Can I Dog-Sit Your Puppy?

AI-generated image with text prompt: “Busy courtyard with an elderly person playing with a child and a puppy.” 

It is worth contemplating, what is the value being provided in this scene?

I have a confession to make. I live in a double-loaded corridor apartment. OK, even worse, I think one would consider it a condo. Yes, one of those non-descript glass things on the skyline. Our suite is nice - my partner and I have been in the same one-bedroom apartment for 5 years. Our kitchen is too small but modern, we have an outdoor space that receives south light, and I grow a couple of vegetables out there every year. Our living room is also the office, laundry room, bicycle repair shop, and even from Monday through Wednesday, a doctor's office, but we’ve really enjoyed living here. The building's common spaces are kept up well; there's an “amenity room”, a rooftop with bbqs, and urban agriculture. On the ground level, there are a couple of shops and more unused loading bays than perhaps even the City of Vancouver’s engineering department could dream up. 

But there is something odd going on here: we know NOBODY. I don’t mean I know their name but we don’t hang out. I mean, I don’t even know what my current neighbours look like. I could work with them in a different setting and not know they live across the hall. 

Now, I wouldn’t consider my partner or I particularly outgoing in the building, nor do I think we feel alone or socially isolated. But, we’ve never been given the chance to get to know anyone at all! Sure we've exchanged the occasional pleasantry in the elevator, or, if we really wanted to take action, we could be bold and organize an event in the “amenity room” (although its layout has left its purpose elusive to me). However, I believe the building has fostered a similar feeling among us all: not only is it nearly impossible to catch your neighbour in a social setting, it feels downright uncomfortable. It feels as though the confined spaces and blank walls whisking us in and out of the building were purposely designed to discourage human connection, and as a result, it feels as if doing so would be breaking an unwritten social contract that any interaction beyond a hello is bothersome. 

Here’s the kicker though. Even if I’m not craving social connection, what I do see (in the rare moments I see anyone at all), are my neighbours struggling to juggle the obligations of modern life. Young couples struggling with puppy care, seniors trying to capture someone's attention while awkwardly sorting mail, young families exhaustedly bringing their children to school. So even though I don’t necessarily feel a social loss, I see a lost opportunity for cooperation between humans daily. The puppy goes to puppy daycare, even though I’d love to give it a cuddle and a walk. The senior gets a health care worker because they are lonely but smiles ear to ear when they glimpse a toddler, and so on. What I see is a building making transactional relationships the only option, putting zero value on co-beneficial relationships or community. Given the ongoing struggles of cooperation on major issues of our time; climate change, political polarization, addiction, etcetera, it is striking that practicing a little cooperation at home could also help ease local issues of loneliness, daycare, and long-term care shortages. What if we measured the effects of designing for human connection on not only health and happiness but economics as well? 

The design of the spaces between dwellings, how you pass by other units and what you see, is what an architectural professor might call “interstitial space.” These spaces are the key to rekindling the art of relationship building and where the magic happens. As architects, we know what it takes, and it can be very simple. Our building needs a concentrated shared place that feels some combination of comfortable, pleasant, productive, healthy, playful and/or safe, with a reason for us and our neighbours to dwell or pass through it regularly. Ideally, these spaces provide topics to start a conversation and feel comfortable continuing one to its natural conclusion. Historically this has been the courtyard or the porch, for example. We just have to choose, as a group, to value these things and trust that the benefits will come. There is a chance I could be making it all up, and for all I know, the elderly person could be smiling, thinking, “thank goodness my kids are all grown up!”, but even if I’m right about just one time, what's the harm in designing spaces to allow for that option? 

So next time you arrive home and are enjoying its reclusive peace and privacy, don’t just dismiss the value of knowing your neighbours. Consider how much happier your house plants could be with the human next door, watering can in hand, on your next vacation. Jokes aside, sociability doesn’t have to mean the opposite of being alone at home. Sometimes it's just about embracing the possibilities and real value, social and economic, that can be created by human connection.