What’s There To Do Here? How Social Activities Expose a City’s Values
I’m in my stay-at-home-mom era and it’s more of an adventure than I ever imagined it would be. Between freelancing, managing naps and changing diapers, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a boring day for a mom. But there are still days when I look out the window of our apartment and feel like something’s missing. I try not to complain too much about living in Waco (having moved on from my just-moved-here-from-a-big-city-and-kinda-mad-about-it era) but there are some moments where I feel like a grumpy teenager, lamenting that “there’s nothing to do here.”
That’s obviously not 100% true: There’s so much to do. There’s dry cleaning to pick up, groceries to collect, packages to mail, dishes to put away, etcetera. But I’m not talking about the items on my to-do list, those necessary tasks that sustain everyday life. By “nothing to do,” I’m trying to describe a type of social deficit. A comparison might help.
As you may know from my columns, I moved to Waco four years ago. Not to pull a Brooklyn-Waco comparison (as I’ve done plenty of times now)…but bear with me. Stepping outside my home in Prospect Lefferts Gardens was like walking into a public living room where all kinds of interesting activities were happening. Walking around Brooklyn meant observing and participating in a social dance that felt alive.
Walking just a few blocks, I would see Carribean men playing board games on the sidewalk; people gathering on stoops to talk; buskers performing by the train station; adults and kids running, biking or rollerblading through Prospect Park; and dog owners exchanging small talk on the corners by the local market. Once, during COVID-19, I even convinced my neighbor to play salsa music with me one night, and we practiced our shines in the street outside our homes.
In comparison, stepping into the public realm outside my house in Waco feels less like stepping into a “ballet of the streets” and more like stepping into a rushing river current: You only enter if you have a clear destination in mind. No lollygagging; stay focused on your destination; get in, get out, get home. There’s no buffer zone, nothing to see but other people buzzing in and out, everyone hurrying to and from their starting and ending points because, well…there’s nothing else to do in this space. That’s what the space is for.
Sometimes, it feels like my city is mostly a collection of end-point destinations with the main “public spaces” being the streets, roads and stroads, and the main “activity” being driving — which doesn’t really qualify as a shared social activity. So by lamenting the lack of “something to do,” I’m really lamenting the lack of a safe, unplanned public realm full of activities that bring people together in that joyful and spontaneous way that only public spaces can. This could look like neighborhood streets, corners, plazas, etc.
Perhaps my Brooklyn memories sound too quaint and romantic. They might be, but they also point to one of the most helpful and underrated barometers of public health. In the same way that we might evaluate the health of an individual by their daily activities, we can look at a community and ask, "What are people doing here?" This question of activity is at once so basic and profound. On a basic level, people like to do things. It’s natural to be curious about what activities a city offers. The bored, grumbling teenager has a point.
But on a deeper level, we can see this question as an invitation to take activity seriously. The activities we see in a community tell us something about the values and priorities of that city. A city full of people engaged in a variety of interesting, uncoordinated and unplanned social activities (not just consumerism) is a city that has truly prioritized people, whether they did so by prioritizing public safety, mixed-use zoning freedom or safe streets — the kinds of things that allow this street life to emerge.
Unfortunately, the standard approach to these design components in most of our cities is oriented around a narrow view of desirable activities — mainly driving and buying stuff — so those are the activities we see. But it doesn’t have to be so. Simply by paying attention to the connection between human activity and the design of the built environment, we can make different choices. Let’s consider three case studies drawn from the book "A Pattern Language."
First, let’s say we want to see more neighbors meeting each other in the residential parts of town. This is the kind of activity that would be a net gain in our neighborhoods. To encourage more of it, we should consider not just the width of the lanes, but also the volume of traffic going through a neighborhood on a daily basis.
In the pattern titled “Identifiable Neighborhood,” the authors share the results of a study on the connection between traffic volume and perception of one’s neighbors, ultimately concluding that heavier traffic leads to a less “homey” perception of the neighborhood. “On the streets with 550 cars per hour, people visit their neighbors less and never gather in the street to meet and talk.” Of course, narrowing lanes and reducing traffic won’t magically bring forth neighborly neighbors (that takes other efforts) but it probably will be easier to encourage if we address the volume of car traffic.
Second, let’s say perhaps we’d like to see more socializing and exploratory wandering in our downtowns. In that case, the authors suggest that we consider the volume of land that’s dedicated to parking:
Very rough empirical observations lead us to believe that it is not possible to make an environment fit for human use when more than 9 percent of it is given to parking. People realize subconsciously that the physical environment is the medium for their social intercourse. ... they feel that the cars are overwhelming the environment, that the environment is no longer theirs, that they have no right to be there and that it is not a place for people.
What if we want to see more dancing in the street? There’s a pattern for that, too:
“Along promenades, in squares and evening centers, make a slightly raised platform to form a bandstand, where street musicians and local bands can play. Cover it, and perhaps build in at ground level tiny stalls for refreshment. Surround the bandstand with a paved surface for dancing — no admission charge.”
So, while the lament that “there’s nothing to do here” might sound like teenage (or in my case, middle age) grumbling, perhaps there’s more wisdom to it than meets the ear. Maybe we should be looking at our cities through the lens of organic social activities, not just because activities themselves are enjoyable but also because this lens is a chance to reevaluate what we value and to consider the relationship between our design choices and our community’s social life.
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Tiffany Owens Reed is the host of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. A graduate of The King's College and former journalist, she is a New Yorker at heart, currently living in Texas. In addition to writing for Strong Towns and freelancing as a project manager, she reads, writes, and curates content for Cities Decoded, an educational platform designed to help ordinary people understand cities. Explore free resources here and follow her on Instagram @citiesdecoded.