Cities, social networks, and other random thoughts

I was reading an article from by Alan Ehrenhalt at The New Repulic titled Trading Places, about how over the past decade+ more affluent and wealthy folks have been moving into cities, and more poor folks have been moving away (or are being pushed away) to the suburbs. The article is fairly well researched, and mirrors some of what I’d learned in a “History of American Cities” course I took while in college… there is an ebb and flow to urban living in the US, due to a number of factors (economy, livability, quality of life, jobs, etc). My instructor during the class described a cycle and how it’s a pattern that can often be predicted by looking at the factors I mentioned, but that it’s happened before (urbanization, de-urbanization, and re-urbanization).

This re-urbanization pattern is something I am currently a part of. My family history is distinctly rural, in a time when cities (Portland included) were less desirable, and not particularly safe places to be. I grew up in a time when even Portland was rough (compared to how it is now); crime, dereliction, and an overall sense of decay. However, I was convinced at an early age that the rural life wasn’t for me. I became one of those who moved inward and shunned the rural existence. The idea of something to do and somewhere to go at all hours was too enticing to my relatively sheltered existence to resist. So I moved downtown, and later to the dreaded East side (when Kelly and I bought our house). It’s been fantastic, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I think back to my life in my hometown, 100% reliant on a car to go anywhere for anything, my sense of isolation, being disconnected from the activities of ‘everyone else’, and it seems somewhat foreign to me now. As much as I like (need?) to get away from it all for a while (read my post about the camping trip last weekend), I still value being in a place where I can, if I choose, to walk to a bar, or a grocery store, or a Thai restaurant.

However, reading the article mentioned above, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that all of the buzz around social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, etc) wasn’t just an extension of the same phenomena… that modern life (with all it’s hectic buzz) has further seperated people from one another, and like the desire to “go urban” … connections in a virtual realm are a symptom of the same problem… modern life. Unlike a few decades ago, when things moved a bit slower and a real sense of community might have existed in smaller towns, people are being stretched thinner (to use a Tolkien quote “like butter, scraped over too much bread”), and people are eager for a sense of community, the kind that existed in a smaller more intimate scale before, but is rare to come by for most of us in this modern age. Perhaps we’re all meant to live a bit more close-knit and simple than we do, and the ‘social web’ is a direct result of how isolated we still feel, even those of us who live ‘in the midst of it all’, and are constantly surrounded by people. That is an isolation of it’s own kind, and maybe worse than living in the woods somewhere miles away from civilization.

Anyway, enough of this deep thoughts stuff, I’m enjoying a delicious beer in my yard. Heck with anything else. 🙂