Via Raph’s Blog comes this interesting article in the Boston Globe: How The City Hurts Your Brain.
Its conclusions are striking, but without actually reading the (uncited) paper referenced by the above-linked article, I’d approach the article with caution. It was only a few months ago that the folks at F13.net got a first-hand lesson in the pitfalls of peering through a journalist’s filters, and it’s the frequent pop-science article that leaves the educated shaking their eggheads.
Thus disclaimed, I find it interesting that purely anecdotally, the idea that crowded, noisy urban environments wear us down by neurological overstimulation makes perfect sense. I’ve voiced very similar thoughts, in a somewhat less-formal manner, whenever I get into a comparative discussion of the many places I’ve lived. Given that Icelanders’ favorite question is “How do you like Iceland?”, the topic is brought up not infrequently.
My two former residences that stand most indicted are, of course, Los Angeles and the City of New York. I’ve never hidden my distaste for LA; it only takes a wee bit of crawling through this very site’s archives to find invective leveled against it. When you boil down all the comments on its social scene, traffic, layout, attitudes, housing and other issues, you find that the problem’s pulsating heart lies in the fact that Los Angeles is a multi-hundred-square-kilometer concrete cancer festering on the side of California. Go to Google Maps and look at it from space; even at the distant scale linked, there’s a notable pallidity to the landscape.
It doesn’t hurt that, as a desert, Southern California is naturally antiviridian.
New York’s case is closer to the Newbury Street example than the naturalist slant found in the article. Whenever I visit the City, and especially Manhattan proper, there’s a palpable pulse in the streets themselves, a neverending crush of ideas, words, people, things. While invigorating for a few hours or days - though that may, of course, be partially attributable to nostalgia - remaining there longer leads inevitably to the anxiety, tension and irritability spoken of by the study. As much as I may admire what New York stands for, its pace is impossibly hostile.
On the inverse, examine Iceland and San Francisco. In San-Fran, I lived close enough to Golden Gate Park that, after a light drizzle, I could open my windows and welcome in a wonderful arboreal scent that instantly refreshed my apartment. The ocean lay a ten-minute streetcar ride away, while the hothouse of downtown was similarly accessible in thirty. Here in Iceland, I can see the literal edge of civilization from my rear porch and escape humanity entirely with a simple forty-five minute drive into the moonscapes and glaciers of the interior.
Oddly, an orbital survey of San Francisco looks objectively similar to LA, although the latter’s sheer area is still unmatched. What you do, see, though, is a greater proliferation of intra-city green space, and in far less concentrated lumps. It makes a difference, I suppose.
Tags: iceland, los angeles, new york, psychology, san francisco, urban design
Entries (RSS)