Do you all agree that Springfield is a lonely city? It seems to be based entirely off the amount of people living alone in an apartment or home. Is that indicative of loneliness? Or is there other attributes that make Springfield a lonely city?

I feel as though it also has to deal with how society handles interactions today. I can say I go to work, come home, eat, browse the internet and sleep. Repeat 7 times weekly. It’s hard to fit in socializing with how we have to live

Bruh. This and the "springfield is the poorest city in missouri" are such bullshit studies. The reason for both is that we have a vast amount of students in springfield. Much higher than other places. Nearly 25% of springfields population is going to college right now.

Of course this is going to drag down the average income by a ton if a quarter of the population can only work half as many hours as everyone else, and college students are either living alone or with a roommate, not living living with a significant other.

Soon we are going to get studies like "springfield has the most mental illness in missouri" "springfield is the most physically active city" and "springfield has the most people living in flats with shared bathrooms"

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Judging by the activity in the subreddit, they nailed it

When nearly everything is strictly accessible by car due to lack of public transit, patchy bike infrastructure, auto-centric land development patterns, etc. it tends to make your existence pretty lonely. You spend your travel time alone, surrounded by other people who are also alone in their own cars, and only have to interact with people once you've arrived where you are going. Repeat on the return trip. Multiply by everybody forced into our auto-centric city, and you've got a populace that spends more time in personal vehicles than actually out in the city, forming its urban fabric.

Obviously there are a lot of factors that would go into making a place feel lonely, but car dependency is a huge factor, in my opinion.

I blame cars for my lack of friends. Certainly isn’t my flakey nature, propensity for conflict, and impossibly high standards.

Is this meant to be a veiled insult directed at me?

My loneliness quotient (LQ) is top 99 percent. I’m so fucking lonely I probably single-handedly weighted this study

Reads like a joke at his own expense

50% read it that way, the other 50% saw a sarcastic dig at me, so I thought I’d ask lol.

I'm not following how travel time in a car by yourself is lonelier than traveling on a bike by yourself, or walking by yourself. Are you stopping to talk to someone every few hundred feet when you're riding/walking? If you have ever been to a city you know that even in walkable areas, people aren't stopping to chat.

Weird study. I can’t speak to the whole city, but can speak for myself. And, yes.

I’m not sure I buy the claim that it is “much higher” than other places. Not all that far from us, Columbia and Lawrence both have larger schools and smaller city populations, so by definition, there would be an even higher proportion of college students there.

We would also need to check if the statistics a) count college students at all (since they are not typically permanent residents of the cities where they attend college) and b) count college students as living alone (since they often live in shared dorms or shared apartments).

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I don’t think you can judge loneliness by people living alone, or doesn’t necessarily mean those people are lonely. That’s a dull definition.

That being said, I do think SWMO is pretty lonely if you aren’t churchgoing or into hunting/fishing… especially the churchgoing part, though.

you sound fun at parties

could it be that it’s more affordable than most cities to live alone? I considered getting roommates living here, but at $675 for a 1br I can afford to not have to deal with someone else’s mess.

What parts would you say?

I’m not

Yes, pretty much worst city for people being friendly

Feel this hard. Springfield is way too heavily car dependent. Biking is dangerous due to the lack of bike lanes and half the time there aren't side walks. Humans need those small interactions on the day to day that aren't just from a drive-thru or Walmart. Car dependency makes us hostile and lonely.

Cars are bad!!

Seemed like self deprecating humor to me

And with your help, we can make it #1

I would say the more affluent parts when I go on the northside people seem much more open and friendly

Right?! I'm all for better bike lanes, pedestrian pathways and better public transit but let's not act like we're all gonna find that extra date per year by cycling and walking. Also, I would assume bus stops and busses would be more like airports where people put in AirPods and keep to themselves. Anecdotally, I see drivers having social hour all the time with calls, messages and FaceTime anyway.

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Yes, very nice

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better housing options and more alternative transportation may help connect this town.

I should have been way more clear in my initial comment because my wording made it sound as though I think commutes would be more social without cars, and having lived in Chicago I can say that while my commutes were more social than they are now, it wasn’t so drastic as to feel negative about it. My actual opinion is more in regards to the way cities develop and age when built nearly strictly with the automobile in mind, which is the reality for basically all cities in the Midwest. “Aging in place” is one concept you should definitely Google, it’s very interesting and very relevant to modern day America, as it’s something most of us will not be able to do.

We are social animals first and foremost. Despite the personal freedom automobiles were created to provide, their impacts on cities (in terms of infrastructure, environment, economics, sociology as well) are well-studied and documented, and largely indicate that when our built environment is built for cars, not people, it begins to detrimentally impact the urban fabric of the city (style and scale of buildings, style and scale of public right-of-way, proximity of necessities, area and location of open space, the list goes on). But you can’t pull a thread from that fabric without impacting the integrity of it as a whole. When a trip to the grocery store requires a car, that immediately puts a strain on some people - those who are perhaps too old to drive a car, or those who can’t afford a car, or those who aren’t old enough to drive yet, etc. etc. etc. Auto-centric development really does impact our lives in ways we tend to not see because we are just so accustomed to our cities being that way, but there are better ways to design our urban areas, ways that could really improve our lives financially, socially, and environmentally.

This is not to say that cars have no place in a city, that’s hardly realistic, but there are many, many good reasons cities should begin to truly pursue alternative forms of transportation.

I was at a funeral today. The father spoke how his son, who died, had said how lonely he was. But the funeral was packed. Standing room only. People lined out through the lobby. It is sad that someone that felt so lonely had so many friends. At the end the parking lot was full of everyone talking to each other. A parking lot full of people that weren't alone. Please, if you are feeling lonely, reach out to someone. If you know someone that seems lonely reach out. I'm an antisocial hermit, it's always nice to be invited. Even if I never intend to go.

I feel like this is OT, but when I worked the 2010 census in this area, it was a lot easier dealing with people in apartment buildings than in the very affluent neighborhoods, like Millwood and Highland Springs. The only thing worse than gated communities was the rural areas and maybe some parts of west Springfield with crazy right-wing, anti-government weirdos. Younger and poorer people were generally more friendly and laid-back; also less likely to be anti-government wackos. I don't think I actually worked north Springfield, though; I worked south Springfield and in some surrounding counties like Christian and Taney.

>Also, I would assume bus stops and busses would be more like airports where people put in AirPods and keep to themselves.

I've had some nice conversations with people at bus stops and on the bus, and even made longer-term friends that way.

A lot of people aren't in the mood to chat, but it's not unusual to talk with people.

Keep in mind too, that Springfield's permanent bus riders are a small amount of people. You will see some of the same people for years and that makes it easier to get to know them. I doubt that's true for air travel since few people fly every day but lots of bus people take the bus for a regular commute and the rest of their travel needs.

After a full time job, sleep, and other normal responsibilities such as housework or kids, we get maybe somewhere from 10-30 hours to ourselves each week.

Try only working five days a week. If your chosen vocation requires excessive working days, change your vocation.

Well, you've tried to pull a sneaky there though. You're not clarifying your first point at all, you're pivoting to a different one. You've gone from "cars are inherently isolating" to "the structure of cities built with cars in mind is isolating." Your second point is more relevant to the thread, and there's some merit to it.

On the other hand, it seems like the ideal I see put forth of "walkable neighborhoods" and "mixed-use spaces" is predicated on everyone working in a coffee shop, a grocery store, or a nice office.

That's fine, but if I'm a mechanic I don't necessarily want to live next to the diesel shop, or a warehouse worker next to a fullfillment center, and if I work in waste management...well, you get the point. Factory workers used to live in dormitories at their worksite, and no one wants to go back to that, I assume.

So, yes, urban planning and infrastructure, including mass transit, is welcome and warrented, but it's never going to be as practicable or widespread as proponents want it to be. And it's not going to cure all of society's ills, including loneliness.

How do you quantify loneliness?

Yeah, it's big enough to get with the times and upgrade bike infrastructure.

I’m surprised anyone can afford to live by themselves

You can? What do you do? If you don’t mind my asking

It’s both

Agreed, terrible metric, if anything living alone here is more based on a low cost of living. More people here likely don't NEED a roommate, partner, or spouse to share rent or a mortgage with to survive.

Also agreed on lonely here. Church is the social hub, but there is a big portion that don't go to church and don't do anything else.

It's sad it took death to bring those ppl around where were they when he was alive?

I don't know. That's why I wrote about it. It's sad it takes a tragedy to see what is really there. I know I've started looking deeper at people. I simply ask 'are you doing ok?'. What if that's all it takes to turn someone around? I know it helped me when I was asked that question.

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Ugh, yes. As a mom Idk how to make other mom friends and have even played with the idea of a laid back church, despite me being an atheist.

I’m not even necessarily lonely. I have good friends. But it’s just that one little part of my life is completely unfulfilled for family hangs and Idk how to fix that without something like church. I need a mixer for other moms.

I would argue that centers of employment located further from residential areas due to the use (manufacturing, etc.) should still be accessible by public transit and active transportation infrastructure. The issue with cities like Springfield is that the entire city is built to serve people who own personal vehicles. Public transit or other forms of transportation are an afterthought, if thought about at all (especially in the past when the city was growing the most).

Requiring a personal vehicle is a continuous economic strain, particularly so for folks who already struggle financially. Financial struggles can mean working more hours, leading to less personal, family, or friend time, which can impact your mental health, which can impact your physical health, etc. Everything about our lives is connected in some way - our relationship with our built environment is no different.

And don’t get me wrong - a zero-car future is not possible, and reducing car use isn’t a silver bullet in the fight against loneliness and disconnection. But there are a lot of logical arguments to be made in favor of different development patterns and alternative forms of transportation that could truly improve the lives of people in Springfield in tangible ways. And I do think the deterioration of our sense of community would lessen and even reverse if those options were explored, and implemented, with enthusiasm - not just toss away projects on a micro scale.

I...feel that.

That resonates deeply in my clinically depressed, blackhole where my soul once inhabited the space - but collapsed in on itself after exposure to "ever enumerating and seemingly exponential detached and isolated settings, situations and disentanglement from my native town.

It's the become a theme in something I'm working on.

You drink coffee? Smoke tobacco's and herbs of varying strength and origin? Revel in blaspheming gpd till the wee hours of the morn, and enjoy eccentric, reclusive artistic individuals with a wide array of "analogue aspects, in an otherwise purely digital landscape" and roam like Rufus while you wax philosophical?

Holla sometime should you be moved to do so.

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Yeah. Sounds spot the fuck on.