6 ms·

> It causes social isolation. What is it about suburbs in particular that causes social isolation?

by randomdata 2y ago

kaicianflone 2y ago
No third places
- kaicianflone 2y ago
  https://theweek.com/culture-life/third-places-disappearing https://theweek.com/culture-life/third-places-disappearing
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Are they disappearing, or are they actually becoming more prevalent, dividing the population and leaving few people around to support each third space? A third place needs to more than a place – it also needs people. I can think of 10s, maybe even hundreds, of third paces I could theoretically go to within a short distance. None of them particularly appealing, though, because they don't have enough people to create an engaging environment. If these third places consolidated their efforts, seeing most of them disappear to focus on one third place, there is a much greater chance that the single community would thrive. Combined, it could be huge, but so long as they each try to go at it alone...
iambateman 2y ago
The default suburban life leads toward a comfortable kind of solitary confinement. Someone who lives in a “single family home” equipped with air conditioning, a privacy fence, a big screen TV, a garage door opener, and the internet will tend toward isolation because all of those technologies make aloneness easier. The reader may point out that many people are isolated in big cities too. This is true – if an adult has decided to be alone, they can be. But in the city, one's lack of social connection is more often felt whereas a suburban home can diminish the effect, like ibuprofen taken for a headache.
- randomdata 2y ago
  How does that meaningly differ from rural homes, which do not have the isolation problem? Rural areas have the strongest social communities I have ever seen.
  - zknow 2y ago
    I've noticed rural communities tend to have more extended family and larger families which helps a lot. Besides less different types of work.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      That's fair. Also a lot of "our great-grandparents were friends, so I implicitly trust that we are also friends". But what about the suburbs destroys that? Or, would it be more accurate to say that those who already don't have connections have a preference towards living in suburbs? Perhaps that is where they feel most at home?
      - throwaway0123_5 2y ago
        I don't think there is some special physical property absent in suburbs and present in rural areas that contributes to social isolation in the former but not the later. Rather I think it has to do with the kind of person that lives in each place. My grandparents and cousins live in a rural area. They all have ancestry in that town going back to the early 1900s. So do most of their neighbors. Families live next to (where "next to" admittedly might be a few miles depending on how rural) each other for generations. This is obviously conducive to strong intra and inter-family social networks. People who live in cities and in suburbs on the other hand seem to be far more transient. They move around for school or careers and aren't tied down to one place. I grew up in suburbs in three different cities. New neighbors frequently moved in and out of all three places, and the street where I lived from aged 5-10 has only two "original" families left. For those people, the built environment in suburbs being conducive to social isolation (in American suburbs anyways) becomes a problem. The nearest grocery store, restaurant, or interesting venue of any kind is likely 30+ minutes away if you try to walk, and the walk is likely to be dangerous due to poor pedestrian infrastructure and poor public transit. There are few accessible third places in which to meet people, it takes a lot more intentional effort. This is even more of a problem if you're a kid, as you're now entirely dependent on your parents and their car to meet friends or go to places where you can meet friends. I moved from upper-middle class suburbs to Washington D.C. The difference in how many people you meet who you might want to be friends with, and in how easy it is to get places where you want to go (especially without a car) is night and day. Will suburbs ever be as good as cities in this regard? Probably not. But mixed-use zoning and returning to "streetcar suburbs" would probably go a long way (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/27/in-praise-of-streetcar-suburbs https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/27/in-praise-of-s...). There's also other reasons to oppose current suburb development patterns. Suburban sprawl is highly inefficient in many ways. It takes dramatically more infrastructure to serve the same number of people that you could in a denser area. Roads, power lines, pipes for drinking water and sewage, etc. The taxes that many suburbs pay don't cover these expenses and suburbs end up being subsidized by people living in denser areas. Rural areas also suffer from this to some extent, but rural areas are a necessity for society to run, hosting farms and other resource extraction activities, so subsidizing some costs is fair. People in rural areas are also more likely to be self-sufficient, having their own septic tank, private well, etc., and aren't offloading their costs to society.
SamWhited 2y ago
At least in the U.S. (and likely elsewhere) the design of the suburbs encourages neighborhoods with individual houses and very little walk able space (occasionally there are sidewalks or parks in the richer areas, but developments may be large and they're not evenly spaced throughout). Exclusionary zoning in the U.S. has also reduced the number of "third spaces" (coffee shops, malls, grocery stores, barber shops, etc. where people congregate and meet) near or in neighborhoods. This means fewer chance encounters since you have to plan to both go out in a car to meet. You have to find a friend then say "let's go get drinks at 13:00 across town at this place" instead of just happening to walk into the small neighborhood grocery and seeing each other. It's even worse in the exurbs where large housing developments have been created with no amenities nearby, sometimes within upwards of an hour drive! There are a number of good books on how the built environment affects our social life, if you're interested. It's not specifically about suburbs but "Palaces for the People" by Eric Klinenberg is one of my favorites that covers a lot of this sort of thing.
- randomdata 2y ago
  What makes that different from rural areas, where social communities thrive?
  - SamWhited 2y ago
    It likely depends on the rural area. In the middle of North East GA where I grew up, it's about the same, social isolation is becoming a huge problem because you're forced to drive long distances and plan ahead to meet with people. In another small town right up the street they have a thriving main street area and the housing is mostly built around that with the exception of outlying farms. It's a smaller town, but chances are you can walk over to the square and everything you need is right there, so they have a much more vibrant feeling town even though it's smaller. I'm not expert though, that's just my suspicion for why they're different having grown up in the area.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > social isolation is becoming a huge problem It is interesting that you say it is becoming a problem. Why was it not a problem in a past? > It's a smaller town Towns are usually considered urban. I was imagining actual, by definition, rural. Living in a small town (~2,000 people) right now, I'd say it has less of a social community that the rural areas I've lived in previously. Still nothing that should leave you feeling isolated, but there is certainly less of a "automatically friends with everyone" vibe. Granted, my rural experience is strictly in agricultural areas where everyone are farmers, which gives common ground on which to "automatically" become friends. If nothing else, you can talk about farming. Is that the problem with the suburbs? That the people there can't find common ground on which to build friendships?
mnky9800n 2y ago
There is no pub to walk to, grocery store to walk to, no shared public space for walking and cycling to places, there’s no concept of being in a space shared with others. It’s that you simply don’t see people unless you choose it. If you live in the city you learn quickly to be around others. At least that’s my experience.
- randomdata 2y ago
  Rural areas tend to have strong social communities, though, despite all of those same, if not exacerbated, conditions. Based on several adjacent discussions it seems not that the suburbs cause isolation, but that those who prefer to live in isolation are more likely to choose to live in the suburbs – presumably because it offers the isolation they seek. Even if an individual in the suburbs does not wish for isolation, if everyone else there does that limits the social possibilities.
  - mnky9800n 2y ago
    I have lived in rural Vermont and that was only true if you were the right kind of rural Vermonter. There were plenty of those who didn’t belong and never would with no alternative they might find in the city.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      I think it is fair to say that large cities are more likely to cater to those who are unique, but large cities return to the same problem again: Everything is far away and you have to get into vehicle (granted, it might be a publicly operated one) to reasonably be able to engage with it. The chances of your neighbour being of the same unique blend that you seek is no greater in the city than in the country. At which point it really makes no difference if you physically reside within city limits or live in a suburban/rural area as the time and effort to get to the places that cater to your particular niche approaches being about the same in all cases. In fact, in my experience, it is often easier to access the amenities of a large city when you don't live in it!

> It causes social isolation. What is it about suburbs in particular that causes social isolation?

kaicianflone 2y ago

No third places

kaicianflone 2y ago
https://theweek.com/culture-life/third-places-disappearing https://theweek.com/culture-life/third-places-disappearing
- randomdata 2y ago
  Are they disappearing, or are they actually becoming more prevalent, dividing the population and leaving few people around to support each third space? A third place needs to more than a place – it also needs people. I can think of 10s, maybe even hundreds, of third paces I could theoretically go to within a short distance. None of them particularly appealing, though, because they don't have enough people to create an engaging environment. If these third places consolidated their efforts, seeing most of them disappear to focus on one third place, there is a much greater chance that the single community would thrive. Combined, it could be huge, but so long as they each try to go at it alone...

iambateman 2y ago

The default suburban life leads toward a comfortable kind of solitary confinement. Someone who lives in a “single family home” equipped with air conditioning, a privacy fence, a big screen TV, a garage door opener, and the internet will tend toward isolation because all of those technologies make aloneness easier. The reader may point out that many people are isolated in big cities too. This is true – if an adult has decided to be alone, they can be. But in the city, one's lack of social connection is more often felt whereas a suburban home can diminish the effect, like ibuprofen taken for a headache.

randomdata 2y ago
How does that meaningly differ from rural homes, which do not have the isolation problem? Rural areas have the strongest social communities I have ever seen.
- zknow 2y ago
  I've noticed rural communities tend to have more extended family and larger families which helps a lot. Besides less different types of work.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    That's fair. Also a lot of "our great-grandparents were friends, so I implicitly trust that we are also friends". But what about the suburbs destroys that? Or, would it be more accurate to say that those who already don't have connections have a preference towards living in suburbs? Perhaps that is where they feel most at home?
    - throwaway0123_5 2y ago
      I don't think there is some special physical property absent in suburbs and present in rural areas that contributes to social isolation in the former but not the later. Rather I think it has to do with the kind of person that lives in each place. My grandparents and cousins live in a rural area. They all have ancestry in that town going back to the early 1900s. So do most of their neighbors. Families live next to (where "next to" admittedly might be a few miles depending on how rural) each other for generations. This is obviously conducive to strong intra and inter-family social networks. People who live in cities and in suburbs on the other hand seem to be far more transient. They move around for school or careers and aren't tied down to one place. I grew up in suburbs in three different cities. New neighbors frequently moved in and out of all three places, and the street where I lived from aged 5-10 has only two "original" families left. For those people, the built environment in suburbs being conducive to social isolation (in American suburbs anyways) becomes a problem. The nearest grocery store, restaurant, or interesting venue of any kind is likely 30+ minutes away if you try to walk, and the walk is likely to be dangerous due to poor pedestrian infrastructure and poor public transit. There are few accessible third places in which to meet people, it takes a lot more intentional effort. This is even more of a problem if you're a kid, as you're now entirely dependent on your parents and their car to meet friends or go to places where you can meet friends. I moved from upper-middle class suburbs to Washington D.C. The difference in how many people you meet who you might want to be friends with, and in how easy it is to get places where you want to go (especially without a car) is night and day. Will suburbs ever be as good as cities in this regard? Probably not. But mixed-use zoning and returning to "streetcar suburbs" would probably go a long way (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/27/in-praise-of-streetcar-suburbs https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/27/in-praise-of-s...). There's also other reasons to oppose current suburb development patterns. Suburban sprawl is highly inefficient in many ways. It takes dramatically more infrastructure to serve the same number of people that you could in a denser area. Roads, power lines, pipes for drinking water and sewage, etc. The taxes that many suburbs pay don't cover these expenses and suburbs end up being subsidized by people living in denser areas. Rural areas also suffer from this to some extent, but rural areas are a necessity for society to run, hosting farms and other resource extraction activities, so subsidizing some costs is fair. People in rural areas are also more likely to be self-sufficient, having their own septic tank, private well, etc., and aren't offloading their costs to society.

SamWhited 2y ago

At least in the U.S. (and likely elsewhere) the design of the suburbs encourages neighborhoods with individual houses and very little walk able space (occasionally there are sidewalks or parks in the richer areas, but developments may be large and they're not evenly spaced throughout). Exclusionary zoning in the U.S. has also reduced the number of "third spaces" (coffee shops, malls, grocery stores, barber shops, etc. where people congregate and meet) near or in neighborhoods. This means fewer chance encounters since you have to plan to both go out in a car to meet. You have to find a friend then say "let's go get drinks at 13:00 across town at this place" instead of just happening to walk into the small neighborhood grocery and seeing each other. It's even worse in the exurbs where large housing developments have been created with no amenities nearby, sometimes within upwards of an hour drive! There are a number of good books on how the built environment affects our social life, if you're interested. It's not specifically about suburbs but "Palaces for the People" by Eric Klinenberg is one of my favorites that covers a lot of this sort of thing.

randomdata 2y ago
What makes that different from rural areas, where social communities thrive?
- SamWhited 2y ago
  It likely depends on the rural area. In the middle of North East GA where I grew up, it's about the same, social isolation is becoming a huge problem because you're forced to drive long distances and plan ahead to meet with people. In another small town right up the street they have a thriving main street area and the housing is mostly built around that with the exception of outlying farms. It's a smaller town, but chances are you can walk over to the square and everything you need is right there, so they have a much more vibrant feeling town even though it's smaller. I'm not expert though, that's just my suspicion for why they're different having grown up in the area.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > social isolation is becoming a huge problem It is interesting that you say it is becoming a problem. Why was it not a problem in a past? > It's a smaller town Towns are usually considered urban. I was imagining actual, by definition, rural. Living in a small town (~2,000 people) right now, I'd say it has less of a social community that the rural areas I've lived in previously. Still nothing that should leave you feeling isolated, but there is certainly less of a "automatically friends with everyone" vibe. Granted, my rural experience is strictly in agricultural areas where everyone are farmers, which gives common ground on which to "automatically" become friends. If nothing else, you can talk about farming. Is that the problem with the suburbs? That the people there can't find common ground on which to build friendships?

mnky9800n 2y ago

There is no pub to walk to, grocery store to walk to, no shared public space for walking and cycling to places, there’s no concept of being in a space shared with others. It’s that you simply don’t see people unless you choose it. If you live in the city you learn quickly to be around others. At least that’s my experience.

randomdata 2y ago
Rural areas tend to have strong social communities, though, despite all of those same, if not exacerbated, conditions. Based on several adjacent discussions it seems not that the suburbs cause isolation, but that those who prefer to live in isolation are more likely to choose to live in the suburbs – presumably because it offers the isolation they seek. Even if an individual in the suburbs does not wish for isolation, if everyone else there does that limits the social possibilities.
- mnky9800n 2y ago
  I have lived in rural Vermont and that was only true if you were the right kind of rural Vermonter. There were plenty of those who didn’t belong and never would with no alternative they might find in the city.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    I think it is fair to say that large cities are more likely to cater to those who are unique, but large cities return to the same problem again: Everything is far away and you have to get into vehicle (granted, it might be a publicly operated one) to reasonably be able to engage with it. The chances of your neighbour being of the same unique blend that you seek is no greater in the city than in the country. At which point it really makes no difference if you physically reside within city limits or live in a suburban/rural area as the time and effort to get to the places that cater to your particular niche approaches being about the same in all cases. In fact, in my experience, it is often easier to access the amenities of a large city when you don't live in it!