The "paradox of sociability" and "the third place"

Illustration from The Planners Web

I was struck by an answer given to me by a Sprawled Out commenter - one who seems to hold a black belt in indistinct contrariety  - when I asked, probing for something specific with which he disagrees: "Do you feel our sense of community is actually increasing year by year, decade by decade?"

He answered: "In Franklin, yes, actually, and far beyond what I saw in other communities built on the traditional lines to which you advocate a return. Franklin, with all its local associations and citizen committees and commissions is like something out of Tocqueville by comparison."

So I found a specific thing on which we disagree. "Associations and citizen committees and commissions," oh my!

There was a time - - and let's hope there will be a time again - - when members of a community interacted regularly with one another in safe, available public spaces; no need to "join" or "sign up." This interaction - - encouraged by thoughtful physical space as built by pre-sprawl planners - -  nurtured a sense of community and empathy between young and old, rich and poor; the ability (and opportunity) to disagree in a civil manner; mobility for elderly and children, etc. Today's sharply segregated society -- created and enforced by developer-driven "planning," among other blights - -  is effectively and observably smothering all of the above.

Do "associations committees and commissions" constitute community? If so, I say, how sad. Evidently community is reserved for those with the time and inclination to join "associations committees and commissions" - - which mainly consist of like-minded people, by the way, unburdened by certain other responsibilities. It's not enough to just be a fellow fellow human being. And remember, any association, committee or commission is necessarily defined by some manner of exclusion (Darla Hood couldn't join "The He-Man Woman-Haters Club").

Could "associations committees and commissions" help create community? Perhaps.

But our physical, built environment must change. Lack of regular contact in public space has cost us our senses of civility and empathy. The crass talk-radio mentality we endure today - - grown men and women resorting to name-calling and taunting - - is nurtured by the anonymous nature of our interactions. Other people are mere speed bumps in our day (especially while driving, which we do more and more and more as suburbs abandon all pretense of walkability). We go from garage to parking ramp to cubicle and back to garage.

In his book The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg does a wonderful job explaining the some of the reasons that regular encounters with people in "third places" - - that is, a public place that is not home and not work - - are of a different character than the relationships created in "associations committees and commissions" and among friends you might choose to invite to your home. The book goes into great detail about how the ability to encounter our fellows in "third places" is crucial to re-building the sense of community that is being lost as we isolate ourselves and limit our life to "the big triangle."

It is a fact of social life that the number, kind, and availability of friends depend upon where one may engage them. If our dependence upon place in this regard is not always understood, it is because our closest and dearest friends may be granted special rights to enter our homes and lives almost at will. Few people, however, can be allowed such privileges if privacy is to be preserved and individuals are to maintain control over their lives and relationships. Involved here is the "paradox of sociability. " Simply stated, one must have protection from those with whom one would enjoy sociable relations. One can't have them bursting into one's home or one's place of work or even have them around when one wishes they were not. The average individual may regularly engage a host of friends only if he or she can be free of them whenever that freedom is necessary or desired. Of course, there must also be freedom to engage friends easily if a generous number of active friendships are to be maintained.

It is this paradox of sociability that encourages a proliferation of third places, of convenient gathering sites, wherever human beings have settled. Only where planning or zoning disallows them do they fail to appear as a natural manifestation of people's need to have readily accessible meeting places that may be visited and departed from at will. Where third places are not provided, the individual's active friendships are greatly diminished, as is the ease with which he or she can make contact with friends. Such is typically the case in the newer automobile suburbs where zoning regulations disallow those kinds of establishments elsewhere appropriated as gathering spots. Within developments containing nothing but homes, residents are confronted with an unhappy choice: they may either open their homes to frequent and unbidden intrusions by friends or they may sharply curtail informal socializing. Usually, and with good reason, they opt for privacy. The home after all, must be kept as a sanctum sanctorum of privacy, rest, and recuperation, and it must be thus preserved for all members of the family.

As many an urbanite and suburbanite has learned, having an extensive network of friends is no guarantee against loneliness. Nor does membership in voluntary associations, the "instant communities" of our mobile society, ensure against social isolation and attendant feelings of boredom and alienation. The network of friends has no unity and no home base. One's many friends may offer no more than sporadic and unreliable accessibility. The voluntary organizations offer true group affiliation and they have a home base, but what they offer is available only at scheduled times. And, in many of them, interest tends to be confined to the mutual problems and concerns of parents without partners, the work of the church, the playing and analyzing of bridge games, and so on. What urban life increasingly fails to provide, and what is so much missed, is convenient and open-ended socializing places where individuals can go without aim or arrangement and be greeted by people who know them and know how to enjoy a little time off.

While we're on the subject of "the third place"; posted previously, but worth repeating, is this excerpt from Oldenburg's preface:

In the absence of an informal public life, living becomes more expensive. Where the means and facilities for relaxation and leisure are not publicly shared, they become objects of private ownership. Boredom is constant. The American spends much time relieving that boredom by re-decorating their homes. They depend on new wall coverings or furniture arrangements to add zest to their lives. Like the bored and idle rich, they look to new clothing fashions for the same purpose and buy new wardrobes well before the old ones are past service.

A lively round of after-dinner conversation isn't as simple as a walk to the corner cafe (if they can find one) --one has to Host the dinner. The home entertainment industry thrives in the death of informal public life and the demand for new vcr's sound systems, video rental stores, and new cable connections are satisfying the social exiled. This problem in America manifests itself in a sorely deficient informal public life. The structure of shared experience beyond that offered by family, job, and passive consumerism is small and dwindling.

Is this some recent phenomena? Journalist Max Lerner is quoted in Oldenburg's book:

A number of recent American writings indicate that the nostalgia for the small town need not be constructed as directed toward the town itself: it is rather a "quest for community" (as Robert Nisbet puts it)--a nostalgia for a compassable and integral living unit. The critical question is not whether the small town can be rehabilitated in the image of its earlier strength and growth --- for clearly it cannot---but whether American life will be able to evolve any other integral community to replace it. This is what I call the problem of place in America, and unless it is somehow resolved, American personality will continue to be quiet and unfulfilled.

Lerner wrote that in 1957! He has certainly been proven a prophet.

Comments

[daver]

Exactly it is this informal public life that truly matters. Where ideas are exhanged freely, people from a variety of backgrounds mix and there's no restrictions to who's in the "club" or not.

[John]

True. And local planning commissions had better start recognizing that, rather than genuflecting to the developers.