The residents of many of the most sophisticated urban neighbourhoods are often few generations removed from families who migrated from farm areas, perhaps in other countries. Their prevailing images of community life are therefore rural ones, and they have rarely found a way to internalize and affirm the structural, prioritized relationships of urban life. Residents have no creative way of halting or reversing outmoded cultural impressions, and these people feel personally abandoned.
Contacts with officialdom are overlaid with self-fulfilling portents of failure. For example, local citizens may feel that the police do not always respond adequately when called to respond to community disturbances. Although police officials explain that there are certain calls which necessarily take precedence over others, even though they may reach the precinct at the same time, the people of the neighbourhood are then convinced that the police just do not care about their area. School authorities may manifest a distant stance toward these neighbourhoods in order to not get involved in personal neighbourhood conflicts, but the community sees this stance as a negative attitude of the school towards them. The result is that residents then have no structural means of expressing their concern about their children's educational settings; and the gulf of noncommunication continues to deepen, perpetuating the absence of a focused effort in education. Employment of residents is often inhibited by the absence of a structural ground between employer and employees.