social cohesion. In fact, their diet was not that different from the average American.
However, the present generation in their 50s and 60s has a much higher incidence of coronary artery disease. Even though their diet has not changed significantly the cases of heart disease are now much the same as the national average.
So, what changed and why has the health of the second generation deteriorated in comparison to the first generation? Presently, the population of this town is about 1555 and the home page describes itself as a 'town with a unique outlook on life'. According to the researchers studying this change in health the biggest change was that the younger generation had chosen to give up the extended family and community life of their parents and adopt the typical American nuclear family lifestyle.
Researchers concluded that what protected the first generation from the adverse effects of smoking and a high fat diet was the strong sense of connectedness in their community.
――― A New Strategic Model for the 434 Japanese/US Sister-City Relationships
There is also a secondary aim of this project. The project proponents, the Shingu Sister City Committee in Japan and the Santa Cruz Sister City Committee in the U.S. having had a long sister city relationship of over 35 years, recently initiated the first attempt to go beyond mere fellowship and exchange to work mutually towards the long term sustainability of our respective communities.
After investigating the activities of all 434 sister city relationships we found not one relationship engaging in anything that could be easily considered a model for sustainable community development interaction.
There was a post-war slogan in the sister city community that once went like this: 'Beyond country to country exchanges to people to people exchanges." However, with exchanges tailored to the modern era of globalization, exemplary models and effective resources have not available. We would once again like to revive this idea and bring more focus to the exchange of people, idea, know-how, technology, and wisdom.
Both Santa Cruz and Shingu have moved beyond just economic exchange to engage in interactions and the exchange of expertise in town planning by the citizen sector and proposed this project to access the untapped visible an invisible resources inherent in our our sister-city relationship. By doing so we hope to restore both the invisible bonds the inform the visible face of the modern community and we hope to be able to present this as a model for an effective way to solve the pressing problems, especially the invisible problems that communities face in a problem-solving to the sides of the invisible.
In addition, the project included Kandy in Sri Lanka as one of the Asian participants and this helps to define this as a universal model useful beyond just the communities in the US and Japan.
