One of my favourite newsletters shared this really interesting article this week. It's almost hard to define exactly what it's about, as it hits on many different fascinating ideas; but at its core it seems to be looking at our relationship to time and hurry. There's so many great things in this article that I would recommend taking some time to read it in full. But what I want to pause and reflect on here is when he talks about the way certain innovations in time saving or efficiency can move from being a good option to becoming a cultural obligation. He uses something like parking apps or self-checkout lanes as an example.

"We welcome the technology at first because it presents us with a choice. But then everybody else has to adopt the technology, and we suddenly realize we’re worse off than we were when we started... And when behaviours become universal, they affect everybody."

I think this is a great point and I was particularly interested in how he took this idea and applied it to the behaviour of people using their phones to record concerts. I'm not sure if you've been to a concert lately, but this trend has become so big that it has become a normalized part of the experience. The author makes the observation that even if you don't want to participate in this shared behaviour, everyone else doing it can ruin the concert experience for you. He even notes that the people most affected are the performers themselves, who now have to perform for an online audience rather than just the people in attendance. It's no longer an option, it's an obligation.

"When one person does something, it’s an option. It’s something that somebody does. When these things become more widespread, they morph from being alternative options to being social norms, conventions from which you have no escape."

This is something I find myself reflecting on often as it relates to the public realm. Public space lives in this strange middle ground of belonging to no one and everyone simultaneously. As such, it is always vulnerable to the shifting norms and expectations of society. A lack of intentional reflection on those behaviours can result in our public spaces being hijacked by them in a way that actively destroys the value that public space should bring.

Perhaps one of the greatest sins of this modern era is the way we have let technology into our lives without intention or consideration of what we are giving up.

Settling back into my regular reading routine with Jonathan Haidt's 'The Anxious Generation.' If you haven't heard of this book, you should check it out (especially if you have or work with kids).

My reflection this morning is on a section where Haidt talks about the way our society has increasingly lost any meaningful age milestones for kids as they mature. Where many cultures around the world have historically had rites of passage that would mark a child's transition into adulthood, our modern secularized society has eschewed such practices. He then goes on to say how this has become even more pronounced in the internet age.

"On the internet, everyone is the same age, which is no particular age. This is a major reason why a phone-based adolescence is badly mismatched with the needs of adolescence."

Kids will always try and seek out experiences that are older than they are. Rites of passage and milestones helped keep that in check by providing something to work towards. Online, kids can essentially be any age they choose. They are given access to information and experiences that are beyond their maturity levels. Basic parental controls are not enough to mitigate this problem.

Haidt's suggestion is to reintroduce some form of rites of passage to help kids move at an appropriate pace towards more responsibility, freedom, and maturity. All of this should precede giving them access to online spaces; which he recommends being age 16 (at the earliest).

Took the summer off from my regular reading and instead enjoyed some fiction. Read a couple Tana French novels (this one & this one) and book one of the Malazan series.

Other than that, I've been spending a bunch of time with the kids.

Oh, I also wrote this.

Caught an old podcast interview on the weekend with Jennifer Keesmaat in which she made an interesting comment that connects to what I was reflecting on the other day.

She was talking about the social contract in Holland in which people were willing to forego larger personal spaces in exchange for higher quality and more accessible public spaces. People have less need for larger backyards when they have lots of parks and multi-use paths around them. She also contrasted this with the way in which larger private space is seen as a status symbol here in Canada; a larger home is indicative of moving up the social ladder. Yet she recalls family members in Holland living their whole lives in modest row houses, something here we would likely call a starter home.

The key piece here is that achieving this sort of standard of living requires a value or mindset shift from all of us. We need to see a thriving public realm as a worthy trade off; but it also requires investment. It's not enough to just carve off some land and then leave it. Vibrant public spaces need resourcing and creativity in order for them to bring the sort of joy that makes them worth it.

Picked up a book from the library the other day called The Joy Experiments: Reimagining Mid-Sized Cities to Heal our Divided Society. Early on, one of the authors has this interesting bit on Danish culture:

"In Denmark, there’s a belief that there should be a healthy balance between private spending and public good. In other words, an acknowledgment that life is played out in the public spaces of cities as well as in private homes, and the things that give us joy should be in both realms... Without questions, their taxes are high, but the people I spoke to felt they got satisfaction from this form of allocation of their Joy budget. They saw joy as part of their habitat."

This feels like a direct contrast to the values that I see here in my area of Canada. Here, the protection of the private realm is prioritized above all else, even at the cost of the public good. We can see this in the way that public resources are underfunded in favour of private alternatives (healthcare, education, leisure services). It is also revealed in the way our private experiences of shared spaces have become cultural battlegrounds.

Perhaps the major difference is the way in which people in Denmark still see themselves as sharing in the benefits of the public realm. Here in Canada, it increasingly feels like the public-private divide is becoming a class war and those with the means to fund public services are taking their ball and going home, so-to-speak. Advocates for public goods need to make sure that they are drawing their lines of division in ways that include the most amount of people possible.