Peace and Environment News* April 1996
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Peace and Environment News * April 1996 |
by Chris Bradshaw
People see little need for the social contact public places provide, because they rely on institutions to give them what they need to know.
When our older daughter was eleven, she injured her arm in a playground fall. I remember how my legs felt weak and how I broke into a sweat when the doctor said that the "growth bud" at the end of her bone had broken off. To ensure that the arm would grow properly, it had to be kept in a sling for six weeks.
The more I try to understand our society, the more I use that analogy. What is society's "growth bud"? I think it is, like the human arm, at the end of the "tether" that is fixed to our self, at one end, and pushes out into the world, at the other. Although physical growth has limits, the growth of societies probably has no limits. But, also unlike the arm, it can reverse. Societies can collapse upon themselves and turn to barbarism, greed, and general short-sightedness. Also every religious revival has been motivated by a widespread sense that the society's civility and willingness to grow and learn has become "broken."
I suggest that society's growth bud is analogous to the growth bud of each of its members. Each individual grows by reaching out into the shared world a little further each day. The fetus's world is limited to the tight confines of the womb; the infant's, to the limited world of a crib and the arms of two parents; the toddler's, to the rooms on one floor of the house and a little of the yard. The five-year-old naturally wants to explore the neighbours' yards, the seven-year-old wants to visit the corner store and nearby park, while the ten-year-old longs to roam the neighbourhood.
However, that is permitted less and less. Children are transported to school at age six for programming in the technologies they will need in order to be "employable." Before this, most of them went to day-care and kindergarten in slightly less institutional settings that provided them with "social" and "problem-solving" skills and "channeled" their growth instincts and curiosity. They went away from home for this because there were few other children their age available at home and because the needs of their family required both parents to have jobs. The children are deprived of contact with neighbours and extended family, who throughout history have provided important assistance in child rearing. Children today have little experience with adults other than authority figures.
Why is this happening? Let's look more closely at our own local communities—our streets and neighbourhoods. We find first that we tend to view our public places not as places that attract people, but as places where it is dangerous to be and where other people might interfere with us.
People see little need for the social contact public places provide, because they rely on institutions to give them what they need to know. Thanks to our dependency on the automobile, we work, shop and get entertainment at places far away from each other. This means we spend little of our out-of-the-home time nearby and do little walking. Our children are transported passively between from one place to another without getting any sense of their interconnections.
The availability of personal forms of entertainment and information (mostly coming from many hundreds and thousands of miles away) has reduced reliance on informal activities in community centres, schools, and churches.
Even our homes are plagued by "sprawl." Canadian homes have three and a half times as much space per person as forty years ago. Most household acquisitions are for individuals, so that everyone has their own car, stereo, TV, computer, and meal—which comes in a personal pouch ready for "zapping." Our homes are not so much communities as rooming houses where family members lead separate lives.
This sprawl has also been called "space pollution." I have a name for people who live like this: they are "propinquitally-challenged."
Propinquity is the quality of life that occurs in places where destinations are close to each other. The best example is life in a small isolated village in which the residents themselves produce most of what they need. Sharing and bartering are as important as making and spending money.
In the city, a few neighbourhoods function as "urban villages." They are usually neighbourhoods built before we became dependent on the car. The ironic thing is that housing in these neighbourhoods is often more expensive—due in no small measure to the convenience of propinquity. That propinquity, when combined with the neighbours' active use of their propinquity, can easily satisfy the requirement of the adage "It takes a village to raise a child." As international healthy-cities guru Len Duhl has said, "the more connected people are with each other, the healthier they are. The more they are able to determine the conditions of their existence, the healthier they will be."
Increasing numbers of people drawn to these urban villages are choosing to live car-free. This has allowed them to afford housing normally beyond their means. At current interest rates, the Canadian Automobile Association's $7,700 figure for the annual cost of owning and operating a sub-compact car translates into the ability to carry almost $100,000 more in mortgage. And that is just for owning one less car!
A car-free lifestyle involves surprisingly minor—and mostly positive—adjustments. It doesn't take long before you feel sorry for people who drive. They live lives that are, literally, not together. Their lives are spread out hither and yon, unconnected to where they live. The car-free person remembers that life, when there was always the fear that there were other "choices" just a few miles further away, another few dollars to be "saved."
Even if getting to an Office Depot in a car to buy a computer is simpler than figuring out how to get one home from a neighbourhood shop without a car (as I just did), the latter is lots more fun. Besides, the annual costs of a car are equal to three computers. I actually made a list of the things I "missed" about not having a car (we rent one once every six weeks or so)—such as having change for parking meters, sitting in cold weather while the car warms up, and watching for traffic police—and came up with 100.
The real joy, though, is walking. Through walking, I have become more aware of what is happening on my street and who lives there. I see the good things and the problems, and I find out what others see. I recently held the first meeting of the people on our street in eight years.
I find myself less interested in looking for solutions that rely on action by authorities. I find that talking to the person involved instead helps me solve the problem in a helpful and conciliatory way. Already, I can see my growth bud rejuvenating. I am learning from my world, not just relating to it by being oblivious or angry.
I am also looking for ways to bring my neighbours together to create truly local solutions to our problems. For instance, perhaps an older resident would like to barter access to his car for doing work around his house. Or maybe the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama could give free lessons to the child of a single mom, who would in return plant flowers by their building.
However, most residents don't think on even as grand a scale as the street. They simply are happy to regain the chance to visit and to be relevant to their immediate neighbours. There is also the joy of walking, for any excuse (and the car-free have no shortage of excuses), as a chance to notice changes in neighbours' houses and new window displays in neighbourhood stores or to stop by the school to see the work of students or offer to take the children on a field trip in their neighbourhood. Finally, there is the pleasure of evolving friendships that are not the single-purpose kind we engage in with co-workers, people in a evening course in another part of town, or the clerk who is nothing more than a face and a name tag.
Maybe global problems wouldn't be so prevalent if problems were dealt with when they were still small and manageable. A feet-first lifestyle goes a long way in that direction. It sure beats being labeled "propinquitally-challenged."
Chris Bradshaw is a consultant living in Ottawa. The Len Duhl quote is from: Daniel Kemmis's 1995 book The Good City and the Good Life: Renewing the Sense of Community, a copy of which is in the Ottawa Public Library.
Converted April 11, 2000 - Lg
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