What Causes Suburbia's Social Disconnect?

With small town tradition so ingrained in the American psyche and culture, its subjugation to suburban sprawl after the late 1940s would seem inconceivable and yet that's what has happened, because zoning laws made it "illegal to build community-oriented small towns, by forcefully delineating residential space as separate from commercial space," writes It's a Sprawl World After All author Douglas E. Morris in a Louisville Cardinal column, focusing on the often-ignored psychosociological impact of "segregated, isolated and fragmented neighborhoods," where lack of public life breeds a sense of emptiness and alienation.

Psychological and medical research has found that individuals integrated into a community show fewer symptoms of psychological disorders than their socially isolated counterparts, with one major study reporting a quarter of the nation's adults feeling extremely lonely at least once within the previous two weeks; that 10 percent of Americans -- almost 30 million -- suffer from depression each year; and that suicide became the third top cause of death in the 15-19 age group, with the overall U.S. suicide rate of more than 30,000 a year exceeding its homicide rate.

[Thanks to Smart Growth Online for the article summary.]

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