I sometimes wonder what our ancestors would think of us if they could arrive in the present. Clearly, desire has always been a human condition that has caused immense amounts of trouble, but it’s probably also true that we “moderns” have more stuff and ideas to want than anyone throughout history. We’ve gone global with nearly everything, and many of us spend countless hours of our lives longing for things that our ancestors neither dreamed of, nor needed, to live happy lives. In fact, we don’t need most of these things either, but have given in to the collective delusion that they are “required. “
I always wonder about these issues. One hundred and twenty years ago, in 1890, almost no one had an automobile. Cities and towns were built around public spaces and shared transportation. The phone was flickering invention just starting to be manufactured and used. Electricity was for the wealthy, period. Indoor plumbing as well. And that was here in the affluent United States.
What have we given up as a result of all these inventions and the social shifts that came around them?
More and more, the public is becoming private. I often find myself at coffee shops, enjoying chatter with others or reading and writing over a hot cup of joe. However, these are decidedly privatized spaces that were, in no small part, developed as a result of our collective wants for both quality coffee and a space to be social and drink it in. Coffee houses are by no means new inventions, but the current form is often much more privatized, and/or grounded in making profits, than in previous generations.
Even the layout of our cities themselves, or the ways in which we change the layout in order to create more freeways and speedways, reflects an attempt to satisfy wants – such as getting to places faster – at the expense of communities. I live on the edge of the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul, MN. Once a thriving, predominantly African-American community, it was shattered by the installation of I-94 back in the 1960s.
I sometimes wonder what might have been for Rondo, and places like it, as I bike through what’s left of it today. I also wonder what could be for all of us, if we collectively chose to go in another direction.
Photo Credit:
Stocking the Shelves by Drew Herron via Flickr Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
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Nathan I often think about the consequences of our rapid changes in human interaction as well. This spring we took an extended three month self-directed travel and art trip around Europe. One of the lasting impressions was the walk-ability of a place like say Avignon. The other is that people often had their devices tucked away and were visiting, making eye contact and noticing each other – partly I believe because they knew the people around them and not because they didn’t have a device to look at. I wonder, what does it take to insist on designs for community?
The walk-ability of a place is such a big deal. My bicycle is often treated as “in the way” by cars, and both biking and walking – even in a fairly transit aware place like the Twin Cities – is somewhat dangerous, and not always terribly pleasant. Which makes it that much harder to re-develop connections with others and the natural landscape around us.
I think getting community-centered designing (or re-designing) done requires sustained pressure from local groups, as well as a willingness to experiment with changes on a micro-level scale. We do have much more bike and walking infrastructure here now, after a generation of sustained activism to change the way designing and urban planning are done. However, it’s still transitional in my view because the overall urban landscape is still catering primarily to motor vehicles. And on the micro-level I have seen individual city blocks transformed by neighbors partnering to change the plant landscape, create buffers to speeding traffic, and even break city ordinances together to help demonstrate the need for changes. But it’s slow going. Those old European cities benefit from having been built long before cars existed.