2.28.2005
The Connection Spectrum
My friend Christine and I were walking around town a few weeks ago mulling things over. She had just come back from a long warm weather vacation and was feeling a little bitter about her return. It was cold. We had to walk to stay warm. That had not been an issue for her in Costa Rica.
She told me about the ex-pat community down there that she had stayed with, how they all seemed so in touch with the natural environment, how they all showed up on the beach at sunset to sit quietly and watch the sun go down. All of them. The whole town.
She felt like she wasn't nearly as in touch with the natural world as they were. But then she started asking them if, having lived down there for a few years, had they learned more about Latin American politics?
"No," they mostly said, "We don't read the newspapers."
That was a tough one for her to take; they had moved to a new country and hadn't bothered to learn a thing about it. It was an entire dissociation from society in exchange for a deep connection to nature. Or maybe the tradeoff wasn't intentional, but nevertheless it happened.
That led me to pull a newly concocted theory out of my ass. It's been gestating for awhile (not in my ass) but it all coalesced somewhere in SoHo while we were walking to Battery Park City.
Here's what I'm thinking.
Everybody in the world needs to feel connected. There are two major types of connection that can satisfy this need: to nature and to people. They are, to a certain extent, mutually exclusive. The more connected you are socially (ie, living in an urban environment), the harder it is to be communing with nature. And vice versa.
Each person can be placed somewhere on that spectrum, and it seems to me that, on the face of it, different personality types can be associated with where one sits on the spectrum. For some people, being in touch with nature satisfies this connection desire most effectively. These people perceive the world in a slower, more deliberate way. They can sit and watch a vista or a flower for long periods without fidgeting. They are observers. They watch and process stimulus at the level at which it is given, delving deeper into the stimulus the slower it is doled out. It is a skill I aspire to master. Others choose to enmesh themselves in the myriad social constructions that fulfill the need to be connected to people: working, clubs, money, whatever. Living in cities, basically, and all the trappings that come with it. These people prefer to live in an environment that overstimulates. They may gripe about it, but they're choosing to live there.
I may be oversimplifying the relationship (it might not be mutually exclusive, for example, but on the gut level it seems to be somewhat like that), but there seems to be some truth to this, no?
The question is, how does this relate to urban design? I'm not pulling too many major revelations, design-wise, from this theory. The only issue that it leads me to tinker with is the design of parks in urban environments. The prevailing wisdom has it that parks should be a refuge from the overstimulation of the city. But the people that choose to live in the city are capable, even prefer, higher levels of stimulation. What level of stimulation is appropriate in parks, then? Do you give people what they think they want? What they are used to? Less?
I'll have to think more about this.
My friend Christine and I were walking around town a few weeks ago mulling things over. She had just come back from a long warm weather vacation and was feeling a little bitter about her return. It was cold. We had to walk to stay warm. That had not been an issue for her in Costa Rica.
She told me about the ex-pat community down there that she had stayed with, how they all seemed so in touch with the natural environment, how they all showed up on the beach at sunset to sit quietly and watch the sun go down. All of them. The whole town.
She felt like she wasn't nearly as in touch with the natural world as they were. But then she started asking them if, having lived down there for a few years, had they learned more about Latin American politics?
"No," they mostly said, "We don't read the newspapers."
That was a tough one for her to take; they had moved to a new country and hadn't bothered to learn a thing about it. It was an entire dissociation from society in exchange for a deep connection to nature. Or maybe the tradeoff wasn't intentional, but nevertheless it happened.
That led me to pull a newly concocted theory out of my ass. It's been gestating for awhile (not in my ass) but it all coalesced somewhere in SoHo while we were walking to Battery Park City.
Here's what I'm thinking.
Everybody in the world needs to feel connected. There are two major types of connection that can satisfy this need: to nature and to people. They are, to a certain extent, mutually exclusive. The more connected you are socially (ie, living in an urban environment), the harder it is to be communing with nature. And vice versa.
Each person can be placed somewhere on that spectrum, and it seems to me that, on the face of it, different personality types can be associated with where one sits on the spectrum. For some people, being in touch with nature satisfies this connection desire most effectively. These people perceive the world in a slower, more deliberate way. They can sit and watch a vista or a flower for long periods without fidgeting. They are observers. They watch and process stimulus at the level at which it is given, delving deeper into the stimulus the slower it is doled out. It is a skill I aspire to master. Others choose to enmesh themselves in the myriad social constructions that fulfill the need to be connected to people: working, clubs, money, whatever. Living in cities, basically, and all the trappings that come with it. These people prefer to live in an environment that overstimulates. They may gripe about it, but they're choosing to live there.
I may be oversimplifying the relationship (it might not be mutually exclusive, for example, but on the gut level it seems to be somewhat like that), but there seems to be some truth to this, no?
The question is, how does this relate to urban design? I'm not pulling too many major revelations, design-wise, from this theory. The only issue that it leads me to tinker with is the design of parks in urban environments. The prevailing wisdom has it that parks should be a refuge from the overstimulation of the city. But the people that choose to live in the city are capable, even prefer, higher levels of stimulation. What level of stimulation is appropriate in parks, then? Do you give people what they think they want? What they are used to? Less?
I'll have to think more about this.
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