Rat Park
[I may have missed a couple of days, but I'm back with a vengeance.] I saw a reference to Rat Park today in the NYTimes. It was used to suggest that perhaps New Yorkers have sufficient space to play and activities to pursue and are thus no longer drinking as much, but the implications are so much deeper. The basic setup of the Rat Park experiment (conducted by Bruce Alexander at Simon Fraser University in the 1970s and 1980s) is this: rats were addicted to morphine and then placed into one of two environments and offered a choice between clean water and water laced with morphine. The first was the usual tiny metal cage, and the second was 200 times larger with other rats and activities with which to engage. The result is that those rats who were stuck into the bare cages immediately took to the morphine, while those in Rat Park eschewed morphine for water and good times.
For planning, the implications are fairly apparent. If we ensure sufficient space and engagement with the world around, we will be building a healthier, happier society. Two further points should be made, however. First, this gives environmental determinism some legs. This is fine with me, for I believe the environment does structure social relations. Not completely, of course, but it does create constraints and opprotunities for actors to engage. This is why architecture and urban design retain their importance. The second point is that the NYTimes article probably reveals a class aspect to the situation, as Cheever’s characters are almost certainly relatively well off, indicating that the conditions for health and happiness are now generally available to those with wealth. Meanwhile, gentrification by these wealthy people have driven poorer families to move to lower quality building and to double up their tenancy, sacrificing their environmental conditions for those with the wealth and power to take it.
This definitely has to be part of my future utopian investigations.
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