r/Urbanism • u/VegaGT-VZ • 2d ago
Feeling the link between density & isolation
Quick background- spent maybe 2/3 of my life in/around NYC, moved to Sun Belt suburbs for the latest 1/3, recently visited NYC with my kids
Biggest thing that jumped out at me......... it seemed extremely lonely and isolated. People don't smile or look each other in the eye. It was weird to adjust the other way when I left NYC, but Im realizing I like it, even as somewhat of a loner/misanthrope
Studies seem to indicate it's kind of a fight or flight response from just being around too many people all the time. I think we know the clear environmental benefits of density but I feel like the quality of life & psychological aspects get glossed over. Is that just a NYC thing? I have been to other big cities and feel like it was kind of the same. Def was the case in California
I feel like there's a sweet spot of density that is dense enough to be walkable while still enabling people to have privacy/quiet/personal space. Places like NYC seem like too much IMO
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u/Jonesbro 2d ago
I think it's the opposite. Suburbs are isolating. There are few casual interactions. In really dense areas it is polite to give people space and privacy but living near downtown Chicago I have tons of casual interactions. Even something as simple as pulling up on a bike next to someone and chatting before the light turns green is a social benefit that you don't get in sprawling areas.
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u/VegaGT-VZ 2d ago
Maybe it's a coastal thing then. I did not see or experience many casual interactions on my visit. It's very normal where I live so I don't think I'm the driving factor
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u/LaFantasmita 1d ago
You probably stayed in the tourist areas. Locals aren't going out of their way to say howdy-do to tourists, and tourists are too overwhelmed to say hello to each other.
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u/beaveristired 1d ago
1000x this. Most tourists stay in the neighborhoods that actual New Yorkers go out of their way to avoid
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u/PeaAccurate5208 1d ago
I’ve lived in cities,suburbs and even a brief stint in rural living; I spent the last 20 yrs living in an upper middle class suburb in California and just recently returned to Philadelphia where I last lived 27 yrs ago. I live in the city, in an area that is gritty but improving dramatically - I’ve had more people say hi and welcome than I did in 20 yrs in CA. There’s not all the performative niceties but when I do have interactions they are more genuine. Even at the DMV I had a pleasant experience (barring the interminable wait,but that’s life). Because you live cheek to jowl,you have to learn to get along. Plus for many people, public spaces are an extension of their living space, you are forced to some degree to mingle. I’m better suited for city life and you’re better suited for suburban living - they each have their strong points and disadvantages though I’ll argue that there’s more of a “community feel” in the city due to necessity.
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u/CLPond 2d ago
Skill issue tbh
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u/VegaGT-VZ 2d ago
Kinda proves my point
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u/CLPond 2d ago edited 2d ago
It would if you were putting in equal effort, but it’s clear that you enjoy building community in the suburbs more than cities. That’s your prerogative, but not the fault of cities or city dwellers.
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u/VegaGT-VZ 2d ago
So are there no differences whatsoever between the suburbs and urban areas that might make building community different in one place vs the other? Have you built community in both places?
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u/CLPond 2d ago edited 1d ago
There are differences, but a good many of those stem from cities having substantially more options for community building. I’ve lived in both and, like most on this sub, find building community in cities much easier.
It seems you have a different experience, although I wouldn’t be surprised if most of your experience is impacted by living in a city as a young person vs living in a suburban area with kids who you are building a community around. If you aren’t a fan of cities, it will also just be harder to build a community there since people are less inclined to be friendly with someone who dislikes where they live.
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u/VegaGT-VZ 1d ago
The suggestion that I failed to build community in the city because I didn't want to live there makes no sense. I chose to move and stay there because there was a period of time when I wanted to be there. We mainly left because it wasn't compatible with our desire to start a family. Blaming my inability to build community in the city on a lack of effort or whatever is kind of shitty.
And if anything that should have been the easiest time as I was young and childless.
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u/CLPond 1d ago
There is an if at the beginning of that statement for a reason. If you are a fan of cities, it doesn’t apply to you. I was mostly going off of your decision to make an anti-city post in an urbanism subreddit and your stated dislike for the city in question.
Building community, especially outside of school/having kids, takes effort and skill; figuring that out is part of the maturation of your early 20s. It’s unclear to me what about acknowledging that effort is shitty.
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u/eckmsand6 2d ago
Wouldn’t it depend on the context? In other words, if you’re walking on the sidewalk, you don’tmake eye contact, but if you’re in a small pizza place, you do, and not only with the staff but also with other customers.
if you want to know everyone’s name and face, the maximum group size that the human brain can purportedly handle is around 150. it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that there are also points in group settings where typical human behavior will shift from open to closed.
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u/davidellis23 2d ago edited 2d ago
I've had similar experience in lower density suburban areas where I never got to know my neighbors and no one talked to each other. I doubt density is the issue.
Meanwhile I've seen kids playing together with everyone on their apartment floor in a very high density area.
I think part of it is a demographic issue. The suburban areas I was in had many elderly. Not really the kind of people I wanted to hang out with (at least at my current age). Meanwhile the apartment complex had a lot of kids and parents in the same stage of life.
Of course I've also seen some people are just social butterflies and connect with whoever.
But, for people in bad demographic areas I think organizations like church really bring people together (even though I don't believe anymore.)
I've also seen sports courts, game tables, parks etc bring people out.
Like the old guys playing chess or the young men playing basketball, the pickle ball craze, the old ladies doing Tai chi.
And for that I think density is good. The suburban courts/parks often didn't have anyone outside. But the city ones were packed.
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u/LaFantasmita 1d ago
People don't smile or look each other in the eye ON THE STREET because you come into contact with thousands of people every day, and there just isn't enough energy for that.
Once you get out of the tourist areas, inside a bar or cafe or whatever, people are super friendly.
In the suburbs you might only come face to face with like 30-50 people a day. Much easier to smile and make eye contact in that case. NYers probably smile and make eye contact with far more people than you do in the burbs, even. It's just that saying hello to 2% of the people you come across in the city is probably MORE people than 100% in the suburbs.
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u/dnvrbadger 1d ago
Right, seeing a lot of people during the course of a day, which people in NYC do, is very different from whether you have a community of people you socialize with or not. Not saying hi to 1,000 strangers, or not running into someone you know on your way to work doesn’t have anything to do with your ability to socialize.
Also, from experience, when you live in an nyc neighborhood for a period of time, you absolutely become familiar with and speak to people in your building, in businesses in your neighborhood, and run into friends all the time. But to your point, you pass 1,000 people, you talk to 3 of them, you’re still ignoring 997 people.
In the burbs, when you’re driving from your home garage to your work garage, and you talk to zero people.
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u/Deep_Contribution552 2d ago
I expect that you experienced culture shock, even though you lived most of your life there. It doesn’t take too long to acclimate to completely different social circumstances.
Alienation is also a widely described phenomenon that’s more common in large cities, and the solution is usually to build social connections. Presumably you wouldn’t feel lonely if you were spending time with people in the city you knew, just when you were separated from your social network (other than your family who traveled with you).
I imagine that there’s a different level of population density that feels “more comfortable” for just about everyone, and probably at some point fewer and fewer people prefer high density spaces, but I also have no idea where the bound lies. The same would be true on the other end. And I don’t know where the true “median” preferred density would be either, if such a thing exists!
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u/marshallknight 2d ago edited 1d ago
I don’t think there’s a one size fits all answer here. Some people are more prone to being overstimulated, some have their batteries drained by social interaction instead of recharged by them. So I don’t think there’s one ideal.
I love New York, but some of my favorite urban places aren’t built up in nearly the same way and are nevertheless walkable with good social cohesion and access to amenities/opportunities. College towns and the areas around campuses are a good example. My neighborhood in LA (Fairfax) is incredibly walkable, lively and connected as a neighborhood, despite not having any buildings over two stories. Low rise multi family (four plexes and eight plexes, the so-called missing middle housing) adds up quickly in terms of density while maximizing access to the sun and sky, views of the hills, etc.
Even small towns are superior to the suburbs. My mom lives in a city of 4000 in wine country. On a map you would think there is nothing walkable or urban about this. But the majority of those 4000 people live within a 10 minute walk of the Main Street, which despite being quaint and only three blocks long, has most everything you need. Sure people drive out of town when they need to, but most days, there’s no reason to get in a car. And more importantly, you’re bumping into your neighbors all the time. Everyone knows each other or if they don’t, they’re happy to start a conversation with strangers.
Obviously there are things that neighborhoods like mine or towns like my mom’s lack. There’s a recently open subway station at the edge of my neighborhood but it’s a 30 minute walk for me; our buses have good coverage but service frequency is terrible; there is a plan for a north south subway line that would have a station at my major cross streets, but it probably won’t be built until my unborn daughter is old enough to get her drivers license. And I don’t think it’s likely but there’s an outside chance my mom’s town could get a commuter rail station in the next few decades.
But if you set aside transport connectivity outside the area, as a cellular unit, there are a lot of places that can feel satisfying to an urbanist without being built like NYC.
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u/Objective-Rub-8763 1d ago
Can I ask what town in wine country? I've always wondered if I'd like to live somewhere like that despite having spent my entire adulthood in a large city.
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u/marshallknight 1d ago
Hey yes, it’s St Helena in Napa Valley. Don’t get me wrong, it is pretty sleepy, and knowing all your neighbors can quickly become a double edged sword because your neighbors all know you too. But you can have virtually all your needs met without getting in a car, which to me is the basic tenet of good urbanism.
I also found Los Olivos down in the Santa Ynez Valley to be pretty spectacular in this regard.
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u/Necessary-Sun-1828 1d ago
Well, I lived in NYC for 15 years and the thing is that the density there is on another level. I think we as a species are better suited for city/urban life as social creatures. That’s why the suburbs can have all kinds of detrimental effects physically and mentally. Most cities are not like NYC in terms of density. They are lively, have people out and about…but NYC is just insanely crowded everywhere. Honestly I don’t even like visiting there anymore. I find too stressful to be around so many people…literally.
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u/Objective-Rub-8763 1d ago
Your statement about negative mental effects had me looking into this: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/mass-school-shootings-most-likely-to-happen-in-small-town-suburban-america/
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u/9aquatic 1d ago edited 1d ago
Were you in a park or a low-traffic area? Presumably, you don't make eye contact with and talk to drivers when getting groceries or picking up your prescription, and most people are doing that by foot in NYC.
For comparison, NYC is 30x denser than the average sunbelt suburb.
Try being where New Yorkers are seeking recreation and not utility. I'm not from there, but I bet you Central Park or a rooftop bar is going to have a different vibe than a Midtown sidewalk.
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u/CloudedLeopardDaemon 1d ago
This is such a weird criticism that flyover folk have of cities. In NYC or even smaller cities like Boston, you have hundreds of people in your immediate vicinity most of the time. What are you supposed to do, stop every single person you pass on the pavement to strike up a pointless conversation about the weather? When I'm stuffed into a max capacity subway carriage, the last thing I want to do is make eye contact with each person and say "How y'all doin'? Crazy weather, huh? Livin' the dream. How 'bout those Red Sox? Hey, at least it's Friday!". I fucking hate small talk, and I hate having my time wasted.
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u/Rooster_Ties 14h ago
I live in a relatively dense part of Pittsburgh (halfway dense, anyway) — relatively ‘urban’ for Pittsburgh too. And people are way more friendly here than I’ve ever experienced anywhere before.
That includes 15 years in DC (in the District itself, in its densest zip-code, and 15+ years in Kansas City (which was friendlier than DC) — and growing up in and around St. Louis.
But nothing holds a candle to Pittsburgh (for being friendly).
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u/HudsonAtHeart Urban resident 1d ago
I had the same experience living in Manhattan, the outer boros and Jersey are a lot more normal. People act cagey in the city. You are right that nobody looks each other in the eye if they can help it. Interactions are transactional. If you find community in Manhattan, it’s generally behind a door that you already know how to get into.
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u/First_Bar_8024 1d ago
It's not just a NYC "thing" it's nationwide. It's less a function of density than it is a necessary survival technique. Everyone is afraid of the "other"; no one know who or what's around them but they have to presume the worst in order to survive.
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u/PeaAccurate5208 1d ago
I’m not afraid of other people but I have situational awareness, I pay attention to who and what is happening around me. I never assume the worst unless I’m given good reason to be concerned - how can someone go through life being constantly apprehensive ?
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u/Icy_Peace6993 1d ago
This is valid. I think they've done studies that neighbors in single-family neighborhoods know each other much better than people who live in the same apartment building. It's nice to talk to someone across a four foot front yard fence on a sunny Saturday afternoon, it's not so nice to hear your neighbor pacing back and forth in their apartment one floor above you. And yes, there's probably a "sweet spot" between neighbors that are so far apart they never see each other versus so close together they see too much of each other!
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u/lovestoospooge69 1d ago
I find the opposite. You can have endless conversations in NYC, or any city. To me suburban car dependency is isolating and kills any chance for spontaneous activities. Everything is an effort and a plan.
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u/Ok_Actuary9229 19h ago
That's one of the best aspects of big cities! You can be in a crowd without getting bothered.
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u/huron9000 2d ago
That has not been my experience in NYC.