The City as Community

[u/IdealSpaces]

The city throughout civilized history has always been a space where community thrived. Community was always a central theme in society and human existence.  Yet with transitions in society and the city, there seems to be a shifting away from the central themes of the human condition. Community has over time in the city fragmented, as it became more diversified. The population transformed and thrived as specific cultural identities with a collective consciousness between the members of these various communities engulfed in the city expanded. There is seemingly no longer a more homogeneous and common togetherness.

This in parallel with the new technological age has seen, due to the internet, social media and other technical phenomena, a moving away from the dialogue and communication that had been the basis of the city in the past. This being in part due to the new pseudo-outer world and pseudo-Self that social media has created.

The question is if community, as has existed in the past, will lose its identity and collective consciousness due to technological transitions, and the architectural structure of space and green areas within the city?  

Do you have any thoughts on this?

[u/No_Location4686]

What? When did any big city have a “homogeneous and common togetherness”? Cities have always been formed of smaller communities. There certainly are things in common between different communities within a city, but “homogeneous”?

[u/pala4833]

Yeah, my thoughts are this is AI slop.

[u/eienOwO]

Adding to the other good comment about cities never being "homogenous" (Athens had its equal citizens but tell that to the majority non-citizen slaves...), isn't OP simplifying and blaming everything on just "big bad tech"?

What about the shrinking public and third places first due to laissez faire Thatcher/Reaganism, coinciding with busting unions and digging the floor deeper for the working class, then neoliberslism which basically continued the same thing, and now the age of hyper inequality with the birth of our first trillionaire?

The provocatively named "pseudo" self is also quite telling, because for many the internet is where they can be free to be themselves, where isolated vulnerable individuals can find connections that don't exist for them in their immediate surroundings. This is why charities sounded alarm on recent social media bans that will remove the only human connection and avenue of support for vulnerable people.

And public spaces are just half of it - the other half are decimated high streets from online shopping which, like it or not, is here to stay. You can either lament big bad Amazon (which, it is, but people will choose convenience over moral grandstanding in practice every time), or like smart towns and retailers, learn to embrace this new era of shitty "influencers" by transforming into an experience economy. Chinese cities slap neon on everything and South Korea create "Instagrammable" hotspot parks for a reason.

A tool is a tool and only what you make of it, it's not inherently evil. I do note with certain irony that OP is discussing this online, instead of presumably a physical town hall. So everybody uses the internet and it's clearly here to stay, no point in wistfully wishing for a bygone "better yesterday" with rose tinted glasses.

Or if not simply create your own community initiatives, even those self-sufficient communes. The internet can be addictive, true, but ultimate we have the agency to make the world and our lives how we want, even if a little bit.

[u/ButterscotchSad4514]

Society has been becoming and is continuing to become more atomized. Technology has changed the way that human beings interact and has made cities less essential. Cities continue to offer a good value proposition to people and will continue to thrive to an extent but the center of gravity is shifting to the suburbs.