Do ya’ll ever wonder if single family zoning, and car-centric urban planning, are some of the primary factors behind modern adults suffering from rampant loneliness? Two environments renown for fostering friendships and social activities are university campuses, and seasonal jobs in remote locations. What do those two things have in common? Proximity. People work, eat, and play together. In another word, community.
In my experience, humans are simple creatures. We take the path of least resistance. For your standard adult, the concept of traveling across town to meet up with friends after a full day of work or chores is exhausting. We crave those connections, but the barrier to entry is too high. We settle for whatever scratches that itch with the minimal amount of effort. Typically that involves some form of social media or other digital communication. It’s like grabbing that crappy packet of ramen because you ran out of groceries before your market day. It’s not really what you want to have for dinner, but it’s what is readily available so you shrug and eat it anyway.
This is all anecdotal and speculation on my part, but I’m curious if anyone else has any thoughts on this.
I don’t think so.
I know so. I’ve read a number of articles in recent years about how weak social ties are just as important as strong ones for happiness. This is just the first result from a search: Weak social ties are just as important as strong ones for greater life satisfaction
Weak social ties are precisely the ones that get cut off by car dominance, what with driving across town to do everything in life, only mixing it up with strangers you’ll never recognize again instead of the usual bunch of neighbors. Between snout houses, online shopping, and drive-thrus, one could live a normal suburban life for weeks without interacting with anybody but coworkers and family. Now add work-from-home…
Edit: Here’s another article that makes the connection directly: https://www.businessinsider.com/barcelona-solution-loneliness-crisis-pollution-cars-streets-parks-traffic-sidewalks-2023-12
beat me to the phrasing. yeah it’s pretty much fact
car-centric urban planning
Yes, this can absolutely contribute to weaker communities and fewer interactions.
One of the things I noticed since riding a bike everywhere, is how much social interaction you have compared to a car. Even a quick chat with someone while you’re both stopped at an intersection is something that never happens while driving.
But you really notice how awful cars have made things when our city shuts down a downtown road for an event, basically making it walkable. People are chatting with strangers, smiles everywhere, businesses get way more customers, etc. It’s just… better.
Even the loss of meeting spaces within communities is a direct result of car-centric infrastructure. Quite a few urban planning YouTube channels have gone over this. But yes, cars are making us lonely.
We need a fuckin land value tax
No way. That would fuck over way too many people who are just trying to live out their lives in the home they’ve built/purchased/inherited.
So what about all the people who are being fucked over by not having access to affordable housing?
Someone always gets screwed when policy is changed, we should make our decisions based on if the policy is better for collective flourishing in the long run
If your policy change is going to harm the less fortunate then you should re-evaluate the policy.
A land value tax just shifts those who can’t afford it out of their homes and hands more land over to the wealthy.
Land isn’t the problem with housing. The problem is that developers have figured out it’s more profitable to build fewer expensive properties than a large number of affordable ones. Not only do they have to do less work, but it keeps the market artificially low and so lets them charge more for what inventory they do have.
So they do just that.
And the residential development market has such a huge investment level to enter you won’t see many willing to roll the dice on mass producing affordable housing.
Show me a home builder who has plans which are less than 3k sqft these days. You won’t find one.
developers have figured out it’s more profitable to build fewer expensive properties than a large number of affordable ones
You’re right about this part, but you need to ask why is this the case. It’s due to (among other things) over regulation and a stifling of home building.
Most cities in North America make it very expensive and difficult to build. Zoning laws means there are only a few places they can build densely, and red tape increases the cost of building. This has caused a huge mismatch of supply and demand for housing in cities. So of course in that environment, what is most profitable is to cater to the wealthy.
If developers could build faster than demand was growing, they would satisfy the wealthy demands and then move on to less profitable middle and lower income housing.
This is how all markets work in this context. Electric cars were initially only made for the wealthy, because those sales were the only ones that could be profitable for the emerging technology. Now that the tech has improved and the wealthy demand is satisfied, it has come down to middle class prices
Ask me if I care
Good thing you aren’t making policy.
Maybe one day ;)
Trust me, the people who are home owners who would pay MORE with a land value tax are sitting on gold mines. They aren’t struggling. They can sell if the cost of a LVT is greater than the property tax.
Or, they can sell land that they’re not using and shrink the amount of land they would pay taxes on. Then the cities can keep growing and people won’t be paying so much for rent.
Usually this policy reduces the amount people pay in taxes assuming they aren’t living in a 3 bedroom house on 10 acres of land in a place relatively close to a city center.
Sounds like you may need to read up more on it because you don’t seem to understand what it is.
I live in Tokyo and see a lot of people, particularly foreigners but also Japanese, complain about loneliness. We mostly use public transit, do not have zoning like that, etc. so it’s definitely not a cure-all to do just those two things (not that I think that was what you were saying).
That’s a good point.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I would imagine that in Japan the issue of loneliness cuts very deep due to the cultural and societal norms. I would also think that if you were to keep all those same norms but introduce in the car dependent design and infrastructure of the US then the problem would get even worse, no?
Not being able to leave my house without planning things around the schedule of my parents, and whether they even felt like driving, until I was 19 years old certainly didn’t have a positive impact on me.
I moved from a rural area to an urban area three years ago and I’m always blown away at how many old ladies chat me up on the bus. It makes my day so much brighter. Anecdoctal, but I figured I’d share.
I’ve taken the bus and BART (train) to work for 6+ years and have had all of 5 conversational interactions between them, usually while waiting and not on the vehicle itself. I’ve definitely interacted with more people just standing outside a car in a parking lot, ranging from games and shows to just both being out.
For the cast of BART, it’s just a really loud train, screechingly loud. Plus there can be weirdos and scam artists so it’s generally best to just keep to yourself there. For the bus I’ve had a few conversations, but they’ve mostly been recognizing people rather than spontaneous conversations.
But that was mostly the area I grew up in as well. Some spots are very easy to meet people and talk with anybody and everybody, like aforementioned games, but then there’s other times where it’s definitely not ideal to be talking with strangers.
Also, definitely not dismissing your view! Just what I’ve happened to notice around me as a carless person who is usually the one to strike up the conversations lol
This isn’t asking cars vs trains, it’s asking car dominated neighbourhoods vs walkable neighbourhoods. You’re still on the car side of this divide.
I never compared cars and trains. I lived in a walkable neighborhood where a good 5-block range of people can walk to the grocery store and a couple other clothing/general stores, right off the main road which connects us through to the rest of the city. I honestly couldn’t have grown up with a more exemplary distinction between walkable neighborhoods, suburban housing that requires 5-10 minutes of driving through the streets, and the wider city where it takes 25-35 minutes to get between towns - all connected via bus and train for commute.
The unfortunate reality of my area is exactly as I stated. Currently it has very little to do with transportation (cars), but circumstances surrounding housing and poor public service support which made it so that people keep to themselves. On a day to day basis very few people interact while waiting for the bus/train, or while walking to and from the grocery store. It doesn’t matter that it’s walkable, it matters that it doesn’t feel safe for auntie’s and abuela’s.
But again, that’s just those examples. They’re the common daily examples, but still. Waiting for the train on a game day or a concert in town? You best believe you will be talking with everyone who passes by, because the air in the city is so much more vibrant and everyone is excited and on the same page. It’s also crowded, compared to it just being a bit more “busy” on a typical day.
In my college town we had everything we needed right there and yet still people would go to do things over an hour away, even with Old Town right there with all sorts of vintage shops, clothes, food etc. It was a far larger town than back home and yet the streets had far fewer people out and about. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t social, we just weren’t socializing while walking around, in and after class making plans to go on hikes, to the beach or to other cities.
At my local community college right around the corner from home people would walk to school and all the food&amenities were right there and it was far less sociable there because people had different priorities. For us here it doesn’t matter that we can walk to school and go get lunch, we are trying to get there and back safely. We didn’t get together outside of class and go on trips because we didn’t have that privilege - completely unrelated to vehicles entirely (save for the people living in them). I was lucky and had a community college within a 15 minute walk from me, and I chose my college specifically because it was a good city for being a student without a car. Many others don’t have the privilege and are stuck between cities.
I’m not pro-car. Quite the opposite and I do not care in the slightest about them or the culture surrounding them, though I appreciate that I have friends who appreciate them. In terms of functionality, I do think they have their place in our society - not to the point where every individual has them but with our current reality I do think 1 per household is reasonable, even if not ideal. A byproduct of growing up in this society, I suppose.
The issue comes down logistical space for us individuals and our desires. I work in performing arts, I travel between where my workplace is and between venues. We have thousands of pounds of equipment for lighting, audio. There’s quite literally no feasible way for us to put on an event without a vehicle - which is totally fine. However, as an example just one of the people working for us lives over 3 cities away. He also works in that city there, and he can’t move because he’s taking care of his mother, and she can’t move because we don’t have a hospital that has what she needs, or takes her insurance I can’t remember the exact reason. Basically, he can travel to us and get paid doing what he loves, or he could quit, work a dead-end job that he hates while he takes care of his mom. There’s performing arts jobs out there for him, no school or theatre or concert hall. What is he supposed to do, not do what he loves? Go into something else?
In a carless society there is no way to solve that logistical issue. Every city and town needs every niche aspect for every individual? That seems impossible for so many different reasons I wouldn’t even be sure where to start. A hypothetical carless world where they never existed and I didn’t need to travel an hour to another town because all towns and cities have the exact same niche job for each individual already sounds like utopia, so sure why not, I bet people would talk more in public. In that same world I imagine that people living in their cars are provided a home via the support for public housing and social services for those not as able to do it on their own.
If that sounds too hopeful that’s because I’m not sure how a carless society would inherently prevent those issues of safety and availability (job and business).
Is my coworkers situation created specifically because of a society centered around vehicular travel? Maybe so, though I also don’t see how his situation is solved or avoided in the first place with a society where cars weren’t put first and foremost. Barring the people living in their cars, the safety of the streets however are definitely not impacted by vehicles either, so unless we solve housing and addiction issues then walkable neighborhoods don’t seem inherently any safer.
That is my point. I think the current state of my city comes down to this: the city infrastructure being designed for cars is irrelevant because our city’s social infrastructure is junk, and because of how infeasible it seems to have each worker live in the same town/city as the business that exists there.
Ironically it’s a tool that could connect us more, but depending on how we use it, it may lead to us being disconnected. e.g. if you rode a bike, you could talk to people more, but ofc that depends on the circumstances in your area.
Cars literally put a limit on how close things can be together so they physically could not connect you more than a dense walkable neighbourhood by their mere existence as objects with their physical dimensions.
Yes. IIRC, this is discussed in the book “Curbing Traffic.”
Only if you drive a boring car. Take a really cool car to the grocery store parking lot, and people walking in will stop and talk to you about it.
This is a social tax worse than cigarettes lol.
Maybe we can combine them, only cool cars allowed and you must be smoking while driving them.
