Connectivity

Facebook might be one of the best ways to connect with distant and near friends and relatives. I do not fault the great idea of being able to catch up with old friends. I am disheartened when some people post questions or comments that are obvious attempts to find constant companionship, but are missing due to the haphazard nature of web browsing. We look for connectivity for our computers and on-line relationships with passion in our homes wirelessly or while at work or play updating our lives virtually to the web. In relation to architecture and what can be done to create real physical communities, we are ignoring our physically close neighbors due to the convenience of the web and the fear of losing old friends and the fear of having to meet and learn about new people. Developers and architects have helped us become more insular, telling us what we should like in the style of a house and spending money on the size of the dwelling unit, not the intangible price of a front porch and sidewalk to interact with our neighbors. We are connected and not connected. Walking around your neighborhood, interacting with others is vital to our sense of community. A group of houses is not a community just because a developer places those words on a sign. A community can arise from any physical or web-based connection, but our vehicle driven society is submerging the physical communities that exist in more active and well planned neighborhoods and cities. I believe that taking a hike is the best way to be connected, to our selves, our neighbors, our community, our planet.