THE fLOWER

LOST & FOUND • SMALL THINGS WITH SIGNIFICANCE • NEW PERSPECTIVES

Lost or found? Connected or disconnected? Home or not? Why do places matter? Can the right places substitute the rising challenges of loneliness with a feeling of belonging? Ever heard of social infrastructure? The Flower begins in a kitchen with a decent view and ends atop an empty mall. In between there is, among other things, hope.

INFO:

There are two approaches: You can listen to the whole story ( 7 minutes) and proceed to the exercises/micro lectures afterwards. Or you can read the whole thing, exercises included in the story, below.

Relevance in general: On an existential level, The Flower is about finding meaning where you are - or trying to escape to get a new perspective. Thus, it caters to most people. It’s also about the potential of places and your role in making the difference between belonging and just being around.

Professional relevance: in connection with urban planning and a focus on social infrastructure and the importance of “bumping places”.

Prefer listening? We’ve prepared a recording of “The Flower” for you. You can hear the full story below.

Below you’ll find the three exercises and micro lectures on social infrastructure connected to The Flower

CHAPTER 1

You never meant for this to be your permanent home. It was just a matter of coincidences, broken trust, and bad decisions, some of them yours. Bad luck, as well. That’s how you’ve come to tell the story. But then came the apartment and the offer of a job with the school administration. The apartment has a decent view, and the school feels pleasant, suburban, sleepy. It feels like you’ve finally reached the end of an argument, and now is a time to breathe and stay afloat. You can hear the highway at night, from the apartment with the decent view, but you’re in no hurry to get back out there. This is it, and it’s not too bad after all. If you really meant to stay you would do things differently. You would get yourself involved, shake up things. This town could need a shaking-up. You would meet people. Learn names. Say hi. Be a little chattier. You’ve been in town for what? Half a year? Eight months? You’ve developed a few habits. One is that you eat your breakfast standing by the kitchen table, leaning slightly over the sink. It doesn’t really feel like a meal but there’s nobody around to be offended. The company could be nice, though. Someone could be waiting. You tried that but thought it wasn’t for you. Things ended. Put that on the list of bad decisions. You could have a cat. If you wanted one. The landlord wouldn’t mind.

So that’s pretty much it. It’s early morning. You stand by the sink with your bowl of cereals, leaning in to save you from spills, and the phone rings. It’s not a habit that the phone rings in the morning. You feel a small jolt as you check the number. This feels different. It’s from the school.

  • Have you settled in? Do you feel at home? Or are you waiting for better things to come around? Read the following micro lecture on social infrastructure and consider the questions at the end:

    Tolerance, stability, and feelings of belonging take root in places where people bump into each other on a regular basis. Towns and cities with enough meeting places, also known as social infrastructure, create the best frames for strong and resilient communities.

    Social infrastructure comprises both formal and informal bumping places: the parks, markets, playgrounds, schools, squares, libraries, holy places, shops, eateries, and other micro destinations that we frequently pass by on our daily routes. The nods, greetings, and conversations that pop up nurture the feeling of belonging to a place. That feeling has an extraordinarily positive effect on our personal and collective well-being.

    According to Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People (2018), properly designing and maintaining a strong social infrastructure “might be our single best strategy for a more equal and united society”. Local face-to-face interaction works as soil for mutual understanding and support. It is not the result of an intentional approach, it just grows as you pass by the same bakery every morning, accompany your kids to school, walk the dog, frequent your favorite café.

    Klinenberg’s studies across the globe demonstrate that in places with a strong social infrastructure, the health, the feeling of being safe, the economy, and the overall resilience is 5-10 times better than in places with a weak social infrastructure. It goes for wealthy and poor neighborhoods alike, and it gets very visible when catastrophes hit. Then, it becomes a matter of life and death. When the hard infrastructure breaks down – traffic, the sewerage, electricity, the internet, water – it’s the softer, social infrastructure that determines our fate.

    Being surrounded by and participating in thriving, vibrant places, makes us healthier and happier. It hasn’t just been proved scientifically; we feel it in our bones when we experience it.

    Here’s a question for you to consider: What are the best bumping places in your neighborhood?
    Just reflect for a moment: Are there enough of them? Could they be better? What could be done to improve them? Could you contribute yourself? Or do you live in a bumping place desert without ever having missed a strong social infrastructure? If it began to grow, however, would everyday life become richer?

CHAPTER 2

So, the school rings, and you pick up the phone, and you stand by the sink with the buzzing phone in your hand as you realize that you can see the highway from the kitchen window. Or at least a bit of one of the supporting pillars. That comes as a total surprise. You finally answer the phone, and someone tells you that the principal’s daughter is missing. Missing? you ask. You hear that search parties are already being sent out. Will you be willing to help? Yes, you reply, automatically. Then the person on the line describes the principal’s daughter to you, and it’s only afterwards, after the conversation, as you stand by the sink and look at the highway pillar, that you realize that you meet the principal’s daughter every day at the school canteen and don’t need a description of her.

You’re supposed to go searching by the old mall. The school janitors will be there, too. You’ll be five in the area in total. That’s what the person on the line tells you. So, you head out. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? You head out with a bottle of water, your phone, and a jacket tied around your waist. You always arrive a bit earlier to the canteen than the principal’s daughter and the rest of the kids, and you could have told the person on the line that the principal’s daughter seems like a perfectly fine and normal girl.

Why does someone goes missing? you wonder as you walk towards the old mall. No sidewalks here, just a patch of stiff, rattling grass on each side of the road and a gust of hot air as the cars pass by. Or maybe we’re all missing, you think. Maybe we all need to be found.    

  • Do you feel rooted in your neighborhood? Do you feel part of a place and a culture, or would you like to be part of one? When people participate in improving their community in ways that feel meaningful, maybe even fun, and inspiring, real change can happen. What would you like to improve in your community? Read the micro lecture below and consider the question at the end.

    A century ago, the Scottish biologist Sir Patrick Geddes wrote: “Our greatest need today is to see life as a whole, to see its many sides in their proper relations; but we must have a practical as well as a philosophical interest in such an integrated view of life.” This need is even more urgent today than it was on the time of writing. The modern way of living leaves little room for wholeness. We’re dragged in different directions at the same time.

    Maybe you feel it too. Maybe you sense a feeling of not being rooted, of not being a part of the life in your neighborhood. If so, you’re not alone.

    In 2017, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness a public health “epidemic.” According to a 2018 report by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 22 percent of adults in the United States say they often or always feel lonely or socially isolated.

    In 2022 both The United Kingdom and Japan appointed a “minister for loneliness”. An often-cited analysis by professor of psychology and neuroscience, Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University, compares the risk effects of loneliness, isolation, and weak social networks to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

    But what is loneliness exactly? We all feel a little lonely from time to time. Social psychologists define loneliness as the gap between the social connections you would like to have and those you feel you experience.

    There’s no easy cure to loneliness but a vital first step is to acknowledge the power of strong social infrastructure. On a personal level, think about how you can support it, strengthen it, and use it, if you don’t already do that. On a town planning level, make it a number one priority. The problem is that fast money and one-dimensional solutions are usually chosen over maintaining, sustaining, and continuously evolving the more complex patterns. But those are the ones that make residents and visitors stay.

    So, the big question is: How can we realize Klinenberg’s advice about making a strong social infrastructure our top priority?

CHAPTER 3

You spend the day by the old mall. It has been deserted for years and is awaiting demolition. New residences will rise from the ashes, you guess, playgrounds and golf courts. There’s a faded poster of a family by a wading pool and a phone number. There’s a dog involved. The father looks like he’d rather be at the golf court. You spot the janitors in the distance. You wave, politely, and they wave back. Later you meet them. They offer you a power bar and a cup of tepid coffee. There’s no news of the principal’s daughter. The janitors tell you that she’s all over the local news. Tonight, it’ll be national. Probably.

You’ve never visited the old mall before. It was shut down long before your arrival, and there’s nothing else happening out here. You spend the day roaming the area with its deserted parking lots and overgrown plazas. Doors have been broken; windows crashed. Still, there’s a calm to the mall that surprises you. This is like the last day on Earth, you think. Or the first. The hum from the highway travels with the wind. Suddenly, you feel a deep and sorrowful urge to travel again, to escape whatever there is to escape. You make your way to the roof of a series of buildings, and there she is, the principal’s daughter, camping on the roof with a backpack and a sleeping bag, and you can’t help noticing that your description of her would have been more accurate than the one you received from the person on the line.

You raise your hand and approach the girl, and she smiles at you as if she has been waiting. There’s a hawk in the air, above the parking lots, or maybe it’s just a crow. Whatever. It seems right and significant. You think that you’d like things to feel righter and more significant. Maybe this could be the beginning of something new.

They’re looking for you, you say. Maybe it’s time to get back home. I know, the principal’s daughter answers. I just needed this, needed to look at things from a distance. Then she points towards a crack in the roof, and this is the thing you come to remember long after the case of the principal’s daughter is forgotten, and other, significant things are happening in your life. Look, the principal’s daughter says as she points out a scrawny, pale dandelion emerging from the crack in the roof. There must be a bit of soil down there. Who would have thought?

  • When we forget that local life is like a flower that needs our daily attention and care, then our communities wither and die.

    The good news is that most people are willing to put in an effort if they can work on elements, they are passionate about. And most people want to be part of something larger than themselves. By understanding this and by strengthening relations and building trust, empowerment and pride, most communities can become better places to live, work, and enjoy life.

    Can you imagine yourself passionately contributing to the strengthening of the social infrastructure in your neighborhood? What would you do? Could be anything from spending 5 more minutes in town, taking another route on your way home, buying more local stuff, greeting a few more people – to setting up that small café you once dreamt of. Or…: the list is endless.

    What could your first small step be?

    • Balancing basic needs

    • Sensing what’s important

    • Observing the details

    Imagine we could integrate more places of refuge in our cities. Or, rather, more sanctuaries. Where we could go and get a new perspective whenever we needed it. Imagine a grid of sanctuaries. Is that what a great place consists of? Does it already exist where you live?

  • If you want to read more, take a look at the category of Public space and social infrastructure at The Empty Square JOURNAL. You may start out with community activator Jim Diers’ Bumping Places. Inspiring, easy to read, and built on many years of experience.

Credits:
Written and produced by The Empty Square
Illustration: Samuel Toi
Voice artist: Jackie Yates