Choosing The City Life

The idea of owning a suburban home was fed to Americans by people in power: Suburbia has always been suitable for industry.

Big houses = big appliances. This fed the coal, steel, and automaking industries. With it came cars and oil that made the postwar American suburb possible. It is all as much a creature of government as of the market.

The climate crisis and carbon dependency make potential homeowners reconsider the effects of suburban sprawl.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attack and the market crash of 2008 sowed a sense of instability and propagated fears.

“Save the economy or save lives” is a false choice.
A group of economists published a paper on the 1918 flu outbreak. Their findings revealed:

• Early and aggressive interventions saved lives and triggered a faster rebound, such as job growth and banking assets.
• Without a healthy population, there can be no healthy economy.

The hope is for a deep, short recession, to show that people have shut the economy down to limit the spread of disease.

Asking millions of able-bodied workers to stop working creates a crisis of unemployment.

During this time, the U.S. is expanding unemployment benefits and are also delaying tax filing. In northern-European countries, the government is directly paying businesses to maintain their payrolls to avoid mass layoffs and furloughs.

Noise pollution may lead to high blood pressure and heart attacks, as well as impairing hearing and overall health. Loud noises raise stress levels by activating the brain’s amygdala and causing the release of the stress hormone cortisol, according to research.

Silence has the opposite effect, releasing tension in the brain and body.

The constant attentional demands of modern life put a significant burden on the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is involved in high-order thinking, decision-making and problem-solving.

When we can finally get away from these sonic disruptions, our brains’ attention centers have the opportunity to restore themselves.

• The writer and journalist Jane Jacobs is mainly known for her writings on urban planning.
• Through magazines such as Architectural Forum or Fortune, she explained her perception on what was wrong with the approach to redevelopment in New York City, for instance.
• After having attended courses on urban planning, she launched her most famous book 'The death and life of great American cities', which was both highly praised and criticized.

The writer Jane Jacobs has always taken a high interest in urban planning, emphasizing the necessity to take into account community's needs.

She was particularly involved in redevelopment projects such as the ones concerning the Greenwich Village and Toronto, where she participated in demonstrations against changes that did not focus on community, but on individual interests of the 'master builders'.

It is also known as music design, music consultancy, or as part of a broader package of experiential design or sensory marketing.

The work involves creating distinct,  compatible musical identities for brands.

Muzak, a brand of background music, set the template for background music. It played in retail stores and other commercial premises and sold itself on the basis that it could increase productivity in workplaces. 

Muzak's template for background music persisted for decades. The music was a balm to ease awkward silences and to encourage and brighten the mood.

Silence helps activate our brain to work better and jog its memory banks efficiently.

Dutch agriculture is defined by vast landscapes of greenhouses. Some are covering 175 acres. 

In the Westland region, greenhouses fill the voids between cities, suburbs, and industrial plants.

Tech-savvy farmers use hydroponic systems and geothermal energy to produce high yields using limited resources. 

Due to a controlled indoor environment, Dutch greenhouses use 1:1 gallons of water per pound of tomatoes produced, compared to the 25.6-gallon global average.

The one terrifying aspect of how the space we live affects our health is that many of the bad effects aren't even fully known to us, like mood swings, neuron damage, chemical imbalance and many brain-altering effects, that are yet to be fully studied.

People in 19th-century Britain used folk tales to adjust to the experience of city living. Folklore was continually updated. It expressed concerns about urban development, the threat of strangers, and a shrinking sense of community as people no longer knew one another.

In Victorian London, a tale was told about Spring-heeled Jack, a supposedly clawed, fire-breathing ghost that terrorised villages. The figure thrived in rumour. However, no person who had actually 'seen' the ghost could be found.

• Iris folkloric monsters such as the banshee are still spreading in modern urban living. These stories act as a warning to help police the boundaries between safe and unsafe areas.
• In 21st-century Beijing, the city's night bus has become the focus of frightening stories about encounters with ghosts. Usually, an older, wise figure saves the rider by luring them off the bus, and then promptly disappears. The tale expresses the vulnerability of travelling the city at night.

Coffee cultivation and trade began on the Arabian Peninsula. Coffee was being grown in the Yemeni district of Arabia. By the 16th century, it was known in Persia, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey.

Coffee was enjoyed in homes and also in the many public coffee houses. Coffee houses quickly became such an important center for the exchange of information that they were often referred to as “Schools of the Wise.”

By the 17th century, coffee had made its way to Europe and was becoming popular across the continent. Despite the controversy, coffee houses were quickly becoming centers of social activity and communication in the major cities of England, Austria, France, Germany, and Holland.

Coffee began to replace the common breakfast drink beverages of the time — beer and wine.