Max Lerner, former editor of The Nation and a New York Post columnist (the old Post), writing in 1957 on the quiet and unfulfilled nature of Americans without a place:

A number of recent American writings indicate that the nostalgia for the small town need not be constructed as directed toward the town itself: it is rather a “quest for community” (as Robert Nisbet puts it)–a nostalgia for a compassable and integral living unit. The critical question is not whether the small town can be rehabilitated in the image of its earlier strength and growth - for clearly it cannot - but whether American life will be able to evolve any other integral community to replace it. This is what I call the problem of place in America, and unless it is somehow resolved, American personality will continue to be quiet and unfulfilled.

[via this densely informational post by John Michlig on the value of a "third space" for meeting people outside of self-selecting groups and outside the home]