Upside, Downside: Air conditioning vs neighbourhood cohesion

[London is already a “heat island”, a low, wide city several degrees hotter than surrounding (and shrinking) farmland and forests, that was built in sprawling and extravagant fashion when fossil fuels were cheap. G. Harrison, It Strikes Me Funny, July 21]

I wrote about air conditioning recently, and as per usual, what I said was bang on. Not a loud, important bang, mind, but still...

For example, London is certainly a heat island.

And when temperatures rise to ‘hot, hotter, hottest’, many Londoners add to the problem.

I.e., they crank up countless a/c units, cool off businesses, homes and vehicles artificially, and create more heat and carbon emissions at the same time.

The whole process is really a Catch-44 situation (twice as bad as a Catch-22).


["Can we use the a/c sparingly, even on hot days?": photos GH]

Last night, while generating another kind of heat on my exercise bike, I read the following comment about air conditioning:

Some people credit the arrival of air conditioning with the decline of neighborhood cohesion, especially in the South. (pg. 79, Little House on a Small Planet)

I found the sentence interesting because air conditioning has another colourful chapter in its life story, and we can now blame the entire fall of neighbourhood cohesion on the southern US.


["My front porch lines up with my closest neighbour's. Excellent."]


["The four chairs get a lot of use during three seasons."]

I suppose the advent of a/c, whether in the South or in Canada, drew people indoors during hot days or evenings and off their front stoops, steps, lawns and verandahs. Some people would say, “Forget about sitting under the elm tree with the neighbours. Let’s go inside, sit right in front of our new major appliance and listen to the next exciting episode of ‘The Cisco Kid’ on the radio.” (Up north it would be ‘Front Page Challenge’ on TV. That’s only if I got the decade right. I probably didn’t. Sorry, I digress).

Others would say, “I like chatting with the neighbours and passersby as they wander listlessly around the block in their undershorts to escape the heat, but I’d much rather sit indoors now and play with all the dials on our new air conditioner that’s the size of a refrigerator.”

And who could blame them?

Certainly not me. I too have a fascination with dials and push buttons and mysterious widgets. “Forget the instruction book,” I often say to my wife. “Let’s see if I can blow another fuse.”

A second comment from Little House on a Small Planet is closely linked with the first one mentioned:

Front porches in neighborhoods used to serve as telephones and TV sets; they announced to neighbors you are available to chat, and livened up the street life for those out on an evening stroll.

It makes me think there is much to be gained by making an effort to reduce our dependence on artificially cooled air indoors.

Though some people need a/c in order to survive our hot weather, perhaps if more of us tried to cool off in more natural ways, i.e., by walking or cycling about our neighbourhoods more often (not in our undershorts, please), sitting in shade islands provided by healthy trees on the front lawn, or catching a wee breeze on the front porch, we could reduce carbon emissions while, at the same time, growing more connected to the neighbours we live amongst and neighbourhoods we live within.

Do you think a/c is related to the decline of community cohesion?

Can the telephone and TV be added to the equation?

Is the South really to blame?

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Please click here to read ‘As temperatures rise, Londoners create more heat.’

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