Sidewalks & Shenzhen
Sidewalks as safe, comfortable, and pleasant places where people love to spend time. Also, coming of age in the factories of Shenzhen.
Featured Articles
How Double-Loaded Sidewalks Bring Safety, Comfort, and Joy to Our Streets
Social Life Project • 7 Nov 2024 • ~3100 words
Double-loading is the way to revitalize sidewalks so they can become safe, comfortable, and pleasant places where people love to spend time.
The sensory separation between people and the loud sounds and smells of cars also makes the sidewalks pleasant places to hang out, turning them into socially vibrant places to gather. In the midst of an epidemic of loneliness, we desperately need more places like this. Sidewalks with double loading become places to sit and chat, rather than just places to move along quickly on the way to some indoor destination. Everywhere becomes a destination and endless possibilities for connection and fun are opened up.
Adrift in the South
Granta • 7 Nov 2024 • ~8750 words
Xiao Hai on coming of age in the factories of Shenzhen, translated by Tony Hao.
I still don’t know how to articulate what I felt in that first factory: why was I so possessed with fear and loneliness? And how naive I was to believe that I might run into an old friend! I simply didn’t understand how vast a city could be: I had no idea how many people worked on my production floor, and couldn’t possibly grasp the enormity of the total population of the factory, or Lilang Village’s population across all its factories, or the town of Buji’s population across all its villages, or the district’s population across all its towns, or the total population of Shenzhen across all of its districts. It would be harder to find an acquaintance in my factory than to discover a needle in a haystack.
Recommended Articles
What we lose by being overly scientific about healthcare
Psyche • 7 Nov 2024 • ~2150 words
Empirical studies tell us about treatment outcomes, but they overlook the cultural dynamics that can help us feel better.
Sometimes, stepping back from narrow empiricism means taking a result and daring to build on it. One of the most consistent findings in research on psychotherapy, for instance, is that the best indicator of whether psychological treatment will be effective is the not the techniques applied or the scientific rigour of the underlying theories but, rather, the relationship between a patient and their therapist. Relationships are vehicles of change. For better or worse, we are most affected by the people closest to us, and when a new person shows a special kind of benevolent curiosity about how we respond to the world, we expand our blueprint of how to comfortably be with ourselves. Perhaps it is time to apply this knowledge more broadly.
