People, Food and Other Objects of Sociality in Small Urban Spaces

In his book "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces", William Whyte presents a number of observations and insightful analyses of the factors that promote or inhibit sociality in various spaces in urban areas.  I was reminded of the concept of object-centered sociality that I recently read (and blogged) about: shared objects providing the catalyst for social awareness and interactions.  Much of the online discussion about object-centered sociality is based on shared digital objects (although Jyri recently described an example of shared digital objects leading to a shared physical connection in a cafe). Whyte focuses on objects that draw people together in physical spaces … primarily other people and food, noting that supply creates demand.

According to Whyte, while people may talk about "getting away", their choices often reveal a desire to be among other people … lots of other people.  In fact, choice itself is a major factor in venue selection: socializing on a crowded street corner provides an easier and more polite exit strategy (and escape route) than being structurally being hemmed in.

In the center of the crowd, you have the maximum choice — to break off, to continue … If you know you can move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put.

I suspect this is the same factor that makes elevators such unsociable places … and contributes to the risk of strking up a conversation with the person sitting next to you on a plane (an example of which was recently described by Jane).

People attract other people, and food attracts people (who attract other people), so

If you want to seed a place with activity, put out food.

Whyte describes an outdoor cafe with ethnic food at St. Andrews Plaza in New York, where the seating was intentionally tightly packed.

[P]eople were compressed into meeting one another … it is one of the most sociable of places … I’ve never seen so many people striking up conversations, introducing people, saying hellos and goodbyes.

[Aside: way back when they served meals on airplanes, I remember the arrival of the meal as the most sociable period of a flight, when people sometimes took a break from their reading, writing or other activities to chat a bit as they eat.  And I also remember that that the snackbar car on the Metra commuter trains in Chicago I used to take was always far more sociable than any other car.  I don’t think a snackbar on an elevator very practical, but perhaps some textual food, a la the Digital Elevator Poetry project demonstrated by James G. Robinson at UbiComp 2003.]

Other people and food both provide for what Whyte calls "triangulation":

[T]hat process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to each other as though they were not [strangers].

Unusual — one might even say, remarkable — people (street characters, musicians and other entertainers) or objects (art, sculpture or [other] spectacular sights) provide great conversation openers, even — perhaps especially — if they are "bad", as bad acts (and bad works of art) may provoke more side comments than good ones … remarkable food may fall in this category as well.

Whyte also refers to what might now be called the wisdom of crowds, with respect to people’s ability — and tendency — to self-regulate.  In speaking of a public place’s "effective capacity, that is, the number of people who by free choice will sit at a place during normal peak-use periods", he observes that

It’s as if people had some instinctive sense of what is right overall for a place and were cooperating to maintain it that way, obligingly leaving, or sitting down, not sitting, to keep the density within range.

This notion of instinct and wisdom leads me to the last aspect of Whyte’s book I want to mention here, which is the notion of attracting desirable vs. undesirable people in a public place, which reminded me of yet another book, "Love is Letting Go of Fear", by Gerald Jampolsky, in which he argues that every perception and action is motivated either by love or by fear, and the way to achieve greater joy and peace is to let go of fear.  Whyte expresses similar sentiments with respect to the design of public places:

Places designed with distrust get what they were looking for and it is in them, ironically, that you will most likely find a wino …  Fear proves itself … The best way to handle the problem of undesirables is to make a place attractive to everyone else.

Jampolsky, as well as Marc Ian Barasch (and others) might question whether anyone is truly undesirable … but I’ll defer delving into that topic for another blog post.