urbanism

“The 84-year-old white man accused of shooting Black teen Ralph Yarl in the head for ringing the wrong doorbell “spent considerable time at home in a living room chair, watching conservative news programs at high volume,” one of his relatives told The New York Times…

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I've been telling everyone who wants to listen about how land use is the source of so many American problems, and I'm once again going to link land use to the rash of killings lately perpetrated by people who have unreasonable fear of someone showing up at their door, or getting close to their car, or pulling into their driveway (three recent incidents of people being shot for no good reason).

Land use determines social cohesion

Suburban and rural populations are less close to their neighbors, just as a geographical fact. They are also farther from their jobs, at least on average, than urban populations.

This means that to get to and from work, they spend more time commuting, and in the US this means sitting in their cars.

More time commuting is less time spent at home, less time available to develop relationships with neighbors, to spend with family. It's less energy available (anyone who has had a long car commute knows how tired you get from it).

What happens when people get home late, already tired? They watch TV. This habit gets ingrained in us during our working careers in America, and can you blame us? Who has energy to go out and hang with the neighbors after 90 minutes of commuting and 8 hours of work?

Compare it to being in a walkable city, and your commute is under 30 minutes each way, and you don't have to drive (so you can listen to an audiobook, read something, listen to music, whatever). Not only are you closer to your neighbors, you have the energy to interact with them on weeknights.

Aging in America is a process of becoming more and more isolated

Unless you pack up and move to Florida or some other dedicated retirement community, people who age in their homes are at unique risk of isolation in America. You are surrounded by people commuting huge distances to work, who have no time or energy to interact with you.

As people age, they get less confident in driving, and eventually lose the ability to drive altogether. Now you are in a place where you can no longer get around by yourself, and are dependent on family or paratransit services to get to important appointments. You are not going out to socialize on a whim very often.

What do you do? You sit inside, and watch TV. Eventually you run out of shows to watch or get bored of them, so you tune into the 24 hour news, because it's always fresh information (seemingly) and it's more exciting.

Sound familiar to the quote at the top of this piece? It's not just old people getting radicalized by Fox News, OAN, and the like, but I'd wager that a very high percentage of older people are getting sucked in by it, because of this dynamic.

There are no easy answers in America

So much of our society is already built around cars. There are no safe, affordable, walkable areas in any city in the US (choose two of those three, basically). There is no transit to get you to a walkable area if you live outside of one.

Changing that is probably the work of several generations, even if people wanted it to happen. The rub? They don't want it. Why don't they want it? Well, the latest culture war battle has been against the 15 minute city. I can only guess that the people who run the Fox News' of the world realized that if people become more urban, their hold on them will decrease. So people have been convinced that living in a place where all your needs are available within 15 minutes of walking or transit, is somehow a bad thing.

The very dynamic that is causing the problem is preventing us from solving the problem, at least in part.

Of course there are many more reasons. The appeal of a big house and car are undeniable. Even people in Europe are getting sucked into the idea. But it's a case of choosing to eat sweets for every meal because they taste good, and ending up with diabetes, but at a societal scale. Even though living closer together would be better for us, we don't want to accept it and figure out how to make it work.