"Is that really true? Europe isn’t really as affluent as the United States. Maybe we’re just a little further along the gain wealth/lose community continuum. As an urbanist I like to think these are choices we make (or don’t realize we’re making, but which can be made differently), but maybe there really is something inexorable going on here."
I'm probably more on your side then I've written -- and me believing that it's a choice (you can have material wealth AND community) rather than a either/or process, out of hope more than anything.
The casual social interaction CAN ramp up again once you have kids in school. When done well, the pick up line offers opportunities to socialize with other parents who are in a similar situation. As can school events. But, like the other trends mentioned, this is more available in some places than others.
I used to pick up my kids and then let them run around on the playground at the youngest's school to let off some steam and give me a chance to socialize with other parents. It was only 10-15 minutes of my day, but I felt a profound loss when the teachers in charge of the after-care program asked us not to do that anymore (and this was pre-COVID - I'm sure it's never coming back now).
A synthesis of the restaurant piece and the Las Colinas pieces illustrates that urbanism in the US is doomed. As previous generations--Great Gen, Silent Gen, Boomers, and Xers--all promoted car dependence and suburbia in varying ways and in varying degrees, we have pinned our urbanist hopes on the kids. Millennials and Zoomers, urbanists hope, get it. But I don't think they do. The evolution of service in bars and restaurants is a response to the preferences of younger people. It seems calculated to minimize contact with strangers.
Second, and unrelated to the first, is the tendency of urbanists to exaggerate or imagine the loneliness of suburban dwellers. Many suburban dwellers have rich social lives. We will have more meaningful dialogues with suburban dwellers if we acknowledge this instead of pretending they are generally lonely losers.
I do agree there is something defective about suburban social life, and Jane Jacobs has some important insights that I do not see discussed by urbanists. She characterizes suburban socialization as All or Nothing associations occurring in opaque private spaces, such as living rooms and back yards. Her neologism is "Togetherness."
Minimizing contact with strangers seems to be a Boomer thing - they're the ones I see wearing the t-shirts that say "I hate people; nobody talk to me" with varying degrees of attempted humor. Unfortunately, they seem to have reproduced it in Millennials, where it presents a "I'm a superior introvert; making a social effort is oppression." (I say this as a confirmed introvert.) Whenever I see a meme about "My day is ruined because the self-checkout had a problem and now I have to ask the cashier to help me" I intuit that the poster is either 35 or 68.
I dispute your overall characterization. I am ignorant about any possible studies, though, so, like you, I am just working with anecdote. With this caveat issued, some of the gabbiest people I knew in regard to strangers were from my parents' and grandparents' generations (think Eisenhower- and Nixon-age). They yelled "get off my lawn" as stridently as anyone, but put them in a public space, and they would small-talk every stranger as if they were long-lost friends. When I rode the bus as my sole form of long-distance, local transpo (four decades past), I recall much more chatter during the ride. Comparatively speaking, there is hardly any social interaction when I ride. It's more common to see people of all ages looking at their phones at stops and during the ride. I mean, people do not even LOOK at other people these days.
Zoomers seem aware that this behavior is contributing to their loneliness and misery, even if they can't imagine doing differently. The people I described actively enjoy isolating themselves.
Whether people are happy about the situation or miserable, I am claiming that we are not well equipped to solve these problems. In the long run, culture is changeable, but I predict that culture will not change in the ways that it needs to change. For example, with the food kiosks, I HAVE NEVER USED ONE. That's an option. Anyone using a kiosk is incrementally promoting kiosks. Revealed preference speaks volumes here. IMO, JJs theory of urban socialization as expressed in Death and Life is a great conceptual tool. I don't see urbanists discussing this, at least accurately and in any detail.
Do you really think bars and restaurants are being automated because the customers want it that way? I always thought it was because machines are cheaper than paying employees.
Yes I do! By your reasoning--that consumers do not have any choice over what they buy--restaurants would have been converted to automats over a century ago!
You don't seem to recognize that there are shades of opinion about kiosks. Ranging from highly in favor to highly opposed. Highly in favor would be: thank God I don't have to ever talk to a human being. Highly opposed would be: I will never order from a kiosk. In between would be: I don't like kiosks but I've got other issues in my life to worry about.
I continue to assert that business owners do what they do primarily to save money. They relent only when customers revolt, and in this instance customers have not revolted. New Coke was the supreme example of customers revolting. But that was a long time ago.
"Is that really true? Europe isn’t really as affluent as the United States. Maybe we’re just a little further along the gain wealth/lose community continuum. As an urbanist I like to think these are choices we make (or don’t realize we’re making, but which can be made differently), but maybe there really is something inexorable going on here."
I'm probably more on your side then I've written -- and me believing that it's a choice (you can have material wealth AND community) rather than a either/or process, out of hope more than anything.
The casual social interaction CAN ramp up again once you have kids in school. When done well, the pick up line offers opportunities to socialize with other parents who are in a similar situation. As can school events. But, like the other trends mentioned, this is more available in some places than others.
I used to pick up my kids and then let them run around on the playground at the youngest's school to let off some steam and give me a chance to socialize with other parents. It was only 10-15 minutes of my day, but I felt a profound loss when the teachers in charge of the after-care program asked us not to do that anymore (and this was pre-COVID - I'm sure it's never coming back now).
A synthesis of the restaurant piece and the Las Colinas pieces illustrates that urbanism in the US is doomed. As previous generations--Great Gen, Silent Gen, Boomers, and Xers--all promoted car dependence and suburbia in varying ways and in varying degrees, we have pinned our urbanist hopes on the kids. Millennials and Zoomers, urbanists hope, get it. But I don't think they do. The evolution of service in bars and restaurants is a response to the preferences of younger people. It seems calculated to minimize contact with strangers.
Second, and unrelated to the first, is the tendency of urbanists to exaggerate or imagine the loneliness of suburban dwellers. Many suburban dwellers have rich social lives. We will have more meaningful dialogues with suburban dwellers if we acknowledge this instead of pretending they are generally lonely losers.
I do agree there is something defective about suburban social life, and Jane Jacobs has some important insights that I do not see discussed by urbanists. She characterizes suburban socialization as All or Nothing associations occurring in opaque private spaces, such as living rooms and back yards. Her neologism is "Togetherness."
Minimizing contact with strangers seems to be a Boomer thing - they're the ones I see wearing the t-shirts that say "I hate people; nobody talk to me" with varying degrees of attempted humor. Unfortunately, they seem to have reproduced it in Millennials, where it presents a "I'm a superior introvert; making a social effort is oppression." (I say this as a confirmed introvert.) Whenever I see a meme about "My day is ruined because the self-checkout had a problem and now I have to ask the cashier to help me" I intuit that the poster is either 35 or 68.
I dispute your overall characterization. I am ignorant about any possible studies, though, so, like you, I am just working with anecdote. With this caveat issued, some of the gabbiest people I knew in regard to strangers were from my parents' and grandparents' generations (think Eisenhower- and Nixon-age). They yelled "get off my lawn" as stridently as anyone, but put them in a public space, and they would small-talk every stranger as if they were long-lost friends. When I rode the bus as my sole form of long-distance, local transpo (four decades past), I recall much more chatter during the ride. Comparatively speaking, there is hardly any social interaction when I ride. It's more common to see people of all ages looking at their phones at stops and during the ride. I mean, people do not even LOOK at other people these days.
Zoomers seem aware that this behavior is contributing to their loneliness and misery, even if they can't imagine doing differently. The people I described actively enjoy isolating themselves.
Whether people are happy about the situation or miserable, I am claiming that we are not well equipped to solve these problems. In the long run, culture is changeable, but I predict that culture will not change in the ways that it needs to change. For example, with the food kiosks, I HAVE NEVER USED ONE. That's an option. Anyone using a kiosk is incrementally promoting kiosks. Revealed preference speaks volumes here. IMO, JJs theory of urban socialization as expressed in Death and Life is a great conceptual tool. I don't see urbanists discussing this, at least accurately and in any detail.
More people should refuse to use the kiosks, yes.
Do you really think bars and restaurants are being automated because the customers want it that way? I always thought it was because machines are cheaper than paying employees.
Yes I do! By your reasoning--that consumers do not have any choice over what they buy--restaurants would have been converted to automats over a century ago!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat
I have never ordered from a kiosk, and I will never order from a kiosk. If enough people had my attitude, there would be no kiosks.
You don't seem to recognize that there are shades of opinion about kiosks. Ranging from highly in favor to highly opposed. Highly in favor would be: thank God I don't have to ever talk to a human being. Highly opposed would be: I will never order from a kiosk. In between would be: I don't like kiosks but I've got other issues in my life to worry about.
I continue to assert that business owners do what they do primarily to save money. They relent only when customers revolt, and in this instance customers have not revolted. New Coke was the supreme example of customers revolting. But that was a long time ago.