CNU        VIII      SPEAKER

DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC PLACES IN THE DEVICE-BASED (ULTURE

Chris Hubbard, Principal WHAArchitecture and Planning

Presented at CNU2000: The Politics of Place

B10: Principal at WHA Architec­ ture and Planning, Mr. Hubbard specializes in walkable neighbor­ hood architecture and planning. In addition, he has spoken at Universities and written for Architecture magazines on these topics.

Also, as part of an education/ research outreach, he has produced a nfoety minute documentary for a DC-area

community television station on the shi fi from walkable neighbor­ hoods to automobile-dependent developments and the reshaping of the American way of life.

He is founding partner of Neighborhood Media Group and co-producer of a 18-video series on Andres Duany's Techniques of Traditional Neighborhood Development.

He organized a panel al CNU Vil on the Culture of Technology.

JUNE 16, 2000, 3:00 PM

Some prominent research has indicated that over the past 3o-40 years there has been a dramatic pattern of civic and social disengagement in America. This includes a decline in social networks, norms of reciprocity and trust between people. This pattern of disen­ gagement is manifested in a significant decline in participation in: voting, PTA, fraternal organizations, Unions, Red Cross, Religious Worship, socializing with friends and neighbors, local pubs and the family table to name a few areas of decline.

This social and civic disengagement has very serious effects on democracy and the civic realm as social and civic engagement have been shown to be pre conditions for better schools, safer streets, faster economic growth, more efficient Government and even healthier, happier Lives. Three significant factors in this decline seem to be increased mobility and less local rootedness with regional destinations where we are less likely to know others; increased cotmnuting time in the car to work and shopping; and the techno­ logical transformation of leisure.

The consumption of the related technologically-based commodities has displaced engage meat with our world and the pursuit of excellence in our lives, as Albert Borgmann has noted in his book, Technology and the Character of Comptempora,y Life: television and related devices provide more private, passive and less social entertainment, that has kept us at home more; television also gives a distorted, negative view of our "neighbors" through a disproportionate number of negative stories on the news, which combined with not knowing one's neighbors can discourage trust in them; the car provides more private, socially non-negotiable, disengaged transportation in an increasingly automobile depen­ dent environment; fast food provides individual meals as opposed to family meals.

However, before WWll, in walkable neighborhoods, one procured one's needs through face-to-face human interaction. There is a pattern to the consumption of commodities from technological devices as Albert Borgmann has said: "In a device, the relatedness of the world is replaced by a machinery, but the machinery is concealed, and the commodi­ ties which are made available by a device are enjoyed without the encumbrance of the engagement with a context".

The WWII generation's children and then grandchildren increasingly use these devices

Formore information con1ac1: THE CONGRESS FOK THE NEW URBANISM/ The Hearst Building, 5 Third Street, Ste. 725, Saa Francisco, CA 94103-3202. Tel: 415 495-2255, Fax: 415 495-1731, e-mail cnuinfo@cnu.org

for procuring their needs and hence have disengaged more from public places and people. With this disengagement there is disuse of civic skills and consequential decline in civic skills, e.g. with the rise in road rage and general disregard for traffic laws. The device­ based culture has generally displaced place-based culrure even in traditional places like walkable neighborhoods - which increasingly have been reduced from a more socially interactive environment to a mere device for dispensing commodities.

Some technologies may be the vehicle for social and civic disengagement, but they are not the driver. Ultimately this post-WWII wave of social disengagement began with the volition of the WWII generation to retire or disengage to - in the words of Ray Oldenburg - "the safe, orderly, quiet haven" of the automobile dependent development after the traumatic war. There is a desire in human beings to be autonomous and to be social, the desire for autonomy has been generally winning out in the last fifty years.

One can see the counter trend to this volition with enlightened, community spirited individuals choosing to move back into walkable neighborhoods in cities, towns and TNDs Uke Kentlands and Celebration. In these places there is social and civic engage­ ment by desire and choice. John Dewey said,"... Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community."

The key is the local and the place. Local face-to-face interaction, with its nonverbal communication,is important for being understood, being held accountable and thus developing trust. Walkable neighborhoods provide practical and sustainable opportunities for local face-to-face social interaction but are not sufficient for social engagement in our cultural context.

The internet to the extent that it allows new connections to be made - and it does - can recover some of our lost social capital if these connections result in local place-based interaction. Some new companies offer web sites to physically defined neighborhoods and therefore the internet can be a cyber bridge back to place-based community. As philosopher Paul Ricoeur said, the trick is to become modem and return to the sources.

formoreinlonnalion contact: THE CONGRESS FOR THE NEW URBANISM /The Hearst Building, 5 TI1ird Stree1, Ste. 725, San Francisco, CA 94103-3202. Tel: 4l5 495-2255, Fax: 415 495-1731, e-mail cnuinfo@cnu.org

2

Community and Public Places in the Device-Based Culture:

By Chris Hubbard

Some prominent research has indicated that over the past 30 –40 years there has been a dramatic pattern of civic and social disengagement in America.' This includes a decline in social networks, norms of reciprocity and trust between people – social capital or community. This pattern of disengagement is manifested in a significant decline in participation in: voting, PTA, fraternal organizations, Unions, Red Cross, Religious Worship, socializing with friends and neighbors, local pubs and the family table and league Bowling to name only a few areas of decline. The proportion of Americans saying that they can trust their government to do the right thing plummeted from 75% in the 1950's to 19% in 1994; the proportion of Americans saying that most people can be trusted fell from 58% in 1960 to 37% in 1993. We also see increasingly a general disregard for traffic laws and the prevalence of road rage. In addition there seems to be fewer shared concepts of virtue in today's society. Society has become more individual based and atomized which is counter to all collective action. This social and civic disengagement has very serious effects on democracy and the civic realm as social and civic engagement have been shown to be pre conditions for better schools, safer streets, faster economic growth, more efficient Government and even healthier, happier lives. Civic and social engagement is necessary for a vibrant community/democracy both to develop civic values and skills, but also to multiply and amplify individual voices. Putnam says: "The more extreme views have gradually become more dominant in grassroots American civic life as more moderate voices have fallen silent... If participation in political deliberation declines – if fewer and fewer voices engage in the democratic debate – our politics will become more shrill and less balanced."

The use of Some Technology is a Significant Factor of Decline

What are some of the factors in this decline? Pressures of time and money; Movement of woman into the work force with less time and energy available for building social capital; fewer marriages, more divorces, fewer children, lower real wages; Change in scale from the local to the regional and global; Increased mobility and less local rootedness; automobile dependent lifestyle; technological transformation of leisure from more social to more individual. The replacement of a civic generation with less engaged children and grandchildren – this will be touched on later; In particular I want to concentrate on the ways technology has changed the way we engage with each other and places, even traditional places. The four most significant technological factors involved in this decline are: increased mobility and less local rootedness with regional destinations where one is less likely to know others; change in scale from local to regional and global; increased commuting time in the automobile to shopping and work in an increasingly automobile dependent environment; and the technological transformation of leisure.

Originally we used technology for the liberation from toil and misery making goods needed for survival readily available.2 In some cases this has evolved into the procurement of frivolous comfort and entertainment, or put another way, technology has become a tool for self-gratification. The consumption of some technologically based

commodities has displaced engagement with our world and the pursuit of excellence in our lives. Philosopher Martin Heidegger said: "He (Man) puts the greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before himself at the shortest range. Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in the shortness of distance". 3

The use of Some Devices Displace Engagement with People and Public Places

The use of some technology has reduced complex engagement with our world that is at times social, burdensome, poetic or mythical into mere consumption of commodities from devices — that is a cheap substitute for more natural engagements. For example, TV provides private, passive, less social entertainment; the car provides private, socially non- negotiable, disengaged, transportation; fast food provides individual meals and the telephone allows non face-to-face communication. There is a pattern to the consumption of commodities from technological devices as Albert Borgmann has said: "In a device, the relatedness of the world is replaced by a machinery, but the machinery is concealed, and the commodities which are made available by a device are enjoyed without the encumbrance of the engagement with a context". We have traded relatedness and the poetic for availability; exertion and exercising skills for expedience. For years we have used devices and disengaged from local public places and people. Now, we don't need to engage in public places or with others to procure our needs for survival. This disengagement has brought disuse of civic skills and when the disuse of civic skills and virtues eventually results in the loss of them it creates a downward spiral of disengagement where the public realm becomes unpleasant and people disengage, leading to more disuse of socials skills, more unpleasantness, and so on. Now the

device-based culture has generally displaced place-based culture even in traditional places like walkable neighborhoods.

Before WWII we Procured our Needs by Necessity through local face-to-face Human Interaction. Now, More and More, we use Devices to Procure our needs.

Generally, through engagement with walkable neighborhoods before WWII, one procured one's needs through local face-to-face human interaction: entertainment included: vaudeville, dances, banquets, informal social interaction with neighbors. Now entertainment is more individual and private from using devices such as television, video games, computers and videos players, In terms of time spent, television viewing has the most significant influence on us in our leisure with the average daily household viewing above 7 hours. In terms of anti-social/anti-democratic activities, television viewing is public enemy #1: studies show as television viewing increases (specifically viewing television for entertainment), civic and social engagement decreases across the board. In addition, while we don't know as many of our neighbors, television gives a distorted/negative view of them from a disproportionate number of negative stories about people — that discourages trust in others. Much research suggests that when people have repeated face-to-face interactions, they are far less likely to shirk or cheat. But most of all, television (and related devices) viewing has kept us at home more.

Informal social connection in the past came through more diverse, local, face-to-face interactions, now social interaction is more remote with homogeneous connections through cell phones and computers. In the automobile dependent environment we not only have less face-to-face social interaction with neighbors but the environment is more socially, economically and racially homogeneous. Surveys show that most of our political discussions take place informally. We have become so mobile that we are less likely to know the people at our destinations which have become increasingly regional and less local. Also, we don't seem to have as much interest or time for informal social interaction. Now, conventional and even traditional public places have become mere devices for dispensing particular commodities in the device-based culture. One can imagine that virtual reality is not too great a jump when we now have individual consumption and everything else is background. Even the coffee shop has become a mere device for dispensing coffee under Starbucks management. A fairly typical sight now is a person in a potential 3rd place (a meeting place) using a cell phone or Walkman. From the

Internet and telephone we have typed and spoken words, with placed-based communication we have spoken words and all of the meaning that comes from non- verbal communication — body language, facial expressions, tone of voice and the language of the eyes.3a Given that very few of us are poets or philosophers it is unlikely that we can fully understand or be understood with just words. But this holistic level of understanding is important as it allows us to be held accountable for our views and thus helps to develop trust. Studies show that even high quality video interaction does not have the depth/trust building quality of face-to-face interaction. In the device-based culture. the desire for social connection can be sublimated with what psychologists call a pseudo- personal connection to others through viewing television. This displaces real connections to others.

Transportation was more social with walking/transit and local face-to-face, informal social encounters with neighbors on the streets and in local establishments. Now transportation is more individual with private automobiles for commuting to work and shopping. Studies show that for each additional 10 minutes of commuting time

—including shopping trips — civic and social engagement are reduced by about 10%.

Food was provided at the family table and with it engagement with the family, now fast food provides individual meals and there has been a significant decline in family meals. In addition, husbands and wives spend 3-4 times more time watching TV as they spend talking to each other.

The level of engagement in public places has reached a low even in traditional walkable neighborhoods: Recently, in a 1920's walkable neighborhood in the Washington, DC area, a small boy was stabbed to death in the front yard of a house by a stranger who walked up and stabbed him and then simply went down the street and caught a cab. Where are the eyes on the street?

Technology may be the Vehicle for Disengagement, but it is Not the Driver

Lest you think that I am blaming technology for the decline in social engagement - I'm not! A lot of technologies have the potential to increase social capital, but they aren't the limiting factors. It is always a challenge for a culture to survive the introduction of technology as technology might displace some focal practices. The danger of technology comes not from augmenting natural systems, but from substituting technology for those

natural systems. The consumption of commodities gives us a sense that we are autonomous and we consume commodities both to be autonomous and because they are readily available. They continue to be produced because they are consumed. There is a desire in human beings to be autonomous and a desire to be social - the desire for autonomy has generally been winning out in the last fifty years. In fact success as

presented in the media is related to the level of one's consumption of commodities, as

Ray Oldenburg says: "In the United States well-being has long since been measured by the individual's ability to afford a lifestyle which shuns things public and common".4 Ray Oldenburg has also said that we now – in this disengaged environment - develop lists of undesirable characters/neighbors. This trend toward autonomy was predicted by DeTocquevi lie as a product of Democracy itself: "Individualism at first only saps the

virtues of public life; but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all others, and is at length absorbed in selfishness...Individualism is of democratic origin and it threatens to spread in the same ratio as the equality of condition."' Philosopher Pierre Manent has said that the west has rejected the laws of Nature and God in a quest for human autonomy. But in declaring ourselves free and autonomous we have, paradoxically, lost a sense of what it means to be human.° The use of technology cannot transcend man's ultimate reality, which is Man, Nature and God. Tragically, in this sense, the use of technology can only produce a cheap substitute for Reality with its intrinsic poetic and mythical nature – a virtual reality. Allan Bloom has said that social disengagement is

rooted in and manifested in the voluntary breakdown of the family: "The important lesson that the family taught was the existence of the only unbreakable bond, for better or for worse, between human beings. The decomposition of this bond is surely America's most urgent social problem; to children, the voluntary separation of parents seems worse than their death precisely because it is voluntary. The capriciousness of wills, their lack of directedness to the common good, the fact that they could be otherwise but are not

–these are the real source of the war of all against all."' The "unbreakable human bond" is analogous to the strong force in physics that holds the nucleus of an atom together. If you destroy this force, the hierarchical world breaks down into fundamental particles.

Ultimately this post WWII wave of social disengagement began with the volition of the WWII generation to retire or disengage to, in the words of Ray Oldenburg, "the safe, orderly, quiet haven" of the automobile dependent development after the traumatic war.8 Their children and grandchildren were taught by example, device based culture, in the biggest devices of all, the automobile dependent development and the television. It is a cheap substitute for the walkable neighborhood. The use of these devices not only displaced civic and social engagement but more importantly the development of the civic values and skills as well. Increasing television viewing e.g. is correlated to a decrease in church going which encourages civic values. Each generation becomes further removed

from place-based culture and local public places that encourage face-to-face social interaction. Making this situation worse, place based culture is dying out with the WWII generation. Therefore community isn't simply a choice to engage or disengage anymore: one must first FIND a community group. Ultimately, community is a virtue and like other virtues it must be learned, practiced and is based on one's integrity. If any of these factors are compromised, community will be compromised no matter whether there are walkable neighborhoods or not.

A Countertrend: Choosing Engagement with People and Local Public Places from Desire Rather than from Necessity

One can see the counter trend to this volition with enlightened, community spirited individuals choosing to move back into cities, towns and TNDs like Kentlands and Celebration. In these places there is social and civic engagement by desire and choice rather than necessity. The walkable neighborhoods provide practical, sustainable opportunities for repeated local face-to-face social and civic engagement and for informal social interaction with a group. John Dewey said, "...democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community." Dewey's biographer Robert Westbrook adds: "Only in local face to face associations could members of a public participate in dialogues with their fellows, and such dialogues were crucial to the formation and organization of the public." Ray Oldenburg has said that growing up in a small town is the best training for living in a democracy, where one is put in close contact with a diversity of people with different incomes, ethnic backgrounds, education, religion, etc.

Putnam says that cities that have institutional neighborhood organizations such as Portland, OR and St. Paul, MN, are more effective at passing proposals that local people want. These cities also enjoy higher levels of support for and trust in municipal government. But opportunities are not necessarily sufficient for engagement given the present state of our culture. One must first value as a priority our place-based culture and

community and therefore civic and social engagement. Then one must consciously resist the use of devices that displace social and civic engagement and learn or develop the culture that is necessary to engage in these places. Significant social interaction is ultimately placed-based not device based. But there is a hope for recovery - from a device! It emerged quietly just before the close of the century. It is a hope for this generation and everybody else for the new millenium. The internet to the extent in which it develops new connections – and it has – can capture some of our lost social capital as long as these new connections eventuate in place-based interactions with a diverse group.

There are new companies which provide web sites for physically defined neighborhoods and subdivisions. If we include, in addition, third places with community/social web sites where one can create an electronic identity/profile and others would be free to make a connection, the Internet can become a cyber bridge back to local place-based community. It is a hope for connection in the most un-supportive physical and cultural environment for local place-based connections that we have had in over a hundred years. Through these place-based encounters with a diverse group we learn and practice the social skills and virtues – that De Tocqueville calls -the habits of the heart" - which are prerequisites for a democracy. Some prominent research has indicated that it is the regular engagement with a diverse social group that is most important for community. A diverse

social group creates informal plenary sessions that are at times civic in nature - driven by the process of conflict and accommodation - which contribute to the perennial renewal of society. The local neighborhood can contain such a group

In the absence of a common good or common object, as Rousseau puts it, the disintegration of society into particular wills is inevitable. Therefore the key is to consistently choose to engage with our cultural building blocks such as: spiritual skills, civic skills, marriage, family, local neighborhood/community groups, social groups, worship groups, cultural groups and nation - More connections, more engagement and more social capital. The crucial counterforce to consumption is celebration according to Albert Borgmann: "genuine celebration in turn is the communal devotion to something that unites and surpasses us and is sacred in a broad cultural sense."

The social institutions that made this democracy great are place-based and require

place-based engagement to keep them vibrant. Technology will be a part of developing a future vibrant democracy, but local place-based connections will be necessary. As philosopher Paul Ricoeur said, the trick is to become modern and return to the sources.9

NOTES

1.   Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000).

2.   Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984).

3.   Martin Heidegger, "The Thing," Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).

3a. John L. Locke, The De-Voicing of Society: why we don't talk to each other anymore (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).

4.   Alan Ehrenhalt, "The Empty Square," Preservation (March/April 2000).

5.   Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Penguin Group, 1956).

6.   Pierre Manent, The City of Man (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

7.   Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987).

8.   Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (New York: Paragon House, 1989).

9.  Paul Ricoeur, "Universal Civilization and National Cultures," History and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965).