Private Pleasure, Public Plight by Hans Kummer

Author:Hans Kummer [Kummer, Hans]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Urban
ISBN: 9781351308069
Google: LSFWDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-04-17T03:37:13+00:00

England: Social Comfort in Aging, Urban Villages

The typical middle-class domicile in England is the semidetached or terraced house (called a row house in the United States) on a narrow street in a built-up area next to a major center of population.19 The house is quite spacious by European standards, but the facilities within it are much more limited in number and primitive in quality than are those of Sweden or the United States. Kitchen equipment is relatively old-fashioned, refrigerators are small, freezers are rare. It is common for the British family, therefore, to shop for food more often than the American family. (The difficulties of frequent shopping are mitigated to some extent by daily milk delivery, Britain being the only modern society that still extensively maintains this home service.)

The house typically is on a street from which nonresidential uses have been excluded, but shopping districts consisting of a multitude of small shops are often in the immediate vicinity. Due to the relatively high densities the districts tend to be within walking distance, and groceries may be carried home by hand (although in-town supermarkets and bulk shopping are on the increase.) Public transportation in the form of bus service is much more readily available than in the United States, however, and people generally use it to get to work as well as for major shopping trips. Most middle-class residents own one (but seldom more than one) car, which is used less frequently than the American car; it is especially important for weekend trips. The car is often parked on the street or in the front yard in a carport.

British residential areas often have much more of a village appearance than do those of either Sweden or the United States, because of the densities, the narrow streets, a relatively active street life, and an old-fashioned appearance. The life-style of the English metropolitan dweller follows suit—it is in some respects like the life-style of people in a small village. (This is certainly a life-style that many of the English romantically idealize.) People live very close to one another, yet they have outdoor areas where they mingle. At least four types of specialty shops are often visited during the course of a week: one for meats, one for bakery goods, one for vegetables (the green grocer), and one for dry goods. Together with the low level of automobile ownership, this shopping pattern gives many English suburbs a bustling street life, a kind of village friendliness.

The English are quite home centered, and unlike the Swedes and a few Americans they have only one home on which to lavish their attention. Among the world’s finest gardeners, they attend the backyard garden particular well. In interior furnishings, the English home could be described as cozy rather than attractive. Many foreigners judge the decor to be well below that of the American home and, especially, that of the Swedish home. Part of the problem is the relatively low material level of many English homes, which among other things is manifest in what is apparent undermaintenance.

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