This brings me to the excellent book on communities, urban development and North American society that I am currently reading. Dark Age Ahead, despite its ominous title, is full of wisdom. The author is Jane Jacobs (88), the wise woman of urban studies, and we all better sit up and listen to what she has to say. And this is what she says about today’s North American neighbourhoods:

One can drive today for miles through American suburbs and never glimpse a human being on foot in a public space, a human being outside a car or truck… This is a visible sign that much of North America has become bereft of communities. For communities to exist, people must encounter one another in person. These encounters must include more than best friends or colleagues at work. They must include diverse people who share the neighbourhood, and often enough share its needs.

She also has some important thinks to say about the distinction between family as a biological unit and a household as an economic unit. She is really concerned that our society does not make a distinction between the two:

Two parents, to say nothing of one, cannot possibly satisfy all the needs of a family-household. A community is needed as well, for raising children, and also to keep adults reasonably sane and cheerful. A community is a complex organism with complicated resources that grow gradually and organically.

The stress put on today’s families is enormous financially, mentally and emotionally and it is anybody’s guess where it is going to go. Here is the truly scary part:

If the predicaments of North American families continue mounting and climb further up the income ladder, I have no idea what kinds of households will emerge to deal with needs that families are at a loss to fill. My intuition tells me they will probably be coercive. This is already true of the most swiftly multiplying and rapidly expanding type of American households at the turn of the millennium – prisons.