Is this really more of a severe problem in America than in South Korea or Japan? How important is population density factor into ones loneliness? Yes the US is large, Some googling on Urban Alienation turned this up though, food for though: http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/
I really think the main culprit of American Loneliness is piss-poor urban planning. There are so many areas of urban sprawl where instead of putting the store fronts directly on the side-walk and having communal parking garages behind the stores, each store or public place gets its own half-mile of desert pavement between the sidewalk and the destination, with a patchwork of green barricades thrown in for good measure.
Small shops can't stay in business because there is no foot-traffic to support them. There is no ambient sense of community because it is a generic pavement desert for cars rather than a community for humans. You can't discover places in these communities, the store has to be gigantic and you make a conscious decision
Living in a city with zero urban planning is like living in no city at all -> no community -> no feeling of belonging.
If everyone simply told their city council to approve no more building permits unless the store-front was on the sidewalk American Lonliness would be solved. Otherwise of course we will be lonely, because we aren't even living in real cities meant to be used by people.
I really think the main culprit of American Loneliness is piss-poor urban planning. There are so many areas of urban sprawl where instead of putting the store fronts directly on the side-walk and having communal parking garages behind the stores, each store or public place gets its own half-mile of desert pavement between the sidewalk and the destination, with a patchwork of green barricades thrown in for good measure.
Small shops can't stay in business because there is no foot-traffic to support them. There is no ambient sense of community because it is a generic pavement desert for cars rather than a community for humans. You can't discover places in these communities, the store has to be gigantic and you make a conscious decision
Living in a city with zero urban planning is like living in no city at all -> no community -> no feeling of belonging.
If everyone simply told their city council to approve no more building permits unless the store-front was on the sidewalk American Lonliness would be solved. Otherwise of course we will be lonely, because we aren't even living in real cities meant to be used by people.