Cities Are Bad for Humans
Dec. 19th, 2021 01:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithStudies show that people living in cities suffer worse mental health.
Well, duh. Overcrowding is bad for 100% of organisms. Every species has a range of optimum density based on its needs and habits. Too few, and it's difficult to find a mate; too many, and competition for resources undermines survival. Social species can live more densely than solitary ones because they have skills to manage relationships. But there's always a maximum density beyond which it becomes harmful.
People living in cities are more susceptible to mental illness than their countryside counterparts. Sociologist Georg Simmel suggests this is because the city, a place of excessive stimulation, has a special way of rendering people indifferent to the world around them. Where relationships in towns are characterized by emotions, those in cities are purely economic — and its inhabitants are poorer for it.
We've created a society that is horrible at meeting human needs, and indeed, makes it difficult or impossible for individuals to do so even if they know how. Frex, if you want long-term relationships, even if you stay in one place, other people moving around you make this harder.
Still, there's a valuable takeaway: if you want want the best chance of mental health, choose a small town instead of a big city. If you're in a city and you're having problems, consider moving somewhere smaller because that might help.
Specifically, city-dwellers are almost 40% more likely to suffer from depression and other mood disorders and twice as likely to develop schizophrenia.
When you see a big, obvious gap like that then something is really wrong.
For one, city-dwellers are routinely placed in emotional states that eat away at their psychological wellbeing, such as stress, isolation, and uncertainty.
While it's not always possible to avoid the causes, we can certainly treat the results:
* Provide quiet rooms, parks, and other stress-relief facilities.
* Build to assist connectivity through mass-transit, sidewalks, and social areas. Use social customs and programs to help people form relationships.
* Facilities like homeless shelters and food banks, as well as social programs, provide a safety net to buffer against uncertainty so that one problem doesn't become a life-wrecking cascade.
While some people move to the city in search of opportunity, others do so to escape intolerable conditions such as war, poverty, or abuse. Rather than curing their neuroses, however, the perils and pitfalls of city life may actually have the adverse effect of exacerbating them.
Damaged people often benefit from a safe, quiet environment and nature soothes many complaints. Put these together and you can see that moving to the countryside is a better bet for most trauma survivors. However, a city may be beneficial in terms of providing more services such as a wide choice of support groups, counselors, doctors, etc. Either balance the two by living near a city but not in it, or offer nature trips for traumatized city dwellers.
At the same time, there seems to be something about cities that brings out the worst in people regardless of whether they arrived with predetermined trauma in tow.
Two reasons that are very hard to get around:
* Overcrowding is bad for organisms. Cities typically exceed the optimum human density. We can offer people a choice of living densities, but those who choose the highest are going to face some hardships because of it. This is worse if they don't actually have a choice.
* Humans can only manage so many relationships, and a city greatly exceeds that number (which is sometimes called the monkeysphere). We can help this by facilitating relationships among smaller groups such as coworkers or neighbors.
His central thesis is that city-dwellers, because they are exposed to so many more audiovisual stimuli than their countryside counterparts, involuntarily erect psychological defenses against their surroundings that make life less rewarding.
Now consider the people who can't do that. The ones who get diagnosed with ADHD, SPD, or the like. It's not that this crapsack environment is good for or even harmless to other people. It's just that it breaks some faster than others -- the canaries in the coal mine. No accident that some studies have shown reduced symptoms for ADHD and SPD in those who enjoy more nature.
The number of people which city-dwellers must interact with on a daily basis is so large that it is both impossible and impractical to develop a personal connection with every one they meet. Consequently, most interactions with others are brief and impersonal.
This is in sharp contrast to the village, where inhabitants are intimately familiar with each other.
See above re: monkeysphere.
For instance, a baker is not just a baker but also a neighbor. He is not simply a member of the service industry that sells bread in exchange for money, but a member of the community, and his personality and history are as (if not more) important to customers than the service he offers.
A subtler aspect: People are more likely to form relationships with other individuals than with a corporation, and the village baker is more likely an independent business owner than a chainstore manager.
Not mentioned in this article: more village jobs are concrete, and more city jobs are abstract. That is, to keep a small town going, you need a local baker, plumber, electrician, hairdresser, often farmers, etc. These jobs relate directly to survival needs like food, shelter, and personal care. In a big city, many jobs are basically flimflam, like stock trading; they make income but don't produce actual products or services directly impacting lives. So it's easier for concrete village jobs to generate a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, while abstract city jobs often leave people feeling unfulfilled, lost, and confused about why they aren't happier when they're making good money.
While relationships in towns are governed by emotions, those in cities are based on reason. “All emotional relationships between persons rest on their individuality,” writes Simmel, “whereas intellectual relationships deal with persons as with numbers, that is, as with elements which, in themselves, are indifferent, but which are of interest only insofar as they offer something objectively perceivable.”
Oh, I don't see much reason in city interactions. It's still emotion. They're just different emotions. A village interaction may involve affection, curiosity, gratitude -- all kinds of things. A city interaction is most often motivated by selfishness, seeing other people as a means to an end.
Because city-dwellers are unable to establish meaningful relationships with a large number of people in their vicinity, their interactions with different elements of society become economic rather than communal. Where townspeople can place their trust in one another, city-dwellers can rely only on the sanctity of their transactions and the value of their currency.
Half-true, and largely dependent on the city's culture. Sometimes people do form a citywide cultural identity. Remember the Spiderman scene: "This is New York, you mess with one of us, you mess with ALL of us." It was a much saner moment than typical of Marvelverse.
Georg Simmel refers to currency as “the frightful leveler” because it expresses everything in the same monetary unit. Goods and services, rather than being unique to the person that provided them, acquire a value that can instantly be compared to all other things. Thus, the market economy, fully developed in big cities, also contributes to the city-dweller’s inability to distinguish their surroundings.
Let's not forget money's overwhelming ability to divide people by location, resources, agency, and pretty much everything else. This contributes greatly to the toxicity of cities both emotional and physical.
Modern cities are built on individuality, which is expressed in the specialization of its labor as well as the financial independence of its inhabitants. The polis, by comparison, was more like a large, small town. Rather than separating its populations into distinct economic units, these city-states promoted the notion that everyone was part of the same social institution.
It can be done. Note that even in our world, some towns and cities have put a lot more energy into developing a distinctive culture.
By the way, Terramagne-America has much less of a problem with this. Many of their methods are replicable with local resources, including but not limited to:
* Their population is less urban overall. They still have healthy small towns; in areas with shrinking population, people are more inclined to address that issue than to ignore it. The Rutledge thread about bringing Syrian refugees into a Vermont town is a direct riff on the Rutland fiasco here. They also have lots of family farms left, and they tend to cluster up even on isolated farms, so more people can live on the same resources and share company. See an example with Woolgather Hill in "Mending the Broken." What cities they do have are more sociable; take a tour of Bluehill and read how to make your home town more like it.
* Most people have good coping skills, help-seeking skills, relationship skills, and emotional first aid as these are taught from a young age on up. This equips them to solve most problems.
* A patchwork test assists people in identifying gaps in their life skills, so they can fill in whatever's missing. While most used by foster kids and abuse survivors, high school and college students are generally advised to take one, and it's a common recommendation for people who start counseling too. Here's an example of a patchwork test in a poem.
* People are taught to connect as soon as they move. First they look for their immediate neighbors on either side, then their floor (in an apartment building) or block (in freestanding houses), then their neighborhood in general. They also look for contacts through clubs or other thematic groups, which are a lot more common there. Most towns and cities have a "new here" group, which can be open-ended or organized by cohort, which helps to make friends among other new-in-town folks. Conversely, folks are also taught to reach out to new neighbors who move in. See an example when Cassandra moves. Counselors, doctors, and other caregivers watch for signs of loneliness because it's more dangerous than smoking or obesity, so they take steps to address it.
* Quiet rooms are about as common as family restrooms. Most big buildings like a mall, school, or office complex will have one or more. They come in a wide range from general to specifics like a breastfeeding room, prayer room, or reading room. Posters and books offer tips on coping skills and self-help for those in need. This way, people have a place to wind down if they start to get overloaded, which prevents many intrapersonal and interpersonal problems. Other safety valves help too.
* Communities are much more connected through methods including sidewalks, bike lanes, mixed-use paths, buses, trains, and semiprivate shuttlebuses. This includes better accessibility for people with disabilities, stay-at-home-parents, the poor, the elderly, and other often-isolated groups. It's just much easier in T-America to get around and interact with people. Here's a shuttlebus example.
* There are lots of public places such as parks, plazas, community centers, meeting halls, and so on. It's easy for a group to find a room to meet in -- support groups, gaming groups, craft clubs, etc. Many schools and churches let out their facilities during off-hours to make more use of the space. See Shiv at a craft club.
* Mental care is readily available through many free or affordable venues including community centers, hospitals, and mental clinics. Lots of good-sized businesses and other places also have an Emotional First Aide as well as a physical first aid employee, to minimize the chance of small problems becoming big problems. Here's an example of counseling there.
* Emergency workers are trained to minimize chances of traumatic stress just like physical infections. Primarily that means quashing helplessness and restoring a sense of safety and control as fast as possible, since helplessness is the biggest cause of PTSD and such. They also offer free choice of options like talking about the stress, not talking about it, or playing a stacking-sorting game.
* If someone winds up in the hospital, they and their friends/family are offered emotional first aid, or emotional trauma care, instead of ignoring the threat to mental health.
* There are Gentle Life communities for folks who want to treat traumatic stress with lifestyle changes. A description appears in the content notes for "Come Together to Learn and Create." The Nicholson family farm was started for the same reason, it's just smaller than a whole community.
Well, duh. Overcrowding is bad for 100% of organisms. Every species has a range of optimum density based on its needs and habits. Too few, and it's difficult to find a mate; too many, and competition for resources undermines survival. Social species can live more densely than solitary ones because they have skills to manage relationships. But there's always a maximum density beyond which it becomes harmful.
People living in cities are more susceptible to mental illness than their countryside counterparts. Sociologist Georg Simmel suggests this is because the city, a place of excessive stimulation, has a special way of rendering people indifferent to the world around them. Where relationships in towns are characterized by emotions, those in cities are purely economic — and its inhabitants are poorer for it.
We've created a society that is horrible at meeting human needs, and indeed, makes it difficult or impossible for individuals to do so even if they know how. Frex, if you want long-term relationships, even if you stay in one place, other people moving around you make this harder.
Still, there's a valuable takeaway: if you want want the best chance of mental health, choose a small town instead of a big city. If you're in a city and you're having problems, consider moving somewhere smaller because that might help.
Specifically, city-dwellers are almost 40% more likely to suffer from depression and other mood disorders and twice as likely to develop schizophrenia.
When you see a big, obvious gap like that then something is really wrong.
For one, city-dwellers are routinely placed in emotional states that eat away at their psychological wellbeing, such as stress, isolation, and uncertainty.
While it's not always possible to avoid the causes, we can certainly treat the results:
* Provide quiet rooms, parks, and other stress-relief facilities.
* Build to assist connectivity through mass-transit, sidewalks, and social areas. Use social customs and programs to help people form relationships.
* Facilities like homeless shelters and food banks, as well as social programs, provide a safety net to buffer against uncertainty so that one problem doesn't become a life-wrecking cascade.
While some people move to the city in search of opportunity, others do so to escape intolerable conditions such as war, poverty, or abuse. Rather than curing their neuroses, however, the perils and pitfalls of city life may actually have the adverse effect of exacerbating them.
Damaged people often benefit from a safe, quiet environment and nature soothes many complaints. Put these together and you can see that moving to the countryside is a better bet for most trauma survivors. However, a city may be beneficial in terms of providing more services such as a wide choice of support groups, counselors, doctors, etc. Either balance the two by living near a city but not in it, or offer nature trips for traumatized city dwellers.
At the same time, there seems to be something about cities that brings out the worst in people regardless of whether they arrived with predetermined trauma in tow.
Two reasons that are very hard to get around:
* Overcrowding is bad for organisms. Cities typically exceed the optimum human density. We can offer people a choice of living densities, but those who choose the highest are going to face some hardships because of it. This is worse if they don't actually have a choice.
* Humans can only manage so many relationships, and a city greatly exceeds that number (which is sometimes called the monkeysphere). We can help this by facilitating relationships among smaller groups such as coworkers or neighbors.
His central thesis is that city-dwellers, because they are exposed to so many more audiovisual stimuli than their countryside counterparts, involuntarily erect psychological defenses against their surroundings that make life less rewarding.
Now consider the people who can't do that. The ones who get diagnosed with ADHD, SPD, or the like. It's not that this crapsack environment is good for or even harmless to other people. It's just that it breaks some faster than others -- the canaries in the coal mine. No accident that some studies have shown reduced symptoms for ADHD and SPD in those who enjoy more nature.
The number of people which city-dwellers must interact with on a daily basis is so large that it is both impossible and impractical to develop a personal connection with every one they meet. Consequently, most interactions with others are brief and impersonal.
This is in sharp contrast to the village, where inhabitants are intimately familiar with each other.
See above re: monkeysphere.
For instance, a baker is not just a baker but also a neighbor. He is not simply a member of the service industry that sells bread in exchange for money, but a member of the community, and his personality and history are as (if not more) important to customers than the service he offers.
A subtler aspect: People are more likely to form relationships with other individuals than with a corporation, and the village baker is more likely an independent business owner than a chainstore manager.
Not mentioned in this article: more village jobs are concrete, and more city jobs are abstract. That is, to keep a small town going, you need a local baker, plumber, electrician, hairdresser, often farmers, etc. These jobs relate directly to survival needs like food, shelter, and personal care. In a big city, many jobs are basically flimflam, like stock trading; they make income but don't produce actual products or services directly impacting lives. So it's easier for concrete village jobs to generate a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, while abstract city jobs often leave people feeling unfulfilled, lost, and confused about why they aren't happier when they're making good money.
While relationships in towns are governed by emotions, those in cities are based on reason. “All emotional relationships between persons rest on their individuality,” writes Simmel, “whereas intellectual relationships deal with persons as with numbers, that is, as with elements which, in themselves, are indifferent, but which are of interest only insofar as they offer something objectively perceivable.”
Oh, I don't see much reason in city interactions. It's still emotion. They're just different emotions. A village interaction may involve affection, curiosity, gratitude -- all kinds of things. A city interaction is most often motivated by selfishness, seeing other people as a means to an end.
Because city-dwellers are unable to establish meaningful relationships with a large number of people in their vicinity, their interactions with different elements of society become economic rather than communal. Where townspeople can place their trust in one another, city-dwellers can rely only on the sanctity of their transactions and the value of their currency.
Half-true, and largely dependent on the city's culture. Sometimes people do form a citywide cultural identity. Remember the Spiderman scene: "This is New York, you mess with one of us, you mess with ALL of us." It was a much saner moment than typical of Marvelverse.
Georg Simmel refers to currency as “the frightful leveler” because it expresses everything in the same monetary unit. Goods and services, rather than being unique to the person that provided them, acquire a value that can instantly be compared to all other things. Thus, the market economy, fully developed in big cities, also contributes to the city-dweller’s inability to distinguish their surroundings.
Let's not forget money's overwhelming ability to divide people by location, resources, agency, and pretty much everything else. This contributes greatly to the toxicity of cities both emotional and physical.
Modern cities are built on individuality, which is expressed in the specialization of its labor as well as the financial independence of its inhabitants. The polis, by comparison, was more like a large, small town. Rather than separating its populations into distinct economic units, these city-states promoted the notion that everyone was part of the same social institution.
It can be done. Note that even in our world, some towns and cities have put a lot more energy into developing a distinctive culture.
By the way, Terramagne-America has much less of a problem with this. Many of their methods are replicable with local resources, including but not limited to:
* Their population is less urban overall. They still have healthy small towns; in areas with shrinking population, people are more inclined to address that issue than to ignore it. The Rutledge thread about bringing Syrian refugees into a Vermont town is a direct riff on the Rutland fiasco here. They also have lots of family farms left, and they tend to cluster up even on isolated farms, so more people can live on the same resources and share company. See an example with Woolgather Hill in "Mending the Broken." What cities they do have are more sociable; take a tour of Bluehill and read how to make your home town more like it.
* Most people have good coping skills, help-seeking skills, relationship skills, and emotional first aid as these are taught from a young age on up. This equips them to solve most problems.
* A patchwork test assists people in identifying gaps in their life skills, so they can fill in whatever's missing. While most used by foster kids and abuse survivors, high school and college students are generally advised to take one, and it's a common recommendation for people who start counseling too. Here's an example of a patchwork test in a poem.
* People are taught to connect as soon as they move. First they look for their immediate neighbors on either side, then their floor (in an apartment building) or block (in freestanding houses), then their neighborhood in general. They also look for contacts through clubs or other thematic groups, which are a lot more common there. Most towns and cities have a "new here" group, which can be open-ended or organized by cohort, which helps to make friends among other new-in-town folks. Conversely, folks are also taught to reach out to new neighbors who move in. See an example when Cassandra moves. Counselors, doctors, and other caregivers watch for signs of loneliness because it's more dangerous than smoking or obesity, so they take steps to address it.
* Quiet rooms are about as common as family restrooms. Most big buildings like a mall, school, or office complex will have one or more. They come in a wide range from general to specifics like a breastfeeding room, prayer room, or reading room. Posters and books offer tips on coping skills and self-help for those in need. This way, people have a place to wind down if they start to get overloaded, which prevents many intrapersonal and interpersonal problems. Other safety valves help too.
* Communities are much more connected through methods including sidewalks, bike lanes, mixed-use paths, buses, trains, and semiprivate shuttlebuses. This includes better accessibility for people with disabilities, stay-at-home-parents, the poor, the elderly, and other often-isolated groups. It's just much easier in T-America to get around and interact with people. Here's a shuttlebus example.
* There are lots of public places such as parks, plazas, community centers, meeting halls, and so on. It's easy for a group to find a room to meet in -- support groups, gaming groups, craft clubs, etc. Many schools and churches let out their facilities during off-hours to make more use of the space. See Shiv at a craft club.
* Mental care is readily available through many free or affordable venues including community centers, hospitals, and mental clinics. Lots of good-sized businesses and other places also have an Emotional First Aide as well as a physical first aid employee, to minimize the chance of small problems becoming big problems. Here's an example of counseling there.
* Emergency workers are trained to minimize chances of traumatic stress just like physical infections. Primarily that means quashing helplessness and restoring a sense of safety and control as fast as possible, since helplessness is the biggest cause of PTSD and such. They also offer free choice of options like talking about the stress, not talking about it, or playing a stacking-sorting game.
* If someone winds up in the hospital, they and their friends/family are offered emotional first aid, or emotional trauma care, instead of ignoring the threat to mental health.
* There are Gentle Life communities for folks who want to treat traumatic stress with lifestyle changes. A description appears in the content notes for "Come Together to Learn and Create." The Nicholson family farm was started for the same reason, it's just smaller than a whole community.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-19 09:46 am (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2021-12-19 11:00 am (UTC)Come to think of it, I believe part of the effect is dispersion signalling. When the density gets low enough, a motivator kicks in to tell the individual "here is a fellow member of your species, interact while you have the chance." If you're on a lonely country road, and you haven't seen a car in hours, when do you see one, you wave. People are more drawn to connect, pull together, when there are fewer.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-19 09:54 am (UTC)For one thing, the study shows that while *some* mental health issues are more common in citydwellers than rurals, *others* - such as suicide risk, dementia, and addiction - are *less* common. They also take care to note possible confounding factors, something that article blithely ignores.
Thoughts
Date: 2021-12-19 11:15 am (UTC)Possibly ...
>> For one thing, the study shows that while *some* mental health issues are more common in citydwellers than rurals, *others* - such as suicide risk, dementia, and addiction - are *less* common. They also take care to note possible confounding factors, something that article blithely ignores.<<
It would be interesting to do a metastudy, gathering all possible studies on mental health in small towns/rural areas vs. cities to determine the overall balance. We could also investigate which problems are exacerbated by which environment, such that people could be more precisely directed "If you have problems A, B, C then a small town environment may help; if you have X, Y, Z then a city may be more beneficial."
However, this is far from the only example that I've seen. Lots of other pieces have mentioned a similar pattern: cities are stressful to humans, people in cities suffer negative effects, etc. It also matches my personal observations of sociodynamics in denser or sparser areas.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu-projects/drivers_urb_change/urb_environment/pdf_hazards_pollution/IIED_stephens_health_inequalities.pdf
https://brainblogger.com/2016/07/07/how-city-living-can-be-bad-for-kids/
http://www.sustainablecalgary.org/the-blog/2019/5/16/sxtfhnijz154ayjmwi2vm7zztsp51l
https://www.acponline.org/acp_policy/policies/urban_health_penalty_new_dimensions_directions_in_inner_city_health_care_1996.pdf
This one seems to find that the health balance is similar, just the details differ:
https://www.inspq.qc.ca/pdf/publications/307-RuralHealthQuebec.pdf
Further exploration would likely benefit efforts to devise healthy habitats for humanity. Right now, I don't think we're doing a great job of that.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-19 11:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-19 11:43 pm (UTC)Yes ...
Date: 2021-12-20 12:55 am (UTC)Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-12-20 07:22 am (UTC)A small town might very well designate someone the town eccentric and just...live with the person and know how to deal with their issues, but the same person with the same issues in a city might be perceived as dangerous. (Or be more likely to get lost, because strangers aren't as willing/able to help as lifelong neighbors.)
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-12-21 02:45 am (UTC)It's kind of like how dyslexia was a trivial problem for most of human history, didn't reach annoying level until the advent of cities where left/right became really important directions, but now when everyone is expected to read in order to participate in society, it's crippling when bad enough to impair or prevent literacy.
Change the context, and some things cease to be problems or even become assets.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-12-22 05:04 am (UTC)Suicides and addiction are much higher in rural areas than in urban ones. Sounds like they're not coping, they're self-medicating until it gets to be too much.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-12-22 05:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-19 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-19 07:39 pm (UTC)--Laura G
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-20 06:05 pm (UTC)Its been reasonable for most of my life for me to bet that I would not fit in, and optimize for low-connection-with-neighbours environments along with large-pool-of-people-to-interact-with.
As I age, I fit better, either because the rules have changed (i.e. my gender non-conformity and lack of hetero-spouse are less important barriers) or because I've changed (more interest in people than previously, and perhaps more enjoyment of difference); most likely it's both.
But my idea of hell has been a small, closely knit community where I expect that everyone will be hell bent on making me fit, if at all possible, or expelling me if not.
Thoughts
Date: 2021-12-21 11:24 am (UTC)Imagine a small town of like-minded people, though. If you could have that, would you still prefer the city? Some people do because they like the vitality and the diverse goods and services. Others take it because it's what they can get.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-20 04:42 am (UTC)I'm pretty sure I can watch parts falling off my functionality like a cartoon car...soon enough I'll be toodling down the road on four wheels, and a detached steering wheel.
>>However, a city may be beneficial in terms of providing more services such as a wide choice of support groups, counselors, doctors, etc. Either balance the two by living near a city but not in it, or offer nature trips for traumatized city dwellers.<<
If you have any sort of nonstandard need/identity, city living makes it easier to find help or similar people.
City living also exposes you to a greater diversity of people, if one needs to associate with diverse people.
>>In a big city, many jobs are basically flimflam, like stock trading; they make income but don't produce actual products or services directly impacting lives. <<
There is a whole long discussion about value, economics and ethics re: value-producing, value-adding, and flimflam jobs.
>>Primarily that means quashing helplessness and restoring a sense of safety and control as fast as possible, ...<<
If someone decides I am a safe landing space after a trauma, my first response might be 'check scene,' i.e. are they injured, or being chased by someone dangerous? The second response is to try and make sure they feel safe and in control, third is handling needs, as needed: food, minor first aid, etc.
Resources for sexual assault tend to be among the more detailed that I've found for dealing with emotional trauma. (I also have first aid training, including how to do a scene assessment, and sometimes have issues with anxiety.)
Thoughts
Date: 2021-12-21 04:04 am (UTC)Batmobile lost a wheel
and the Joker got away!
>> If you have any sort of nonstandard need/identity, city living makes it easier to find help or similar people.<<
Often true, though it can depend on the need and the city. 1% of people may be asexual, which is over 800,000 in New York City, but most of them don't know each other. I will say that it's usually better to live in a city where you have a community than in a small town where you don't. Unless you prefer the company of nature to humans, which some people do.
>> City living also exposes you to a greater diversity of people, if one needs to associate with diverse people.<<
This really varies by city. The racial dotmap shows the differences. (I was horrified to see that it will be taken down at the end of this year, and possibly not replaced, because I use it fairly often to study racial layouts of cities for writing purposes.) Look at Chicago: it's highly diverse, and parts are very mixed despite having other parts that are clearly ethnic neighborhoods. Hence why there are streets where you can find dozens of ethnic restaurants from all around the world: generally a great city if you're cosmopolitan. Compare with St. Louis, which is mostly white, some black, and very little mixing at all. Not nearly as good if you want diversity. Conversely, small towns -- many are homogenous, but one not far from us has a sizable bunch of immigrants complete with Mexican restaurants. Used to have a grocery too.
>>There is a whole long discussion about value, economics and ethics re: value-producing, value-adding, and flimflam jobs.<<
Yeah. I think the higher the percentage of jobs with real value (that is, producing raw materials or finished goods, or providing important services like education) the happier people tend to be; and the higher the percentage of makework (stock trading, advertising, customer service that doesn't actually solve problems, etc.) the unhappier people tend to be. Folks like to accomplish things, and don't do well when they can't.
>>If someone decides I am a safe landing space after a trauma, my first response might be 'check scene,' i.e. are they injured, or being chased by someone dangerous? The second response is to try and make sure they feel safe and in control, third is handling needs, as needed: food, minor first aid, etc.<<
This is one of my favorite lists for basic needs:
https://depts.washington.edu/fammed/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Katers-selfcare_printable.pdf
>> Resources for sexual assault tend to be among the more detailed that I've found for dealing with emotional trauma.<<
I agree.
>> (I also have first aid training, including how to do a scene assessment, and sometimes have issues with anxiety.) <<
That's good.
I wish I could get more precise scene assessment data. I never did manage to dig up "If you're concerned about a car on fire that might explode, how far back should you stand while casing the scene?"
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-12-21 06:18 am (UTC)Still easier to find a queer neighborhood in NYC than in, say, Nowhere, Kansas. More likely to have groups or meetups for acefolk.
(Ditto for Deaf and immigrant communities, suppourt groups, specialized homeless or disability services, and specialized medical care.)
>>(I was horrified to see that it will be taken down at the end of this year, and possibly not replaced, because I use it fairly often to study racial layouts of cities for writing purposes.)<<
Maybe you could screenshot it, or at least parts of it?
>>Folks like to accomplish things, and don't do well when they can't.<<
Also people tend to cyclically resent flimflam middleman jobs, as they increase cost without increasing value. (I think we're swinging back into a stronger phase of this now.)
>> I never did manage to dig up "If you're concerned about a car on fire that might explode, how far back should you stand while casing the scene?"<<
Look at a car explosion and see how big its blast radius was, then reverse-engineer from there.
I wonder if a car bomb would be a useable example - but it might lead to an overestimation of the blast radius too. Then again, they'd be well-documented, and be dramatically reported in the news.
Also remember that explosions are affected by surroundings. An air explosions might fling shrapnel, fling people around, or start fires depending on surroundings...
Underwater explosions will cause severe damage to lungs and guts. (And the shockwave will rebound off the surface if the water.)