Comment by Brendinooo

Armchair historian AT BEST but...a lot of grassroots social institutions formed in the period between the Industrial Revolution (mass migration to the cities) and the invention of the radio. There were all of a sudden a LOT of people close together, some were even starting to get newfangled leisure time, and there wasn't a ton to do. On top of that, a lot of the institutions were ethnic because of the mass immigration that was happening at the time.

From there, the track downhill is death by a thousand cuts: radio, melting pot, television, suburbs, Internet, etc.

So in a sense one might mourn the loss, but I think it seems worth pointing out that they were enabled in the first place by a particular set of conditions that weren't some baked-in human default.