It's because the standard way we develop neighborhoods does not lend itself to people being able to leave their homes. My parents just bought a condo in a newer development in a rapidly growing metro, and while they can walk around their complex, there's no sidewalks to anywhere else, and even if there were, the city zoning laws means there's no corner cafe, bakery, or small-scale store like there really ought to be. It's so stupid and such an easy thing to fix: just require that each adjacent complex have a right of way and sidewalks and zone for cottage businesses every few blocks. Makes everything more pleasant, and people have something to do when they leave their house without having to get into the car.
EDIT:
This [1] is the kind of neighborhood i'm talking about. Growing rapidly, cheap housing -- great, but they're setting themselves up for real heartbreak because the complexes don't connect. To walk to the park that's not even a mile away requires walking on a huge, busy road. All they need to have to make it not feel dangerous is a dirt path and a required gate between complexes. That's it. [2]
I'm honestly not sure why we think this kind of development is even normal. Roads really ought to connect. It also makes the traffic so much worse. I live two miles from downtown Portland and my street outside my house gets significantly less traffic than my parents.
I fully expect to move my parents somewhere near us as they age. It's just not possible for them to leave the house when they get older without having to drive, whereas older people in my grid-based, sidewalk neighborhood can walk for miles and achieve their entire life.
[2] Meanwhile, our park is technically farther away (about a mile) and we walk there almost everyday and know all the neighbors down the street. We just went to a party at one of the neighbor's homes and the only relation we have is that we wave at each other as their kids play in the yard and mine ride their bikes to the park. I want to leave the house half the time because I have friends outside. That's all you need.
Indeed, this is a saddening development. Especially as people get older and need to interact with people they know socially on a frequent basis.
This reminds me of one of the best cities I’ve ever been on, Brasília. Literally every block is build to be walkable as a small condo and have its own cottage businesses like the so-called “padarias” (Brazilian bakeries), grocers, etc. And all condos/blocks have some amenities like multi-sports court. A unique feature in Brazil (perhaps in all of Latin America) is that all buildings are walkable in the ground floor, meaning that it’s all open spaces and you can actually see kids playing in their building or region. Very lovely.
We're building sprawling deserts of joy. Rising energy costs and changing mores could turn those metaphorical deserts literal as people would rather live close to city centres; there might not be someone to buy the house you thought was a surefire investment.
This matches a number of the new apartment complexes in my area - no walking trails, amenities, or anything else accessible from the complex itself. Often you can't actually go to _anywhere_ from the complex, as the roads from it don't even have sidewalks.
"but that's space we could be putting more apartments! who cares if they need a car to get anywhere, we rent more parking spaces that way." - apartment manager somewhere, probably
Flip the script a little if you really want to understand this. Play the role of a developer and go do some rudimentary math on what you can afford to build at what risk. Use ChatGPT to help you with the parts you don't understand.
There's no moustache twirling. Location is the number one thing people want. If amenities made the cut and could be done, they'd be done. But after parking minimums, setbacks, and massing requirements you lose a lot of sq. ft., every bit of which you need to make the money work.
Try it with a well-known locality since the laws for those are public enough to be scraped.
And yet the commercial property developers in my town (a state capital) are perennially among the richest people in the town, and are all best friends with the planning commissioners that supposedly oversee them (as in regularly on Facebook at social and school events and hanging out and vacationing together).
You make it sound like they're barely scraping by and so the reason there's no amenities is that the local planners give them no option but to use every square foot for "maximizing value".
Its the opposite from the old/new developments I see.
Old apartment complex: A pool, a small gym, maybe some clubhouse one can rent. Maybe a dilapidated basketball court that last saw fresh paint in the 90s.
New apartment complex: A pool, a large gym, multiple clubhouse/lounge spaces, golf simulators, dog wash stations, dog parks/runs, multiple grilling/picnic areas, maybe even racquet ball courts, etc.
Depends where in the country, but in a huge number of places in the US we still have a housing shortage that's been occurring for decades now and extremely high costs. We need millions more units to catch up.
Yeah, so in my view, these sorts of developments became common in the 90s and 00s. The kids who grew up in them are going to have trouble socializing and not being lonely because to them, sitting at home all day is normal. They couldn't do anything else as kids. They had to remain inside. Unless mom or dad could drive them some place, they had no where to go.
> the city zoning laws means there's no corner cafe, bakery, or small-scale store like there really ought to be
So basically we actively reject the lifestyle of European towns, or the life style of early 20th century of the US. I wonder why that is good for the city in any way.
How long are people really supposed to hang out at a corner cafe, bakery, or store? Don't these businesses want turnover? Libraries, rec centers, churches, parks, dance halls, and bars are where people are expected to spend time. Also, although I see little direct of screen time in the full report, large TVs, huge customizable option set, everything streaming on-demand, online shopping, immersive games, addictive internet behavior, etc., it does suggest these are at play, and could account for the hour and forty minutes lost.
> How long are people really supposed to hang out at a corner cafe, bakery, or store? Don't these businesses want turnover?
Before modern Starbucks popularized a hostile environment, it was common to work for half a day in a coffee shop.
They tended to be a lot bigger, have more and more comfortable furniture, and were fine if you quietly worked away and bought a coffee / snack every now and then.
But Starbucks ~05 to now is basically a microcosm of the ways America went awry.
Most coffee shops and restaurant were empty 3/4th of the day before people brought laptops you’d see people playing chess or reading books in these spaces. Laptops really mess with this business model because they don’t want to leave as they get busy.
On the plus side, people who don't leave order multiple drinks and the overpriced food, people working tend to like keeping the caffeine buzz going, and for every customer who settles in with a laptop or a book there will be many more who take their coffee out or just use the drive thru and never step inside. The mix of customer types is what makes it possible to keep a coffee shop open.
A beloved product, IPO'd or purchased by professional PE, invariably becomes worse as the new owners realize love can be exchanged for a worse experience and more profitable enterprise.
If you want to build something and have it stay good, never expose it to the harsh light of economic min/maxing.
Tragedy of the commons. A coffee shop near me started sweeping people out after an hour because almost every table and chair was taken by individual people on laptops for hours at a time. It’s unfair to people like me who want a quick cup with someone.
Does that means that kicking people out after an hour is unfair to people who want to have a long cup with someone? I don't really see it as a question of fairness.
Not every business has to cater to everyone's preference. I suspect that they started shooing people because they found (or at least suspected) that kicking out your customers made them more money. The laptop people will just find somewhere else to get their coffee.
The best coffee shops I been to have multiple spaces set aside for people with different needs, including busy main areas and out of the way quiet areas, a mix of small and long tables plus chairs and couches, books/board games/pool tables available, conference/gaming rooms, etc.
I've seen coffee shops like that get so popular that they required a cover charge on Friday nights and weekends. You're not likely to find those kinds of spaces on every other street corner like a Starbucks but the versatility is really nice.
What about hanging out in your front yard? Corner bakeries, cafes, etc give you a place to go with your friend, not necesarily a place to lounge (although some are okay with that too). Lots of people don't care and like the crowd because it makes it seem popular. Very common with little coffee shops. For our local shop, I know the owner and the family, and while I wouldn't presume to go in there and not order anything, I also doubt they'd really care if I didn't continuously order.
Bakery and store is where you go to buy stuff and occasionally meet neighborhoods. Cafe is like a bar really, most can function as cafe during the day and you get beer in the evening. I have to say, library in my city was always a silent space. You could have smaller churn meetups in city neighborhood tho.
Bars, dancing halls, rec centers and cafes makes more sense in the walking distance rather then somewhere where you go by car.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but I wonder if these trends in staying home are also true in more walkable areas. Of course the ability to go out is a factor, but suburban sprawl is not a new trend in the US either.
>> I mentioned it elsewhere, but I wonder if these trends in staying home are also true in more walkable areas.
I think it depends on zoning and mandates. I used to live in Brooklyn on 4th Ave and it is super-walkable. However, numerous 12story buildings featured a parking garage as their ground-level facade, rather than cafes, offices, etc. This leads to an empty industrial feeling that makes people run away from such spaces.
To be fair, many did have clinics or dentist offices also, but -- it would be nice to have places where people want to go -- gyms, cafes, grocery stores, restaurants, etc.
In "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", Jacobs pushes for a variety -- and I can now truly appreciate that having lived in the above areas. The above areas may be walkable but dont attract people to walk there. They also become ghostly at night and people feel unsafe walking there. I could imagine the entire atmosphere changing with restaurants and cafes.
I think there's a been a substantial change in the kinds of suburban developments. I grew up in suburbia but it was still significantly more walkable than the sorts of developments I see today, especially in areas where housing is cheap and they're building a lot.
My suburb growing up was grid based and you could bike to the grocery store. The part of Portland I live in is technically a suburb (started out that way, but eventually merged into the core). However, based off of historical records, the basic pattern of businesses has remained the same, so even when it was fully suburban, you could always walk to the park , coffee shop, bakery (some have even been here the full 100 years or so the neighborhood's been around).
Whereas, due to zoning and HOAs, I just can't see where those would possibly develop in the example I gave above. It's illegal.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I feel the pattern changed sometime in the 90s and aughts.
Yes, the automobile enabled this change, though I think it happened earlier than you imagine (more like the 50s and 60s). Those older style suburbs are known as "streetcar suburbs" [1].
That's what happens when thanks to Henry Ford every middle class American could afford a car by 1940. It took Europeans another 30 years.
(My brother lives in a 1926 apartment that is 10 minute walk from the beach. Although that privilege does come with a 460k price tag. Nobody had a car back then unless they were millionaires so the entire area was built with trams, bicycles and walking in mind).
The car affordability can't explain it alone, since European cities/towns don't really suffer from these problems. Density is higher, sidewalks are everywhere and American style suburbs are quite rare.
(OTOH there are other problems, many people live in tiny apartments)
I was born and raised in Chicago, still live here, easily one of the most walkable places in the country. Most of the people I know spend most of their time at home. I think the two biggest causes are the loss of third places/religion and the ever expanding amount of content available on the internet. Theres just less and less reason to go outside every year.
I grew up in Vancouver, WA, and while I had the same complaint that youre sharing here, it's possible that clark county is on the far end of the bell curve. I've lived in various cities and towns across king county for the last 15 years, and I've yet to come across a city with homes that are anywhere near as isolated as the ones in clark county.
The article has nothing to do with that. It's looking at the development over the past 19 years. This "car centric cities" criticism is beginning to get really old here on HN.
Why is it getting old? I go out way more today living in a walkable area than I or my parents did growing up in the suburbs. It's just reality, and the data show that.
There's also substantial differences in suburbs, and I don't think it has to do with 'car centric cities'.
The suburb I grew up in was car centric but was still much better than the kids of developments i see today. Things are not black and white and exist on a spectrum. Being skeptical of modern subdivision-based development does not mean thinking everywhere needs to be Manhattan. It just means that we should think about adding a cafe, a park, a corner store, a library, etc, and adding things to make it easier when you don't have a car.
I am not, and have never been anti-car. If you look through my post history, you'll even see me criticize attempts by various states to limit the sale of internal combustion engine cars. I own a car and drive it when I need to. I also walk and bike and scooter and wahtever
it's annoying because in many suburbs the problem isn't cars, it's just zoning! all of the problems described in the grandparent, like the lack of a dirt path between complexes, no small stores in the area -- these are ZONING problems, not car problems!
we can keep our detached homes and cars and cozy suburbs and still have a convenience store in walking distance, I'm sure of it, if local zoning laws allow it
but this subreddit, er I mean website, might as well be r/fuckcars whenever the topic arises
Zoning and car-centric design are intimately connected, though. A walkable suburb just can’t support the number of cars that a typical western suburb supports today.
If you loosen zoning, what you’re going to end up with is denser development and less room for cars.
Streetcar suburbs are an example of this. You have more room than living in the core of the city, but you don’t have enough room for 3 F150s for the family.
The streetcar suburbs in my area have larger lots than the new suburbs they are building on the edge of town. Back in those days e*erpone had a garden and so lots were bigger.
of coures how the lot is built is different but it isn't size.
You are correct. Technically it is a zoning problem. But such zoning only became feasible after cars went mainstream. There are many self perpetuating elements of exclusionary zoning and car dependency.
I think people are adopting a bunker mentality with a constant advertising and propaganda assault that the modern Brain is subjected to.
Especially on the right, but also on the left, every fringe issue is framed as a grave threat to your existence. News media's long stoked the paranoia of whites as they enter a majority minority country of catastrophic fear of minorities.
And the mobile phone was probably the tipping point of a typical human being's tolerance for digital intrusion and ubiquitous advertising.
I honestly think the mental stability of the entire nation has started to go downhill since the introduction of social networking enhanced by mobiles. The statistics of adolescence and depression certainly back that up, and I think we'd be fools to think that adults are immune to it as well.
In modern convenience-based shopping and services, coming from silicon valleys era of shut-in programmers producing apps that enable their shut-in lifestyle are the final aspect
You know it really is amazing how Japan seems to be about 10 years ahead of the US in social responses to technology. The socially withdrawn otaku is the archetype of the end digital capitalism's ideal consumer.
> Preliminary analysis indicates that time at home is associated with lower levels of happiness and less meaning
I wonder if this is something that needs a closer look. I enjoy spending time at home. I'd rather be at home than pretty much anywhere else. Even before the pandemic I felt this way. The pandemic itself was like a vacation.
I think it depends a lot on both the individual and how the time is spent at home. For folks who have engaging hobbies and other activities that lend themselves to home-based practice, it's entirely different than those for whom time at home is basically being shut-in and reclusive with little mental & emotional stimulation.
> time at home is basically being shut-in and reclusive with little mental & emotional stimulation
Me! That's me! I can barely even get to a mere 24 hours at home without feeling stir-crazy, and more than that you might as well dump ants all over my skin.
But I'm very aware of other people (including family members I know) who are perfectly fine with days spent going nowhere…perhaps rarely even leaving their room. It makes no sense to me, but clearly this issue is very personality-dependent.
It's an important point. To use a nutrition metaphor, there are many new easily-available empty calories at home these days, that weren't previously available. The web. Online gaming. Social media. Streaming.
Yet venturing outside into a social environment delivers a higher minimum level of nutritional value. You see other breathing humans, experience empathy and nature, and move your body.
And critically... exercise being comfortable with being uncomfortable. (Aka, life)
One of the quickest paths to crazy these days is becoming too comfortable in a stable, static, self-reinforcing life. You don't get any feedback that you're drifting pretty far off the median. (I mean, has anyone actually seen the Earth's curvature...?)
Reality has a well-known bias towards reinforcing common sense and reminding you when you're wrong.
...who will cheerfully explain to you that you're unhappy, your hobbies are empty, your choices as wrong, and how much happier you'd be if you'd just value what they value and like what they like and stop being you and start being them.
This is my own personal experience and I'd like to preface this by saying that I hate the fact this is the case, but this was true for me.
I was an introvert, or thought I was, for a long time. A homebody.
But going out, and just being around other people, has legitimately improved my quality of life by an order of magnitude. It's very strange but I'm just... happier. It's like working out. You just do it, and then everything is better.
I don't get anxious anymore. I like myself a lot more. I actually look forward to tomorrow, which used to never happen.
My point is that if Alice has what she wants, Bob will not convince her that she doesn't by explaining that she ought to want what Bob wants, which she doesn't have or want. Especially if what Bob wants, and Alice doesn't, is for Alice to be social with Bob.
"You don't live the way I want to" is an observation, not an argument for anyone to change their values or their life.
As a pretty serious introvert who may or may not have had depression during undergrad, my experience has been that the time I most need other people and social situations is exactly when I least feel like I want that.
Which has made me suspicious of introversion as a local maximum that nonetheless leaves one depressed.
Humans don't seem to be built to self-regulate, 24x7, forever. At some point we go off the rails, and other humans (and/or nature) are a good way to kick things back to normal.
(And yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm not a secret extrovert. It can be exhausting being around strangers when I'm down, but sometimes you need to jump off the waterfall and put on that smile that becomes real)
> my experience has been that the time I most need other people and social situations is exactly when I least feel like I want that.
I'm conflicted. I think I get what you're saying, but it doesn't seem to be an argument against bulatb's point, in that both can be true.
It's conceivable for me to want to feel like you don't want social interactions and pursue non-directly-social endeavors (think building something, learning an instrument, whatever) without actually being in need of social interaction.
I think the point isn't that you should self-regulate 24x7, forever, but to do the social thing on your own terms, not on other people's schedule.
Maybe it's a question of quantity. If you only ever do things alone at home and never go out in society, then perhaps there is an issue. It reminds me of alcoholism: wanting to have a drink and saying you're not an alcoholic doesn't mean you're one. It's a question of degree.
For me, staying at home during the pandemic did feel like a vacation, but it doesn't feel like that anymore. I've reasoned that the difference between spending lots of time at home now vs. the pandemic is that during the pandemic the standards for socializing and doing anything were so low, it was like a weight off. With things being closed and social distancing, it was not expected of you to really do anything. You could excuse poor social habits.
Now that things are back to normal, staying at home too much and not socializing as much as pre-pandemic, feels like wasted potential, and I can't chalk it up to everything being shut down and people not being able to get together.
The pandemic finally provided an acceptable excuse for not wanting to go out and do stuff. I could just stay home 24/7 and nobody would question it--it was glorious. Prior to COVID, I'd cave in and agree to go out, wallflower there for some time to be polite, and leave as soon as I knew it wouldn't offend people.
Now, post-pandemic, I simply stopped caring about what other people "question." That's their problem. Thanks to WFH, I can (and do) stay at home for weeks. I've got everything I need here at home and finally feel no external pressure to go out and do social.
It's also great for costs: I put 3,000 miles on my car in the last 12 months, compared to averaging 10,000 per year prior to the pandemic.
That’s interesting. I’m very introverted I think. Being social when I would rather not (which is most of the time) makes me very miserable. To the point of being depressed.
In the most extreme acute situations I have broken down to tears purely from over-stimulation from socializing. Specifically when attending conferences for work. (I am an introvert). After a day of intense socializing I will go back to a hotel room and cry, while other people go to after parties.
As far as depression, drugs, etc. I haven't been under this pressure chronically so I can't speak from personal experience.
That said, I suspect that for introverts in even the most extreme chronic social pressures it would be more feasible for them to escape to some quiet place to recharge, than it would be for an extrovert who has no social connection living in isolation to find sufficient connection to recharge. In theory, it's far more practical to manifest solitude than it is to manifest a party.
Crying sometimes yes, also having sleep problems before social gatherings for example.
Drugs no, although I did tend to numb myself during social interactions with alcohol (not drinking any alcohol anymore, but also have reduced social interactions).
I‘m not saying loneliness cannot be terrible, don’t get me wrong. I guess involuntary anything can be terrible.
I think it can be a cycle. As in, the less you do something the more anxiety you have towards it. I think forcing yourself into uncomfortable situations and turning those into routine can help anxiety.
HN is full of people with a) probably decently good homes and b) a high level of self-motivation on work and hobbies. I suspect sentiment here doesn't generalize well to the population at large.
I believe the stats are more like mid-30s. So been in a software career for a decade and above-average interest in technology, a majority not even in SV... ya, most HN in US probably own homes.
I don't think the quality of the home factors in, but I think you make an excellent point about HN'ers being highly self-motivated in terms of personal projects.
They're less likely to be spending their time at home just watching endless TV or Instagram scrolling.
So I think you're right, it doesn't generalize to the larger population at all.
Haha, just like vitamin D. Everything is associated with going outside, but where is the causality? Almost any negative event, from financial to relational setbacks to a global pandemic make people spend more time indoors and will also have other negative effects, but you can't always cure it with vitamin D.
Many people mention the loss of third places as a contributing factor in these threads. Lower church attendance, the death of shopping malls, difficulties in accessing nice parks, etc. I am sympathetic to this idea. However, it is a very US-centric point of view as well. Many countries don’t have car-centric suburban sprawl that North America has. So I’m wondering if places seen as more walkable have the same trends of time spent at home, and if those trends are as strongly tied to quality of life problems.
The thing is the study covers 2003 to today. People talking about dramatic changes in suburban life but neighborhoods haven't changed much at all since 2003.
What has changed is home entertainment has gotten more diverse. People stream movies more often than they go to the theater. People download the latest video games instead of going to game store. People stream instead of going to Blockbuster video. There is also a greater variety of food delivery options (Uber Eats, etc). You can have groceries delivered. People buy more of their purchases online like on Amazon and have it overnighted to their door.
All these conveniences remove reasons to be out and about. In 2003 you still had to leave the house for most of these things.
I am European, lived in a few cities across a few countries. I have to say that it's very convenient to blame car-centric design for everything bad, but in reality, there is some deeper decay spreading through all developed societies. In my opinion there are two reasons for this. First, we form friendships of need: there are people to whom we're nice because we know we'll need their help one day. For a farmer it's better not to have an argument with the only guy in the village who owns a combine harvester, and especially not during the harvesting season. But nowadays literally the easiest way to live is to be a shut-in and just eat microwave food. We don't need friendships anymore, as in "having friends doesn't raise material standard of life". Second, we form friendships of pleasure: we talk to people that are essentially useless, but spending time with them just feels good for one reason or another. Recently we turned up individualism to the maximum which means that it's pretty much impossible to meet a person who has similar lifestyle, hobbies, and experiences, therefore could be a pleasant conversation partner. As a result, we just don't talk one to another because we don't enjoy it anymore.
I really don't know what could be done here. I'm starting to think that this is simply a new form of environmental pressure that homo sapiens needs to adapt to. Don't fight the change, find ways to thrive in it.
With adults it's more complicated, but the car-centric culture has a pretty clear negative effect on children. Esp. now with fewer kids, helicopter parenting, moral panic over sexual abuse etc. Kids can't meet other kids just like that, are pretty much under constant supervision.
I think the one underlying problem society faces that would absolutely improve our lives in every way is to go back to the 1 income household model, but still maintain the possibility of dual income households. (don't force the other not to work as in the past, but encourage them not to double dip)
As much as feminists hate it, when mothers were at home we were all much healthier. Now we just need to let fathers or mothers stay home and we'll reap such insane benefits.
How? Idk. Single income families get a tax relief or something.
> when mothers were at home we were all much healthier
1950s America is never coming back. It was a uniquely dominant time for the US geopolitically so of course a lot of indicators looked good. That doesn’t mean mothers staying home was the cause of it any more than men wearing suits to the office was the cause of it. Single income households have never been the norm.
Second, what you’re suggesting doesn’t make practical sense. Men with college degrees tend to marry women with college degrees. So since neither is likely to make substantially more than the other, it makes sense for both to work.
And that’s how things have been for centuries. Thousands of years even, across cultures. Women and men both worked. Usually farming, but still working. Single income household was a historical aberration.
>Single income households have never been the norm.
???
Yes they have. The children worked for the family but if there were any kids or birthing going on, which there usually was, the mother stayed home and worked (managed the estate for the richer folk) at home. Way before the 1950s.
I don't think you understand that women and men working was definitely not a normal thing for the last few hundred years. I'm not sure why you think that.
Single income earning households provided the children with access to their parents, and provided each parent with more free time to pursue their recreational "career". The father spent more time with colleagues or friends after work, the mother spent more time at home rather than working then rushing home to look after children.
>It sounds like you have this agenda of women staying at home and attach it to everything else.
No, I just attach it to what it makes sense for. And single income households make sense for third places very well. That's why third places flourished in the peak of this tradition.
>That's basically already the case because of progressive tax brackets.
Progressive tax brackets work against single income families? Do you mean combined tax declaring? I know the US is different to most of the world. But in most of the world income is a reflection of an individual not their family.
It is impossible to combine incomes in a single tax declaration in lots of parts of the world.
In the US, you have different tax status if you're married. There used to be a marriage "penalty" for dual income households because of progressive buckets (the combined income would push you into higher marginal rates). i.e. it would actually make sense to not officially get married for tax purposes. Trump mostly eliminated that, and now everything but the top marginal rate (above ~600k) has doubled thresholds when married.
However merely using progressive rates isn't enough; people see it as a penalty for getting married, not having a dual income. You'd want something like a credit for stay-at-home childcare to directly incentivize it. Right now, we actually subsidize working parents through childcare tax credits/deductions. We could at least make this more neutral by eliminating childcare incentives and increasing the child tax credit.
It's not about walkable or not. It's about cost. It's just that people started wanting (or were forced to) save their money on more important things at home while also working much more (two person income households are the norm now).
I'm not sure why people keep harking on about walkable this and walkable that. It doesn't matter. What matters is that people can't find value in what these places offer. It doesn't make sense to spend an hours wage on a single movie ticket anymore. Or buy a round of beers for a weeks groceries.
Yes, walkable cities have more people spending time at home.
The cities where people seem to do the most are ones where costs of staying at home approach going out, such as HK, SG, KR, JP, CN, etc. These places have huge pressure on staying at home and home-body cultures and yet their third places are some of the best in the world.
Looking at the paper, page 564 [0] has the component graph. Looks like the key contributors are (in order of contribution):
- Work-Related Activities (~35 minutes more at home)
- Sleeping - Assumed at Home (~25 minutes more at home)
- Leisure - Not On Computer (~22 minutes more at home)
What I find interesting, is the key differences in total time spent. There seems to be generally more time spent sleeping actually (~25 more minutes), and that time comes from a decrease in socializing (-~15 minutes), and transportation (commuting, -~20 minutes).
Overall, less commuting and more sleep seems good, but a decrease in socialization is not great, a full 1 3/4 hours a week decrease.
Further down they mention that a dominant factor here seems to be the shifting of many activities, including spending time with family and friends, to a home setting.
This certainly reflects my experience. Nowadays watching a movie doesn't mean going to a movie theater; it means watching a movie at a friend's house. Similar for gaming &c.
Lately I've seen a lot of lamenting the lack of third spaces, but I haven't personally felt too sad about this? When I was younger my friends and I would regularly meet for coffee and pie at a diner that was open late, or shoot darts at a cozy neighborhood bar. Nowadays those kinds of places seem to be all but gone. They've been replaced by Dining and Entertainment Concepts™ that cost too much to frequent with any regularity, and crank the music way too loud to permit real socialization. So we just get together to play Mario Kart instead.
Even if the cost were lower, home options have improved to make being at a location less worth it.
The gap between 1980s movie viewing and a theatre and 2024 movie viewing and a theatre has narrowed tremendously. The selection at home is far superior to the movie theatre now. Food delivery options have expanded well beyond Chinese and pizza. Sports viewing captures a better view than most seats.
Not to mention most people are going to shell out $$$ for a nice large TV. At that point, might as well spend a few extra $$ and buy a surround sound.
Maybe it's just me, but a lot of theaters set their volumes to LOUD. I've found it better to just watch movies at home (save for that rare movie you HAVE to watch in theaters, like Mad Max) and spend the remaining $ on building out my HT.
I was recently reflecting on how I love seeing live theater productions, but hate going to movie theaters to see movies. In principle it seems like they should be relatively comparable?
LOUD was definitely one of the first things I thought of. I don't feel like I need to bring ear plugs to make watching a play comfortable.
Intermissions are another. It's nice to have an opportunity to stand up and stretch my legs, maybe take a bathroom break, chat with my partner about the story so far, all without missing anything or bothering other people.
I think, though, that concessions are the other big one. Stage theaters don't have sticky floors, they don't reek of popcorn, you don't have the person behind you chewing with their mouth open so loudly you can somehow hear it above the aforementioned exceptionally loud volume, etc.
There are some “luxury” theaters that offer a better experience that really does rival watching movies at home, for different reasons.
Tickets aren’t much more than normal ($15 I believe). They have actual powered recliners so you can lean back most of the way to horizontal. They have trays that rotate over your waist to hold drinks and snacks (like an airplane, but bigger).
The nicest part is full food service. They have a full menu of cooked food, snacks, they run their own brewery so you can buy their beer, etc. They have an online food ordering system, and waiters bring it to your seat. They push people hard to order during the commercials so they’re mostly out of the theater during the movie.
No sticky floors, no stale popcorn smell, no 40 year old seats that smell like farts.
It is still dramatically too loud, especially that THQ intro that I can only describe as “a dick measuring contest with Klipsch”. I hate that with a passion; I’m already aware the speakers can get super loud, there’s really no reason to show me every damn time the movie starts.
Yeah, I can see this being something to splurge on once in a while. It's nice to trade dollars for convenience.
OTHO, everything you've mentioned can still be closely replicated at home, just start your movie after food gets delivered to your house and buy the snacks ahead of time. I have a recliner at home and the middle arm-drawer is full of snacks.
Yeah, but you've already got your friend circle, right?
With the socioeconomic-geographic mobility situation - people moving to get good jobs, better lifestyles, and increased quality of life may not. And there are of course regressive movers too, and probably people pursuing greener grass. They aren't going to have friends locally, workplace socializing is... Suboptimal. But in a society that increasingly verbalizes distaste for cold approach, and lacks — as you said a quiet socializing atmosphere (or even competition in such a sphere) there's little left. At least that's my experience.
As someone who moved a lot when they were younger, I'm not convinced that the problem there is access to spaces. It's that the Internet killed it. It reduced the quality of options through over-centralization. And even for the things the Internet didn't destroy, people no longer know how to find things without the help of Google, which then became useless for finding anything that isn't SEO-optimized content farm dreck.
A couple concrete examples: In 2005-ish, it was relatively easy to find monthly vegan potlucks in decently-sized towns. Larger ones might have many of them, with sort of a neighborhood focus. But after Meetup came out you saw a lot of consolidation where everyone would just sort of gravitate toward one of them, and the rest would die off. Chicago consolidated on one group that was organized by some friends of mine, and eventually got so big that it sort of collapsed under its own weight.
Chicago also used to have a bunch of smaller social groups for people learning various languages. That whole space eventually got absorbed by the Chicago Language Cafe, which then became so big that the venue needed to change from a reasonably-sized neighborhood pub to a large taproom in a converted industrial space. It was big, noisy, kind of inaccessible, and generally just a terrible place to get to know people - again due to Internet-fueled centralization.
By contrast, the knitting community tends to have groups organized by local yarn stores instead of through a massive centralized site like Facebook or Meetup. There are two within walking distance of my house. One of them played an essential role in rebuilding my social life when I moved to this neighborhood a few years back. The other I haven't really been to, per se, but they meet outside when the weather's nice and I'll stop and say hi if I happen to be passing by.
There are also numerous book clubs that meet at local book stores and libraries. There are probably at least ten within walking distance of my house, meeting at 3 or 4 different venues.
(edit: Unstated major premise here is that the diners and bars I was talking about in the previous post aren't actually good places to meet people in the first place, anyway. I view them more as places to spend time with friends you already have.)
How is fewer hours of socializing bad? Maybe if you're the kind of person that things you have to always be in a social setting but there's lots of us that just want alone time. If I could get even an hour less a day around anyone else that would be massive for my mental health.
Sure that's sometimes the case. But on the whole I would bet that the average American is more physically and emotionally isolated from their peers outside their immediate family or housemates than any other society in history.
The analogy that came to mind was to image advising firefighters to avoid drowning the cat when they're trying to put out a house fire.
I saw a lot of friendships fracture over COVID. One side was considered grandma murderers and the other side authoritarian who wanted to violently smash down people's non-essential jobs with the state,etc.
Was really hard to look at some people ever the same way again.
I’m spending too much time at home. Getting a lot done but serendipitous meetings and network building is definitely impacted. Time with my daughter is way up, before and after school.
We continue to lose our third spaces and a cohesive weekly ritual.
Even places that flourished because they were third spaces, like Starbucks, are dropping their seating to lower numbers to “get rid of the riff raff” or whatever.
The US is hilariously car-centric and when you’re not driving to go to work, there’s less of an urge to drive at any time; and, without walkability too, there’s even more loss in socializing.
"Third Space" - I admit, I should have capitalized it, since it's a proper noun. Third Space is a term coined to mean "not work nor home" and it was constructed during a time when WFH wasn't much of a thing. I use it because the term has a meaning that I intend to convey, not necessarily because it is a person's 'third main space' anymore.
It was the place people gathered. Church, the bar, local park, etc.
I'm just remarking that the role of the second place -- the office -- has also been diminished
Obviously you don't literally need the "second place" to have the "third place" -- but my point was that in-person interaction has been reduced even further, compared to the 1990's
Probably in 1990, few people would have predicted that the second place would also go away, at least for some affluent part of the population
When I read what you said, I processed it as needless pedantry, implying the "not work and home" should be called the Second Place now, throwing away the historical term and its meaning. If that's not the case, I apologize!
edit: as either needless pedantry, or an unfamiliarity with the Third [Sp/Pl]ace.
If I understand correctly, the article looks at data from 2003 to 2022. I’m not sure if I would call that long-term. What about 1922 to 2022 for example? Or even longer.
From what I understand from my parents and grandparents (I’m Gen X), they did quite a lot of stuff at home (i.e. meet friends, make music etc.)
Depends on what "going out" you mean. Restaurants - sure. But it seems plausible "a drink with colleagues after work" or "taking the kids to the library" or "going to a church activity" have all declined since the 1920s
My one grandfather was a carpenter with a workshop in his basement for example. I’m pretty sure “a drink with colleagues after work” was very rarely a thing for him.
Since removing the office from my life, I think I spend more time at home and more time in social spaces. Meaning, obviously I spend an extra eight hours a day at home, but I also go out more than I used to. When I worked in an office and commuted every day, I was so exhausted after work that I didn't want to do anything at night, and weekends were for recharging my battery for week to come. Now that I don't have to deal with that, I have a lot more motivation to go out and do fun stuff. The last five years have been the most active and happy time of my adult life. Probably not true for everyone, but true for me.
> Since removing the office from my life, I think I spend more time at home and more time in social spaces.
Same here, I got out a lot more when I was WFH, even when I was hybrid, I would get out even on weekday afternoons/evenings and socialize a bit.
But we were just dragged in office full time again, and it's once again rare for my to step outside after work. Now I'm more likely to be mental exhausted and spend my time napping, and consuming low energy entertaining before the next day.
It would help if being outside your house didn't mean spending a bunch of money...but in so many towns, that's all there is to find: Stores and restaurants, or a small yucky space on a bench between unsavory individuals with a drug habit.
I've seen the EU pubs, yes beer, but also coffee, some money is spent, but it's also open to prolonged conversations with neighbors without looks at you to leave right away.
Pet Peeve Time: Suburban neighborhoods these days typically only have a few entrances and exits... The effect of this is that unless you live in that neighborhood you won't enter it... This makes the streets quieter because you don't have any traffic passing through.. but it means that the major arteries have to have higher speeds... which I think isolates those neighborhoods.
You can see the Starbucks and grocery store from my cousin's house in some new suburbs they copy and paste around Texas, but it takes 30 minutes to walk to it because you have to snake back to the single entrance and then double back along the highway.
Unless you want to hop a fence and walk through a ditch, which I did, to get there in 3 minutes. And there's certainly no path along the highway to ride your bike.
So depressing especially once you've left the US and have seen how much better we could design our lives.
Quite neighborhoods from traffic is great. How does this isolate neighborhoods? Are you talking about business isolation? I think the article is about people spending more time at home.
(2) more entertainment/distraction from online stuff (movies, youtube, tech news, anime, streamers, ....)
(3) less office friends IMO partly because WFH. It's not that I'm spending time at home because I working, it's that I'm not going out with co-workers after work because we aren't starting the evening together like we used to.
(3b) Same as above, I'm already at home because WFH so it's an effort to "go out". Where as when it was WFO I'd already be "out" and then stay out somewhere before coming home.
Honestly I hate WFH. I know it's not coming back but "my" life is definitely worse because of WFH. I get that that's not true for many others.
That’s a factor, but there are other reasons. Saving money, more online entertainment, the general shift of things done in person are now online, and the dark patterns that keep us tied there.
A lot of formerly-enjoyable leisure activities outside the home have become a lot loss fun over the last few decades, too.
I know a lot of people in the US, and especially Canada, who've stopped going to restaurants for example. They now cost too much, the food is often mediocre or even outright bad, the service is often terrible, parking can be an issue in some cities, and it's generally a miserable experience. Cooking at home, even if takes more effort, ends up being comparatively more enjoyable.
That's also the case for movies, concerts, sporting events, exhibitions, and tourist venues. The tickets cost a lot relative to the enjoyment that's provided, and the pricing of food and drinks at such events can be astronomical. It has just become prohibitively expensive, especially for families, in addition to the other inconveniences (such as travel and parking) that can be associated with such events.
Even something as simple as going to a beach or a lake has become an awful experience in Canada. A problem at Canadian beaches has been foreigners defecating in the sand, rather than using the proper washroom facilities. Even when that isn't happening, such places can be quite crowded and nowhere near as fun as they were in the past when they were quieter.
I certainly can't blame people for not wanting to subject themselves to unpleasant experiences like those.
TBH though some of their other examples like sporting events and concerts are similarly tied to this. It's too expensive so nobody goes. Except the tickets still sell very well, and the stadiums are still largely full despite the higher concession and ticket prices.
Restaurants are too expensive, so everyone eats at home. And yet it's still hard to get reservations at many places and drive through lines circle the buildings.
Its stupid expensive to go to a Disney park these days. Think those places are empty?
lol, this so true and it keeps from visiting certain places. You just know it's going to be either circling around for 20 minutes or more trying to find parking, or parking really far away and then having to carry everything to the beach which may not even be possible to do on a single trip.
It's not even just about the cost though. I understand there's inflation and I like to help out the mom/pop restaurants survive. I'm willing to pay extra as long at the food is good, but what I notice (at some places) the turnover is very high leading to inconsistent food quality. Sometimes the food is great, then I go back 2 weeks later and the food is awful. There are some places I visit every month and I don't recognize anyone from the last time I was there and it's like that frequently. Can't keep paying high prices and then rolling the dice on whether the food is going to be good.
On the flip side, I've noticed that restaurants with great quality almost invariably have low turnover and those are the one I keep coming back to.
The options are also not cooking at home vs going to a restaurant. There is now food delivery. It used to be that the only way to get ribs was to make them yourself or go to a restaurant and order them. But now a majority of my rib consumption is via Uber Eats.
Movies used to be either in a theatre or a grainy home screen. The home screen is no longer grainy. Same with sports. You have to want the atmosphere to go to a game now.
Beaches being crowded indicates use, so I wouldn't put it into the category of restaurant visits, movies, and sports, which are all declining categories overall.
>Movies used to be either in a theatre or a grainy home screen. The home screen is no longer grainy.
Yes, and it's actually better than going to a theater in most ways:
1) You can pause and go to the bathroom when you need to, instead of holding it and being miserable and then rushing to the crowded bathroom when the credits roll, or going during the movie and missing important plot points.
2) You can rewind it if you missed some important dialog.
3) You can turn on subtitling so you can understand all the dialog, in case your hearing isn't great, or the actors are mumbling as is common these days.
4) You can eat/drink whatever you want, and it costs only whatever your grocery store charges.
5) You can pause the movie and talk to your friend/SO about it.
6) You can put your feet all the way up with your recliner.
7) You can adjust the volume to whatever you like, so you don't have to listen to it deafeningly-loud as is common in theaters now.
8) You don't have to deal with some stupid stranger using their phone or talking loudly to their friends, or having their head block your view.
9) You don't have to worry about a retired cop shooting you.
Movie theaters are probably going the way of the dodo. That doesn’t mean all outside activities are doomed. There’s just a higher bar. Entrepreneurs will have to focus on experiences people can’t get at home and make them accessible and affordable.
When my parents wanted to go out they did, and if I didn't want to I went down the creek, biked to the store, ran around the neighborhood with friends or whatever.
Now that earns a call from CPS and the parents are arrested and the kid may end up in a foster home which are common sources of abuse. So the family just stays home if the kids won't/can't be taken.
Anyone can call CPS as many times as they want and they will investigate, but no one is putting kids in foster care for biking to the store unless there are other things going on.
Are you saying this from personal experience? Because it sounds like you’re spreading an urban legend. Parents aren’t being investigated for kids biking around. CPS is way too busy for that.
I have relatives who work for CPS and if anything they are extremely lenient. And even if they take kids (when both parents can’t take care of the kid for example if they’re both heroin addicts) CPS will try to place with a relative, even out of state.
Sure if you ignore all the examples of it happening, after you so rudely lied about in your other reply where you claimed I cited no evidence despite citing sister comment that included articles such as children being taken into cps custody for walking home alone from the park.
Of course the genius is the kidnappers seal most these cases so their relatives can gaslight you about what happened, which is the icing on the cake.
Did you click through them? Only 1 sounds like a simple case of a parent letting kids out to play and CPS taking any action, and cites several people in that community claiming the CPS response as irresponsible. A few of those links are about a law specifically protecting parents rights to allow children to go play at a park unsupervised.
I've seen the narrative before and I agree that parenting attitudes have changed, but are there any stats/studies to show that kind of severe outcome has really become more common over the decades? (As opposed to simply more-feared.)
Most of the stats come from media outlets reporting on singular cases, and most of the articles on the subject are op-eds rather than scientific studies. It does seem to be more common, but overall data is unfortunately very hard to come by.
The plural of op-ed anecdotes is not objective data, but I can give you some jumping-off points:
Most the cases are sealed and depend on self reporting to the media by parents who do so at great threat of it impacting their secret proceedings, where you cannot even face the accuser.
By design they've made such studies effectively impossible from the outside. You don't even get a jury. So we're left with the odd anecdotes (as exemplified below in sister comment)from those who weren't successfully intimidated.
And that's the beauty. They can knowingly and willingly intimidate parents while screeching "but muh data, you can't prove it" laughing all along by design they've hidden the data in the shadows from inspection.
Yet surely the number of cases and broad outcomes are at least countable, even if identities and specifics are not available, right? For example, like in this piece [0]:
> That study was based on an analysis of [...] the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, which provides information on removals of children from home, terminations of parental rights and adoptions.
From there with a little searching I find this graph [1] showing various metrics from 2013-2022, which don't appear to show any freakish growth over that decade.
The rumours about some great number of foreigners pooping on the beach are generated to create resentment against a certain part of the population. They come from the same place as the "litter boxes in school washrooms" rumour from last summer. It isn't something that is actually happening.
That recent Wasaga Beach controversy didn't come as a surprise to me, since what was described there corresponded well enough with what I've heard from a number of other people in various places in Ontario, BC, and even other regions over the past eight to ten years.
What was described there is also not far off from the other unsanitary practices and obnoxious behaviour I've personally seen arise over that period of time.
Considering what I've heard and seen over the years, I don't have any reason to doubt those latest claims. They sound quite plausible.
also the increasing unavailability and/or inviability of third spaces where you can just hang out without having to spend a ton of money and deal with unpleasant environments
Anecdotally, several managers of such spaces tell me they are dying from lack of use.
I know my parents used them, but I never did. My friends used them a bit in university but stopped once they could afford something different. My local community centre's calendar has dried up, despite the space still being there. New neighborhoods sometimes don't even bother to build one now where I am, as there is no demand.
Nobody demolished the churches or the libraries, but they have rapidly aging user bases. Rotary and other similar social clubs would love younger members, but younger people don't want them.
As a consequence of the aging members, a lot of churches (particularly the less virulent mainstream protestant flavor) around here are merging congregations and getting demolished, to be replaced with more apartment buildings. Sometimes the parishioners will fight the good fight and get concessions made for affordable housing or other social goods.
I really don't think this is the reason. Third places are demand-driven, there are a lot of places where a $2 coffee buys you an afternoon. People aren't bothering.
> there are a lot of places where a $2 coffee buys you an afternoon.
But there also isn't much reason to go there if nobody else does. A weird network-effect thing, right? Like, I didn't bother walking down to the local Chilean bakery that serves food because it's mostly empty most of the time, and there's only so much I can chat to the folks working there about as a stranger who lives down the street.
They're not, they're made, just look at all the open streets projects happening all over the world, and specially in Europe. You need people activelly building these third places for them to exist and for people to go there.
The US is building most of its new homes in anti-social car controlled environments, where you can't walk anywhere, everything has to be done by driving. Kids can't just roam the neighborhoods anymore and when they do people start asking if they should call the cops.
We are sick and it doesn't look like there is much thinking in how to fix it.
I don't buy this - there are third spaces where you don't need to spend money and they've been here forever and are usually accessible. Churches, libraries, parks, certain community recreational facilities, gyms ,etc. It's not a lack of spaces, it's an issue of getting to those spaces.
I'm spending the summer in Canada, where they invest a lot in third spaces, and the difference between Canada and the US in this regard is night and day.
- Parks: A lot of them, every few blocks there's a large, well maintained park. Trash cans everywhere.
- Many community centers, huge, filled with extremely inexpensive or free activities. Community centers all have gyms in them.
- Beautiful, modern feeling libraries
It's hard to describe the difference, but it is non trivial.
I'm in the US. I've spent time visiting in Canada recently as well.
Everything in your list is stuff I experienced in most of the parts of Canada I visited. Not all though, for instance it wasn't like that in the parts of Mississauga I visited. And everything in your list is stuff I experience regularly in the US, in the parts I've lived in.
- churches: not really for the non religious
- libraries: not if you want to actually talk to people
- parks: only if the weather cooperates
- certain community recreational facilities: spend money? too activity oriented
- gyms: same as above
The original poster said "spend a ton of money" (those places you spend money but not a "ton") and I've included churches as an example. This short list isn't comprehensive. Also, have you been to a library recently? There are now spaces where you can socialize and meet.
>The original poster said "spend a ton of money" (those places you spend money but not a "ton")
Then why'd you put gyms in your list? You DO have to spend a ton of money to get a gym membership. And you can't cancel it because you have to sign a ridiculous contract and basically file a lawsuit to end the membership (not really, but it seems almost this bad).
> You DO have to spend a ton of money to get a gym membership.
I've been off and on user of several different gyms over the years. I don't recall actually paying for a gym membership myself. It's usually been a gym at my apartment complex, or a gym at the office park where I work, or my employer covered a gym membership, or I got it through health insurance.
We could agree that libraries don't have to be quiet anymore. It's not perfect but it's easy, and then a bunch of towns would suddenly have really nice public community centers.
That’s my own take, not actual direct causation. But for example, I’ve experienced and witnessed time taken by endless scrolling design (I.e. TikTok) which could have been spent socially. Since I’ve take time away from such apps with patterns, I feel generally more content, but results may vary.
This is 100% true in the US because nearly everything is commercialized and built to create profit for someone. Third spaces resolves this, but there aren't many of those around if you exclude local parks.
Even some of those require fees. For instance, the state of Virginia has many state parks, but to park at those parks requires paying a fee ($5 last I checked).
I think the main thing preventing this from happening a lot in NA is how difficult it would be to maintain without family paying for everything
But there's absolutely people with big trust funds or inheritances living this way. I knew a bunch of people who basically lived like this during COVID because of relief payments and they only very reluctantly found jobs again after it became clear that COVID payments were done and UBI was not on the near horizon.
There's a similar category of people in the USA and Canada as well that I don't have a term for. They're just as checked out really, bouncing between part time minimum wage jobs. They tend to live with like 5 roommates all doing the same thing they are. They work as few hours as possible to pay for rent and food. Any money left over is going to weed/booze/both and videogames
I think it's the same person who would be a Hikikomori, just adapted to NA economic realities
> They're just as checked out really, bouncing between part time minimum wage jobs. They tend to live with like 5 roommates all doing the same thing they are. They work as few hours as possible to pay for rent and food. Any money left over is going to weed/booze/both and videogames
The Japanese term would be "freeter". However, many artists, poets, and musicians, have lived similarly in decades past. Such a lifestyle wasn't and isn't limited to hikikomori or individuals approximately classified as one.
I think the reality is this has little to do with the job.
I'm a SWE, and most other SWE I know are basically losers. They work, go home, do nothing, wake up repeat. Do that for 40 years and eventually roll over and die from complications of obesity.
Sure, they work more and have more money. Doesn't matter much. They couldn't tell you what code they wrote one year ago. All their money is going towards their various vices, be it food, nicotine, video games.
Point being, working and nothing else is the reality for a lot of people. And it is sad, and it is pathetic, and you don't get much to show for it. People, in general these days, don't really have lives. They live, but just barely.
I heard the term NEET (not in employment education or training) used for the first time on western media last week. I usually associate the term with Japan and the Hikikomori issues.
In Spain and other LATAM countries we have the concept of "ni-ni" (ni estudia, ni trabaja = neither studies nor works). Although I'm pretty sure a lot of them don't spend all their time at home.
In one essay, Christopher Alexander calls suburb design schizophrenic, in reference to how suburb dwellers are forced more and more inward.
It's certainly an appropriate description. I've lived in the suburbs for thirty something years and have never made a single friend there. Travel requires a car, and there's no place interesting you can get to without a car. The optimal strategy for life is therefore to pass the threshold of depression and insanity and become a computer-addicted robot who derives pleasure only from typing on the comments section of the internet.
I've been thinking of ways to fix the problem but there's no bandage for removing the cars and redesigning the whole thing. I've thought of structures a clever person might be able to build to attract socialization, and I'm sure almost all of them are against zoning laws.
It's hard for me to emphasize with loneliness, as I've honestly never felt lonely a day in my life. It initially surprised me that people were bothered by working from home due to loneliness.
I really recommend the book Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time
by Sheila Liming if you want to explore this issue more. Lots of interesting exploration about spending time in person.
it's almost like western society, particularly in the united states, has spent the last 70 years intentionally stripping away community and easy access to a third place.
I was just in a USA town called Jacksonville, NC, and noticed a very large area called The Commons, with schools, sports fields, parks, wooded areas, walking paths, ponds, courts, the whole thing. Really well-designed area. Very active with walkers, runners, cyclists, etc.
But want a coffee? Check your phone, and see there's a coffee place maybe a half-mile away. Stop there after a run at The Commons, and it's a car-only place. (7-Brew)
A factor I haven't seen mentioned here is weather. It's become so hot now that people are hiding indoors during the hottest parts of the day. After a while gotta consider if it's even worth going outside.
Its interesting that they focus only on the last 20 years. I'd really be more curious to see how that compares to a much longer timeline. How much time did people spend at home a hundred years ago? Or a thousand years ago?
I’ve come to appreciate my home. I spend thousands of dollars a month on it, why wouldn’t I be there enjoying and maintaining it most of my time?
I think the modern idea that you have to be out and about constantly is linked to our consumer culture and growth oriented economy. They want us to be out spending money we don’t have.
Agreed. Every time we get a thread like this, the majority opinion seems to be to call it a bad thing and to blame technology.
But, why shouldn't we be enjoying the place that is supposed to be our own? I can get a lot more work done when allowed to just be comfy working in my room without many disturbances. I can work on my hobbies and socialize with people who have the same hobbies, without any of us having to be able to come over.
My house is quite nice, I live right next to a big park that's basically a cool forest with tons of short trails that take only a few minutes to traverse. I can go for a walk for 15 minutes through there from 9-5 every day other than Christmas!
I live alone, so I get bored of being alone. When my girlfriend is over, I still want to meet other people. Before my divorce, I wanted to meet other people and not just be around my spouse all day.
Also many historical contexts had plenty of time out drinking (even if that's just in the house of someone that brews), going to religious events, off conducting raids or wars etc.
"The changes in daily life induced by the COVID-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to longstanding concerns about social isolation in the United States."
Sigh, once again, it's wasn't COVID19 itself; it was the paranoid, destructive over-reaction that forced isolation that caused this.
Think of it like "At-most-once" vs "At-least-once" semantics. We were either going to overreact or underreact. You want to overreact to a thing like COVID-19.
EDIT: This [1] is the kind of neighborhood i'm talking about. Growing rapidly, cheap housing -- great, but they're setting themselves up for real heartbreak because the complexes don't connect. To walk to the park that's not even a mile away requires walking on a huge, busy road. All they need to have to make it not feel dangerous is a dirt path and a required gate between complexes. That's it. [2]
I'm honestly not sure why we think this kind of development is even normal. Roads really ought to connect. It also makes the traffic so much worse. I live two miles from downtown Portland and my street outside my house gets significantly less traffic than my parents.
I fully expect to move my parents somewhere near us as they age. It's just not possible for them to leave the house when they get older without having to drive, whereas older people in my grid-based, sidewalk neighborhood can walk for miles and achieve their entire life.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Clark+County+Fairgrounds/@...
[2] Meanwhile, our park is technically farther away (about a mile) and we walk there almost everyday and know all the neighbors down the street. We just went to a party at one of the neighbor's homes and the only relation we have is that we wave at each other as their kids play in the yard and mine ride their bikes to the park. I want to leave the house half the time because I have friends outside. That's all you need.