It’s Not Our Fault We’re Social Recluses.
For the majority of my readers, we remember a time when community existed in the real world. We can blame digital technologies but what about housing architectures? Surprised? Read on.
Community: a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
After school, we’d spend hours playing in the streets with the neighbourhood kids.
On weekends, we’d spend time in our back gardens, neighbours and neighbourhood friends invited; BBQ-ing, trampolining and paddle pooling.
We’d lounge in our front porches, idlily watching the summer pass by; ice-creams in abundance.
Somewhere along the line, we turned into social recluses.
We no longer seek community. We no longer feel the need to even know how our neighbours are doing.
Nowadays, we’re hibernating in our four [4] walls; constantly connected to and updated in the lives of strangers thousands of miles away.
In part, we’ve been ushered into isolation. In part, it’s our fault.
The Two Hands: Home and Community
The main goal of traditional houses and neighbourhoods were to provide a space for the private and communal.
A place to call home and to build a community.
How is Digital Technology Meddling?
I’ll let you ponder over these questions as I continue with this section.
How often do you visit your local shops or high street?
How often do you make small talk? With cashiers, people in the queue or bus stops?
One of the main ways in which digitalisation has meddled with our sociability is by distorting our definition of community and interactions.
Whatever we want, we can order it from the comfort of our beds without interacting with anyone. From clothes to food and even banking is done through our little smart devices!
The places (banks, cafes, food chains etc.) that served as signifiers of a community, a place of common purpose, are no longer necessary or convenient.
I suppose the idea of small talk is a morbidly displeasing thought nowadays.
Quite frankly, most people don’t have the patience or care enough to engage in it!
(HEY: Would you like to read the article in full? Head over to Discourse Journals’ Blog!)
But I will say, small talk is the fabric of community and an excellent way to find common ground and build bonds.
A short conversation in a Tesco queue and you might find yourself receiving advice on how to fix up a generations’ old winter stew.
Or, recommending a school to someone who recently moved into the area.
Or, and for the Love Actually fans out there, find love (aw *rolls eyes*).
But digitalisation has meant we’re dodging small talk at every capacity.
Even in spots that remain communal, like bus stops, aren’t we’re all guilty of awkwardly tapping around the calculator app to avoid any kind of interaction?
Altered Communities
Community has become, not a marker of how well you know someone or how often you speak to someone but rather, ‘well, we live in the same building’.
This altered definition of community and the way in which future housing architecture focuses on tower blocks as opposed to regular housing run parallel.
Pre-occupied with the efficiency and convenience that digital technologies bring, no need for small talk or human interaction, is there really a need for communal spaces?!
Is there a need for porches, front or back gardens if we will be absorbed in our devices, content with Netflix and a delivered takeaway?
Ending Ment
This article isn’t to bash architecture for encouraging a recluse lifestyle. Nor is this article intended to criticise digital technologies for facilitating a recluse lifestyle.
(The article also very clearly doesn’t speak on the intentional socio-political undertones of stacking a population like Lego. That’s for another time!)
But it’s delusional to deny that the convenience of digital technologies is beginning to outweigh the need for real-life interactions.
And when architecture is intended to create community, it too has to change its focus to enable a private space to live out virtual communities.
Housing architecture no longer needs to be designed to build, bond or bridge relations.
Society is transforming. Communities are transforming.
While it’s not wholly our fault, there’s no denying our digital reliance is influencing our, society’s and architectures’ definitions of community.
Iman
Read More:
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other – A must read! Part of a trilogy, the book explains the precarity of digital technologies on our social interactions and skills, and the dangers it poses to our future relationships.
TRT World Storyteller, The Great Disconnect – A wonderful documentary analysing the attempts of technologies to make our lives easier and efficient.
This was such an interesting read. When I tell you, not once have I ever even thought to link architecture to this discussion, but every point you’ve made makes perfect sense. I think we can also see this in the way blocks of flats are very rarely built with garden spaces nowadays...instead several blocks are just stacked up against each other.
Again, what a great read!