Isolation’s Culprit
Some of our posts here have sort of drifted into the topics of social isolation and anomie. I think the evidence in this photo is pretty damning as far the automobile’s culpability – this photo represents the amount of space that different forms of transportation require to move the same number of people (cars, a bus, and bicycles, respectively). Why do places like Mississauga have such wide streets? It should be obvious – to fit all the cars. Wider roads feed into a spiral as they discourage pedestrians from walking. More cars, more roads, more cars, more roads. Fill out even more farmland to fit in even more sprawl. Now I drive, many of you drive, it’s hard to do without a car for many people in North America – but we have to have our eyes open to the social cost of these things. What are we doing to create spaces where automotive transport is the exception rather than the rule? Not much methinks.
This is interesting. I’m not unfamiliar with city life, but I live the country in the southeastern United States.
As a percentage of social interactions per capita, it seems as though country folk are sociologically more closely knit than city dwellers despite the stark difference in population density. I’m not sure why this is, but I speculate that it may be the normalization of deference in interpersonal relationships borne of the need to interact favorably with the few people one sees on a regular basis. In the city, perhaps people are so overwhelmed by the population that there is a need to ignore others for the sake of occasionally being alone.
I know in the country we don’t get far without our personal vehicles, but we need them to reach out to other people, not to hide from them.
I don’t disagree that country life seems to require automobiles or something like that. Where vehicles have an alienating effect is in the city and the suburbs though. I’ve made a post to that effect here: http://civitatedei.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/where-can-we-attain-a-sense-of-place/
There’s a higher quality version of that image here –
http://incredimazing.com/static/media/2007/11/13/ac99be0f2b001d3/espaciocoches.jpg