Strong Towns: We Built Isolating Places. Can We Get Out?
Strong Towns: We Built Isolating Places. Can We Get Out?
People are lonely. Is it because we are addicted to our phones, or is that a symptom of larger design choices we made when building our places? We cover some of the general concepts related to social infrastructure an try to evaluate what to do next.
I've talked a fair bit about this with my brother. I'm the urbanist nerd, and he's the PhD psychologist. The United States is a deeply traumatized society, which has a great deal to do with our history and hyper-individualist ideology, but it's now a feedback loop in which the hyper-individualist ideology perpetuates the trauma. Our built landscape is largely a redirection of that, so it's both a symptom and a cause.
You see how the two are wrapped up together by the number of people who say (often in this very community) that they hate being around people, that they couldn't live in a city, that they don't want neighbors, or at least want to keep them at figurative arm's distance, so they NEED cars. That's a manifestation of the chronic fight-flight-or-freeze response, because at an individual level, our mental model is of other people as competitors and possible existential threats. (What's wrong with public transit? CRiMinALs wIlL KiLl mE!)
Thing is, to we're a highly-social animal, so the more we pull away from other people in fear, the more stressed and traumatized we get. That is to say, that it's not simply that the built landscape causes loneliness, but loneliness and car-dependency are interlocked in a feedback loop with other factors.
I don't think others are threats, I just don't want to hear them arguing or farting or have them in my way.
Edit I've lived in a cheap apartment before and could literally hear when my neighbor took a shit. I've also lived in a condo, and while higher end, I could still hear my neighbor open and close their front door.
I would much rather hear the birds in my rural yard than hear people moving around
Edit edit I have lots of people in my life, and have friends at my home, or am at their home multiple times a week. I would not describe myself as isolated or lonely, just choiceful about what noise and space pollution I allow in my life
Yeah in europe this is pretty well mitigated with a healthy amount of solid concrete or similar dense building materials. In the US we put up walls and doors made of paper even in the nicest apartments. It seems standard but it's a pretty shoddy one if so. I will never understand it other than as a cost saving measure and more systemically, a tool to make poor people miserable and drive everyone else into single family housing.
Modern suburbs are a manifestation of the neoliberal mindset, which is summed up in this well known quote from Margaret Thatcher:
...who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families...
Detached, single family homes on their own parcels of land, with clearly defined borders. Each plot is like its own sovereign territory. That is not a society, that is a rejection of society.
But this arrangement wasn't established for no reason, it was done out of a desire for freedom and independence. With society comes shared culture, language, traditions, beliefs and expectations, things that can limit one's individual freedom. So, you reject the larger society, procure your own piece of land and form your own micro society where you and your family can have whatever culture, speak whatever language, and practice whatever beliefs you want. Of course this is very isolating, but freedom and independence often are. A totally free and independent person is a person who is totally alone.