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The default suburban life leads toward a comfortable kind of solitary confinement. Someone who lives in a “single family home” equipped with air conditioning, a

The default suburban life leads toward a comfortable kind of solitary confinement. Someone who lives in a “single family home” equipped with air conditioning, a privacy fence, a big screen TV, a garage door opener, and the internet will tend toward isolation because all of those technologies make aloneness easier. The reader may point out that many people are isolated in big cities too. This is true – if an adult has decided to be alone, they can be. But in the city, one's lack of social connection is more often felt whereas a suburban home can diminish the effect, like ibuprofen taken for a headache.

randomdata 2y ago
How does that meaningly differ from rural homes, which do not have the isolation problem? Rural areas have the strongest social communities I have ever seen.
- iambateman 2y ago
  oh, wonderful question. I need to think about that some more.
- zknow 2y ago
  I've noticed rural communities tend to have more extended family and larger families which helps a lot. Besides less different types of work.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    That's fair. Also a lot of "our great-grandparents were friends, so I implicitly trust that we are also friends". But what about the suburbs destroys that? Or, would it be more accurate to say that those who already don't have connections have a preference towards living in suburbs? Perhaps that is where they feel most at home?
    - throwaway0123_5 2y ago
      I don't think there is some special physical property absent in suburbs and present in rural areas that contributes to social isolation in the former but not the later. Rather I think it has to do with the kind of person that lives in each place. My grandparents and cousins live in a rural area. They all have ancestry in that town going back to the early 1900s. So do most of their neighbors. Families live next to (where "next to" admittedly might be a few miles depending on how rural) each other for generations. This is obviously conducive to strong intra and inter-family social networks. People who live in cities and in suburbs on the other hand seem to be far more transient. They move around for school or careers and aren't tied down to one place. I grew up in suburbs in three different cities. New neighbors frequently moved in and out of all three places, and the street where I lived from aged 5-10 has only two "original" families left. For those people, the built environment in suburbs being conducive to social isolation (in American suburbs anyways) becomes a problem. The nearest grocery store, restaurant, or interesting venue of any kind is likely 30+ minutes away if you try to walk, and the walk is likely to be dangerous due to poor pedestrian infrastructure and poor public transit. There are few accessible third places in which to meet people, it takes a lot more intentional effort. This is even more of a problem if you're a kid, as you're now entirely dependent on your parents and their car to meet friends or go to places where you can meet friends. I moved from upper-middle class suburbs to Washington D.C. The difference in how many people you meet who you might want to be friends with, and in how easy it is to get places where you want to go (especially without a car) is night and day. Will suburbs ever be as good as cities in this regard? Probably not. But mixed-use zoning and returning to "streetcar suburbs" would probably go a long way (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/27/in-praise-of-streetcar-suburbs https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/27/in-praise-of-s...). There's also other reasons to oppose current suburb development patterns. Suburban sprawl is highly inefficient in many ways. It takes dramatically more infrastructure to serve the same number of people that you could in a denser area. Roads, power lines, pipes for drinking water and sewage, etc. The taxes that many suburbs pay don't cover these expenses and suburbs end up being subsidized by people living in denser areas. Rural areas also suffer from this to some extent, but rural areas are a necessity for society to run, hosting farms and other resource extraction activities, so subsidizing some costs is fair. People in rural areas are also more likely to be self-sufficient, having their own septic tank, private well, etc., and aren't offloading their costs to society.
- caeril 2y ago
  Rural communities have strong social cohesion out of necessity, not desire. I grew up rural, so I have some experience with this. Suburbia hits the sweet spot of introverted personality types: you don't NEED to know your neighbors, because there are sufficient services/resources to handle everything yourself, but you also don't get hemmed into an urban chicken coop that forces you to know your neighbors. The only people who raise alarms about "social atomization" are extroverts, and they're entirely incapable of understanding that some people actually prefer their isolation.
  - iambateman 2y ago
    The point about cohesion from necessity is interesting. Thanks. I disagree about the introvert-extrovert question. I'm deeply introverted (like, really) and also concerned about isolation.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - randomdata 2y ago
      What is it about suburbs that gives you that concern?
  - tsunamifury 2y ago
    They do not, they focus on self over others in the modern era. Modern Rural is a horrible place often.
thimkerbell 2y ago
Do people find that Facebook, etc, helps them connect with local others who they might not otherwise know they have common (& friendable) ground with?

randomdata 2y ago

How does that meaningly differ from rural homes, which do not have the isolation problem? Rural areas have the strongest social communities I have ever seen.

iambateman 2y ago
oh, wonderful question. I need to think about that some more.
zknow 2y ago
I've noticed rural communities tend to have more extended family and larger families which helps a lot. Besides less different types of work.
- randomdata 2y ago
  That's fair. Also a lot of "our great-grandparents were friends, so I implicitly trust that we are also friends". But what about the suburbs destroys that? Or, would it be more accurate to say that those who already don't have connections have a preference towards living in suburbs? Perhaps that is where they feel most at home?
  - throwaway0123_5 2y ago
    I don't think there is some special physical property absent in suburbs and present in rural areas that contributes to social isolation in the former but not the later. Rather I think it has to do with the kind of person that lives in each place. My grandparents and cousins live in a rural area. They all have ancestry in that town going back to the early 1900s. So do most of their neighbors. Families live next to (where "next to" admittedly might be a few miles depending on how rural) each other for generations. This is obviously conducive to strong intra and inter-family social networks. People who live in cities and in suburbs on the other hand seem to be far more transient. They move around for school or careers and aren't tied down to one place. I grew up in suburbs in three different cities. New neighbors frequently moved in and out of all three places, and the street where I lived from aged 5-10 has only two "original" families left. For those people, the built environment in suburbs being conducive to social isolation (in American suburbs anyways) becomes a problem. The nearest grocery store, restaurant, or interesting venue of any kind is likely 30+ minutes away if you try to walk, and the walk is likely to be dangerous due to poor pedestrian infrastructure and poor public transit. There are few accessible third places in which to meet people, it takes a lot more intentional effort. This is even more of a problem if you're a kid, as you're now entirely dependent on your parents and their car to meet friends or go to places where you can meet friends. I moved from upper-middle class suburbs to Washington D.C. The difference in how many people you meet who you might want to be friends with, and in how easy it is to get places where you want to go (especially without a car) is night and day. Will suburbs ever be as good as cities in this regard? Probably not. But mixed-use zoning and returning to "streetcar suburbs" would probably go a long way (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/27/in-praise-of-streetcar-suburbs https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/27/in-praise-of-s...). There's also other reasons to oppose current suburb development patterns. Suburban sprawl is highly inefficient in many ways. It takes dramatically more infrastructure to serve the same number of people that you could in a denser area. Roads, power lines, pipes for drinking water and sewage, etc. The taxes that many suburbs pay don't cover these expenses and suburbs end up being subsidized by people living in denser areas. Rural areas also suffer from this to some extent, but rural areas are a necessity for society to run, hosting farms and other resource extraction activities, so subsidizing some costs is fair. People in rural areas are also more likely to be self-sufficient, having their own septic tank, private well, etc., and aren't offloading their costs to society.
caeril 2y ago
Rural communities have strong social cohesion out of necessity, not desire. I grew up rural, so I have some experience with this. Suburbia hits the sweet spot of introverted personality types: you don't NEED to know your neighbors, because there are sufficient services/resources to handle everything yourself, but you also don't get hemmed into an urban chicken coop that forces you to know your neighbors. The only people who raise alarms about "social atomization" are extroverts, and they're entirely incapable of understanding that some people actually prefer their isolation.
- iambateman 2y ago
  The point about cohesion from necessity is interesting. Thanks. I disagree about the introvert-extrovert question. I'm deeply introverted (like, really) and also concerned about isolation.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - randomdata 2y ago
    What is it about suburbs that gives you that concern?
- tsunamifury 2y ago
  They do not, they focus on self over others in the modern era. Modern Rural is a horrible place often.

thimkerbell 2y ago

Do people find that Facebook, etc, helps them connect with local others who they might not otherwise know they have common (& friendable) ground with?