Important consideration is sustainable, which is why I (too) try to promote/recommend "Smart Towns" organization where I can. The American suburban model isn't sustainable, which makes it attractive to Wall Street Banking Interest as an effective vacuum for wealth transfer to the 1% and particularly the 0.001%.
Honestly, just like how the lack of mixed zoning is a self-fulfilling process in USA, introducing mixed zoning can have the same self-fulfilling effect in the other direction. After a few decades. I have seen examples of better zoned suburbs already existing, I hope that will gradually move US culture away from La Sombrita.
I feel like this kind of ignores two key splits in this discussion, which is that most people in the US really don’t want to live in a dense city, and that many of the desired attributes of community are, in the US, found more easily in smaller, less dense places.
I live in a rural exurb. We have a solid small business infrastructure, a thriving feeling of community, pretty high trust, pretty low crime, and not a lot of density.
It’s easier to start a small business here than in a city - a lot easier - and my hairdresser, carpenter, HVAC guy, veterinarian, electrician, plumber, and yard guy are all small local businesses. We have brewers and vineyards and local restaurants and food trucks and a specialty small grocery, and multiple farmers markets and farmstands nearby, all local businesses.
People see each other at the multiple farmers markets, the many local festivals and fairs, at the local stables and on riding trails, the feed store and nursery, at Little League and track meets, at church, at the library and all its many attendant events, fishing or tubing on the river, doing nature hikes at the state parks - there are more community things to do than time to do them.
I just really feel like, smaller and less dense often gets, without effort, what planners are struggling to reproduce at scale. So maybe density is not really the solution.
This is excellent! So many tourists are now experiencing the joys and wonders of Japan nowadays without pausing to consider the key elements of that experience... community, trust, etc
It's undeniable that social cohesiveness of east Asian society positively contributes to their city planning. Their culture, at micro level, makes for better city living. Yet given their atrocious birth rates in those societies, they seem to have no interest in perpetuating these cultural traits.
I'm curious if in your travels you have developed any sort of working theory as to why that is? How can a society that appreciates behavior towards the communal good have so little interest that this behavior continues for another generation?
Japan's birth rates got up after their historic low in 2005. It really isn't that different from the European countries nowadays, so it isn't a question of whether East Asian culture as a whole is against kids. It just faces the same issues any other developed nation faces: people (esp women) getting together later and later in life, putting off kids more and more, because they want their kid to live a better than average life - with said average being a moving target. And so on.
China and South Korea are a different question. One brutally enforced the low birth rates, and the other has had feminist rulers for ages. So the ultra low birth rates there really are more of a top-down thing, enforced on the populace.
Good question. The short answer is: concentration of resources.
In the west and in East Asia as well, the cost of raising a human kitten even to a middle class standard has increased astronomically in recent decades.
Not only that, but there is an ever-widening chasm between an ever-shrinking number of ever-more wealthy Elites on one paw, and the peons, on the other.
If you weren't born a member of the lucky sperm club, either you fight your way into the Elite ranks like you are the third monkey on the ramp to Noah's Ark (and brother, it's starting to rain) or you can resign yourself to being squeezed dry and thrown aside.
Forget about pedaling faster on a stationary bike (hooked up to the grid), or transhumanism, singularity, and other smoke/copium. Evolving into cats is the way to go.
I tried answering that in my piece on Phnom Penh —- where the it is having children
“The modern world, at least large parts of it, no longer considers it a default good and so it’s been eroded as a capital t Truth, and many people now think about having children as a decision to be adjudicated, maybe not as cartoonish-ly as making a spreadsheet that tallies up the costs and benefits, but as a thing that needs to be rationalized, and when doing that they see the hard work, sacrifice, and a personal commitment more than they see the meaning making good. “
"People need community like fish need water, and they need to feel they belong to something greater than themselves. If they don't have access to healthy communities, they will find unhealthy ones. That was one of the lessons from my work on addiction: when traditional forms of community erode (family, faith, place, and yes, bowling leagues), people will gravitate toward drug traps, bars, and gangs, like water running to the lowest point."
Somewhat of a tangent, but not really: in all the discussions of drug policy, I almost never see anyone ask why some people are so bound and determined to get high?
The legal and personal penalties are fearsome. Nobody wants to go to prison, and life as a street addict is nobody's idea of fun. So why would anyone be so desperate to get out of their own head that they would even think of going down that road?
I suspect that nobody asks these questions because they know that they would not like the answers.
I suspect there are people who ask these questions, but if they are kept alive, much less funded at all, it's to publish work in the most obscure journals for study on how their work can be used to benefit the 0.001%.
Othering works both ways. It creates isolation but also group cohesion. American Black well understand that just using "Black" sounding names impact employment opportunities, but the othering of using OREO White names comes with its own troubles. 1st Nation/Native American reservations in American and Canada were designed to exclude their residents from economic life/do to them what George Washington longed for, hence the high suicide rates; but they are also communities that residents find their social place in.
Important consideration is sustainable, which is why I (too) try to promote/recommend "Smart Towns" organization where I can. The American suburban model isn't sustainable, which makes it attractive to Wall Street Banking Interest as an effective vacuum for wealth transfer to the 1% and particularly the 0.001%.
https://www.strongtowns.org/
Honestly, just like how the lack of mixed zoning is a self-fulfilling process in USA, introducing mixed zoning can have the same self-fulfilling effect in the other direction. After a few decades. I have seen examples of better zoned suburbs already existing, I hope that will gradually move US culture away from La Sombrita.
I feel like this kind of ignores two key splits in this discussion, which is that most people in the US really don’t want to live in a dense city, and that many of the desired attributes of community are, in the US, found more easily in smaller, less dense places.
I live in a rural exurb. We have a solid small business infrastructure, a thriving feeling of community, pretty high trust, pretty low crime, and not a lot of density.
It’s easier to start a small business here than in a city - a lot easier - and my hairdresser, carpenter, HVAC guy, veterinarian, electrician, plumber, and yard guy are all small local businesses. We have brewers and vineyards and local restaurants and food trucks and a specialty small grocery, and multiple farmers markets and farmstands nearby, all local businesses.
People see each other at the multiple farmers markets, the many local festivals and fairs, at the local stables and on riding trails, the feed store and nursery, at Little League and track meets, at church, at the library and all its many attendant events, fishing or tubing on the river, doing nature hikes at the state parks - there are more community things to do than time to do them.
I just really feel like, smaller and less dense often gets, without effort, what planners are struggling to reproduce at scale. So maybe density is not really the solution.
This is excellent! So many tourists are now experiencing the joys and wonders of Japan nowadays without pausing to consider the key elements of that experience... community, trust, etc
Great article.
You might enjoy this documentary on Vietnam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB7qaRNaIr8
It's undeniable that social cohesiveness of east Asian society positively contributes to their city planning. Their culture, at micro level, makes for better city living. Yet given their atrocious birth rates in those societies, they seem to have no interest in perpetuating these cultural traits.
I'm curious if in your travels you have developed any sort of working theory as to why that is? How can a society that appreciates behavior towards the communal good have so little interest that this behavior continues for another generation?
Japan's birth rates got up after their historic low in 2005. It really isn't that different from the European countries nowadays, so it isn't a question of whether East Asian culture as a whole is against kids. It just faces the same issues any other developed nation faces: people (esp women) getting together later and later in life, putting off kids more and more, because they want their kid to live a better than average life - with said average being a moving target. And so on.
China and South Korea are a different question. One brutally enforced the low birth rates, and the other has had feminist rulers for ages. So the ultra low birth rates there really are more of a top-down thing, enforced on the populace.
Good question. The short answer is: concentration of resources.
In the west and in East Asia as well, the cost of raising a human kitten even to a middle class standard has increased astronomically in recent decades.
Not only that, but there is an ever-widening chasm between an ever-shrinking number of ever-more wealthy Elites on one paw, and the peons, on the other.
If you weren't born a member of the lucky sperm club, either you fight your way into the Elite ranks like you are the third monkey on the ramp to Noah's Ark (and brother, it's starting to rain) or you can resign yourself to being squeezed dry and thrown aside.
Forget about pedaling faster on a stationary bike (hooked up to the grid), or transhumanism, singularity, and other smoke/copium. Evolving into cats is the way to go.
I tried answering that in my piece on Phnom Penh —- where the it is having children
“The modern world, at least large parts of it, no longer considers it a default good and so it’s been eroded as a capital t Truth, and many people now think about having children as a decision to be adjudicated, maybe not as cartoonish-ly as making a spreadsheet that tallies up the costs and benefits, but as a thing that needs to be rationalized, and when doing that they see the hard work, sacrifice, and a personal commitment more than they see the meaning making good. “
"People need community like fish need water, and they need to feel they belong to something greater than themselves. If they don't have access to healthy communities, they will find unhealthy ones. That was one of the lessons from my work on addiction: when traditional forms of community erode (family, faith, place, and yes, bowling leagues), people will gravitate toward drug traps, bars, and gangs, like water running to the lowest point."
Somewhat of a tangent, but not really: in all the discussions of drug policy, I almost never see anyone ask why some people are so bound and determined to get high?
The legal and personal penalties are fearsome. Nobody wants to go to prison, and life as a street addict is nobody's idea of fun. So why would anyone be so desperate to get out of their own head that they would even think of going down that road?
I suspect that nobody asks these questions because they know that they would not like the answers.
See: "Rat Park"
I suspect there are people who ask these questions, but if they are kept alive, much less funded at all, it's to publish work in the most obscure journals for study on how their work can be used to benefit the 0.001%.
Othering works both ways. It creates isolation but also group cohesion. American Black well understand that just using "Black" sounding names impact employment opportunities, but the othering of using OREO White names comes with its own troubles. 1st Nation/Native American reservations in American and Canada were designed to exclude their residents from economic life/do to them what George Washington longed for, hence the high suicide rates; but they are also communities that residents find their social place in.
Oh. I'm not a complete "everyone has no agency and are driven by cultural forces beyond their control."
There are plenty of people who abstain, when others don't. There are differences between people, and we need to recognize that!
Not arguing that and I am not sure why you may think I am
Sorry. I think I can come across that way!
No worries.