"Are we turning into self-absorbed silos with little to no time to care about others?" Getting back "the third place"

Two community columnists commented in today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about a dwindling sense of community in today's society:

Many people miss the community atmosphere they experienced growing up. We didn't drive or bus our kids to school or drive several miles to church. Church and school contributed to centers of community, along with neighborhood groceries and drugstores. Milwaukee used to have these types of neighborhoods. Now human contact, even telephone conversation, is declining. If yes, press one; if no, press two. We live in a technical culture, less courteous and with less human contact except for the joy of viewing one or more fingers in the rearview mirror.

Joseph F. Mangiamele, Shorewood

Recently I read about a 70-year-old man who was found dead in his recliner. He had been sitting there "watching" TV for a year. It is safe to say that were it not for the ruptured pipes in his home, he could have watched TV for another year. It is inconceivable to me is that no one missed this person and neighbors assumed he was in a nursing home. Have the days of community and neighbors looking out for neighbors become a thing of the past? Are we turning into self-absorbed silos with little to no time to care about others?

Marisa Rivera, Wauwatosa

"Are we turning into self-absorbed silos with little to no time to care about others?"

The answer is yes. Just read what passes for discourse in the "community blog" of a certain employee of a Republican state senator; someone takes time to compose a reasoned case for passing two school referendum questions, and the best answer this man can muster is, "You’ve never paid a property tax bill, have you?"

As we become more and more isolated with sprawled McHomes in connection-less cul-de-sacs, it becomes harder and harder to see beyond our own noses and appreciate steps that create a better whole. Thoughtful discussion be damned - - everything becomes all about our own personal property tax bill - - never mind that we have to cut library hours and can't clear recreational trails.

We live in suburbs that don't even bother to put sidewalks in neighborhoods, or finish sidewalks that are started.

Developers think nothing of building roads to nowhere with a big, ugly, orange-striped "no thruway" sign at the end (and blithely leaving it that way, in the case below, for three years and counting).

Where's the sense of pride in place? With such a bleak landscape "out there," it's no wonder we contain ourselves and our concerns in the confines of our own homes.

Something lacking in sprawling suburbs like Franklin is what's being called "the third place." If home is first, work is second, then a communal gathering point in a city or town is "the third place" - - and the place that is almost wholly missing in today's car-centric suburbs.

In the words of Ray Oldenburg, an urban sociologist from Florida who writes about the importance of informal public gathering places, "Houses alone do not a community make, and the typical subdivision proved hostile to the emergence of any structure or space utilization beyond the uniform houses and streets that characterized it." Oldenberg argues that "third places" are central to local democracy and community vitality.

From the preface to his book, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community:

Because of the void that the absence of informal public life has created, we have become slaves to consumerism more than we even can conceive. There is such an important element in the informal public gathering spot to relieve stress and makes our life so much more enjoyable.

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.

In other words: How can we think of the "greater good" when our horizon doesn't extend beyond the plasma TV and hot tub? It all becomes about our property taxes, indeed.

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.

Lack of contact in public space has cost us our senses of civility and empathy. The crass talk-radio mentality we endure today 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.

Coffee shops and book stores have become de facto "third places" - - certainly for a people like myself who work at home and need to "get out" now and then - - but they are no substitute, designed as they are to maintain a certain "contact bubble" around the people there; an open laptop or book is a visual "do not disturb" sign.

Here in Franklin we anticipate two commercial developments, Fountains of Franklin and Shops at Wyndham Village, that hold out the promise of mitigating Franklin's lack of a town square by creating a "park once" walkable environment that could encourage a main street feel. Unfortunately, as I'll illustrate in future postings, both developments face obstacles that may hobble them and create two more glorified strip malls.

We can only hope someone somewhere in Franklin's city planning structure can recognize that we deserve better and go the extra mile --- beyond explaining to us after the fact why "it couldn't be done."

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While everyone supports sound economic development, we should not support the takings of important natural resources in the process.