Richness and resilience of neigbourhoods pilfered by business

The richness, and resilience, of our neigbourhoods has been pilfered by the business world.

Demography, consultant, analyst and author, Bernard Salt, late last year told a packed house at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre that the vibrancy and friendships once an integral part of neighbourhoods, was now to be found in the workplace.

It seems that the richness of life that traditionally arose in neighbourhoods was now largely restricted to friendships among work friends.

Bernard Salt

Mr. Salt, one of a panel of four who spoke about “Becoming Seven Billion” at the centre, said once neighbours chatted over the back fence, but now “neighbours” chatted over the petition at work.

Rather than being exciting, vibrant, resourceful and resilient places, neighbourhoods are becoming, or have become, silos from which people emerge in the morning to begin their journey to work, mostly by car, and to which they disappear into at night, back into their private nirvana.

The cost, ecologically, psychologically and socially, to our communities is damaging in the extreme and could be reversed if we adopted the Four-Hour Work Day.

Commercial operations are particularly good as creating a sense of belonging among its staff and that being so emotionally demanding, that arriving back in their neighbourhoods, most people are psychologically exhausted and searching for respite; respite they find by retreat to their private utopia – the “place” pays the price and becomes little more than a dormitory.

The neighbourhood, the place, needs people who actually live there; people who invest a significant portion of themselves to engender life into their small community.

Frequently people are so wearied by the rigours of the commercial world that they have nothing left for their community.

The Four-Hour Work Day would ensure that people returned from their workplaces with something of their soul left enabling them to interact with their neighbourhoods.

Contrary to that, Bernand Salt cast doubt on the idea of what he described as “urban villages” in which people know their neighbours, chat across the road, feeling connected and know their butcher.

Mr. Salt said he gets all the social interaction he needs from his work and when he gets home from work, “I just want to go to sleep”.

“I don’t want to chat with my neighbor,” he said.

The sad reality that appears to avoid the consciousness of Mr. Salt is the emerging conflation of events, our imploding economy, exploding population and decided changes to our climate that can only be resolved if in some way we reduce the amount of “stuff” we produce, the amount of “stuff” we can afford to buy and, within that the amount of energy we use, most of which is produced by fossil fuels.

The adaptation of our lifestyle to allow for the introduction of the Four-Hour Work Day will be the first step in on that journey of abatement.