Excellent article- thank you, Ryan! My wife and I moved from Travis Heights to San Francisco last year, and besides rather desperately missing our son Judah, our daily lives have never felt better. Lots of factors here (including beautiful parks and our wonderful neighborhood, Inner Richmond), all of which ultimately come back to not using a car.
Social isolation has been gradually (and cynically) rebranded as personal efficiency, but the simple kindnesses and impromptu conversations afforded by walking and public transportation are priceless. These brief moments of connection with our fellow citizens reassure us that we're all part of something larger than our often insular worlds suggest.
Thanks, David—and I couldn't agree more! I'm glad you're enjoying San Francisco. It's such a beautiful city with great neighborhoods for exploring on foot. We used to live in Hayes Valley and would walk our dog to Duboce Park, Dolores Park, or sometimes all the way up to Buena Vista—a cute pup is also a great way to meet strangers!
I think you make a good point that we have to think both system-level and personal-level. Parks don’t work if we sit inside watching Netflix instead of going outside.
I think this is where the Strong Towns incrementalism approach can be most valuable.
To take the example of a neighborhood park: First notice the park is not well used, then ask what’s the smallest thing we could do to make it better (probably some shade and some benches!). Do that thing right now — not after a ten year study; now!
The interesting thing is that we can and should do that work together, as a community of interest. The more we work together, the more things get better, the more we want to work together.
What little piece of community fabric can you and your neighbor adopt as a project? Start small but stick with it, and it’s amazing how much things can improve with time.
I 100% agree! In one of my early essays ("Joe Biden Can't Pave Your Potholes"), I touched on the need to rediscover personal agency. With social and civic engagement, there's an activation energy required. I think it gets turned on when we understand that we have the power to make change in our own lives, and that it happens by making connections with people in our communities. So many people don't realize that *they can* make the park benches happen; most only wonder or accept the status quo. We can improve our communities connection by connection.
Love that you're drawing the connection between how we build the environment and how we end up living in it - super under-discussed IMO.
One place that I feel has done this well is (at least some parts of) Seattle. Areas like Green Lake, Alki Beach, and Gas Works Park are all heavily utilized. And there seems to be a pretty built-out network of smaller parks scattered through at least the parts of the city I'm familiar with. Specific neighborhoods like Ballard are also pretty walkable with less use separation and mini road diets via parklets that never got retired post covid.
Thanks, Jeff! An undercurrent of my writing is trying to figure out the cultural aspects of all this stuff. There seems to be a chicken-and-egg problem. Very cool about Seattle, a city that I have only spent a morning in—and the Space Needle doesn't give a great sense of what the place is actually like, I bet. In March 2020, we were supposed to go on a week-long adventure in the PNW...it's still on the to-do list!
Very nice discussion here Ryan. Often lost in the talk around zoning and housing is the need for “third places.”
I imagine this has evolved from one generation to the next. In times past, only church or places of worship could serve this function.
Later, perhaps for some, it was the shopping mall. Those are all but dead in America.
For myself, it's the local library. This is something I have been wanting to explore at Risk & Progress.
Perhaps though, the reason these third places are dying is because they are moving into the digital realm? We might belong to fewer “in person” groups…but how many “online” groups are people a part of. Probably more so than in times past.
It's worth exploring whether or not digital groups can serve as an adequate stand in.
Thanks, JK! No doubt these third places have evolved over time. I am curious about online spaces. On the one hand, they annihilate geography, making it easy for anyone to connect with anyone. On the other, they don't provide any of the other benefits of in-real-life spaces, the ambience, the coffee, the food that you can share, the other people that let you know you're somewhere. Zoom is a tool that makes connection and information exchange possible in totally new ways, but I (personally) never want to stay in a Zoom room any longer than I have to, bound to my chair staring at the camera on my computer; it's all necessity, no desire.
I was talking to a friend about this over the weekend. She's in a small online class, but because they all live in the same place, she and her cohort have met up in real life several times and have become friends. She thinks the friendships wouldn't have developed without the in-person meet-ups. I think online groups can support or sustain relationships when it is difficult to meet in person, so long as there is eventually an in person meeting.
No doubt there is some kind of community here on Substack, but for most of the people we engage with, our knowledge about them is limited by what they write. You can learn a lot that way, but there's a lot "off the page" that missing and, I think, necessary to really get to know someone. But it's something I'm interested in exploring further.
Excellent article- thank you, Ryan! My wife and I moved from Travis Heights to San Francisco last year, and besides rather desperately missing our son Judah, our daily lives have never felt better. Lots of factors here (including beautiful parks and our wonderful neighborhood, Inner Richmond), all of which ultimately come back to not using a car.
Social isolation has been gradually (and cynically) rebranded as personal efficiency, but the simple kindnesses and impromptu conversations afforded by walking and public transportation are priceless. These brief moments of connection with our fellow citizens reassure us that we're all part of something larger than our often insular worlds suggest.
Thanks, David—and I couldn't agree more! I'm glad you're enjoying San Francisco. It's such a beautiful city with great neighborhoods for exploring on foot. We used to live in Hayes Valley and would walk our dog to Duboce Park, Dolores Park, or sometimes all the way up to Buena Vista—a cute pup is also a great way to meet strangers!
You nailed it with "personal efficiency." I think this is a huge barrier in the era of back to back Zoom calls.
I think you make a good point that we have to think both system-level and personal-level. Parks don’t work if we sit inside watching Netflix instead of going outside.
I think this is where the Strong Towns incrementalism approach can be most valuable.
To take the example of a neighborhood park: First notice the park is not well used, then ask what’s the smallest thing we could do to make it better (probably some shade and some benches!). Do that thing right now — not after a ten year study; now!
The interesting thing is that we can and should do that work together, as a community of interest. The more we work together, the more things get better, the more we want to work together.
What little piece of community fabric can you and your neighbor adopt as a project? Start small but stick with it, and it’s amazing how much things can improve with time.
I 100% agree! In one of my early essays ("Joe Biden Can't Pave Your Potholes"), I touched on the need to rediscover personal agency. With social and civic engagement, there's an activation energy required. I think it gets turned on when we understand that we have the power to make change in our own lives, and that it happens by making connections with people in our communities. So many people don't realize that *they can* make the park benches happen; most only wonder or accept the status quo. We can improve our communities connection by connection.
Love that you're drawing the connection between how we build the environment and how we end up living in it - super under-discussed IMO.
One place that I feel has done this well is (at least some parts of) Seattle. Areas like Green Lake, Alki Beach, and Gas Works Park are all heavily utilized. And there seems to be a pretty built-out network of smaller parks scattered through at least the parts of the city I'm familiar with. Specific neighborhoods like Ballard are also pretty walkable with less use separation and mini road diets via parklets that never got retired post covid.
Thanks, Jeff! An undercurrent of my writing is trying to figure out the cultural aspects of all this stuff. There seems to be a chicken-and-egg problem. Very cool about Seattle, a city that I have only spent a morning in—and the Space Needle doesn't give a great sense of what the place is actually like, I bet. In March 2020, we were supposed to go on a week-long adventure in the PNW...it's still on the to-do list!
Very nice discussion here Ryan. Often lost in the talk around zoning and housing is the need for “third places.”
I imagine this has evolved from one generation to the next. In times past, only church or places of worship could serve this function.
Later, perhaps for some, it was the shopping mall. Those are all but dead in America.
For myself, it's the local library. This is something I have been wanting to explore at Risk & Progress.
Perhaps though, the reason these third places are dying is because they are moving into the digital realm? We might belong to fewer “in person” groups…but how many “online” groups are people a part of. Probably more so than in times past.
It's worth exploring whether or not digital groups can serve as an adequate stand in.
Thanks, JK! No doubt these third places have evolved over time. I am curious about online spaces. On the one hand, they annihilate geography, making it easy for anyone to connect with anyone. On the other, they don't provide any of the other benefits of in-real-life spaces, the ambience, the coffee, the food that you can share, the other people that let you know you're somewhere. Zoom is a tool that makes connection and information exchange possible in totally new ways, but I (personally) never want to stay in a Zoom room any longer than I have to, bound to my chair staring at the camera on my computer; it's all necessity, no desire.
I was talking to a friend about this over the weekend. She's in a small online class, but because they all live in the same place, she and her cohort have met up in real life several times and have become friends. She thinks the friendships wouldn't have developed without the in-person meet-ups. I think online groups can support or sustain relationships when it is difficult to meet in person, so long as there is eventually an in person meeting.
No doubt there is some kind of community here on Substack, but for most of the people we engage with, our knowledge about them is limited by what they write. You can learn a lot that way, but there's a lot "off the page" that missing and, I think, necessary to really get to know someone. But it's something I'm interested in exploring further.