Every Child On Their Own Trampoline.
AN ESSAY BY JEREMY WILLIAMS
The fifth principle of New Old Ways is that small is even more beautiful. This came after pulling apart the stats, and seeing that in 2021, separate houses accounted for over 76 percent of the accommodation in the Byron Shire.
Despite 40 per cent of the Byron population being older workers, empty nesters, seniors and elderly, many of whom would love to downsize or "right size" to suit their evolving needs, most developments are only providing more large separate homes. And that's not the only issue.
These types of neighbourhoods, where the houses are huge, the fences high, and everyone ends up living alone together, is what's driving the loneliness epidemic.
Isolation is becoming such a massive issue, with one study stating that 70 per cent of Australians average less than 60 minutes face-to-face social time each day, they're now suggesting that human connection needs to be prescribed daily, like recommended steps or serves of fruit and veg.
This doesn't mean having an hour long deep and meaningful. Just chatting to someone when you're waiting in line for a coffee gives humans an electrochemical charge that lowers our feelings of both emotional and social loneliness.
Which brings us back to the beauty of having smaller homes and shared amenities, which cost a lot of money and we hardly use, like the pool, playground or BBQ area. By centralising these things, not only do we reintroduce small moments for interaction with people, but we make a case for public affluence – money spent on things that are shared – over private affluence, which is what capitalism has pushed society towards, because it gets everyone buying more stuff.
Jeremy Williams does a beautiful job of explaining all this and more in his wonderful essay, ‘Every child on their own trampoline’.
Expanding on the impact of privatising nearly everything, he writes: