Life support: Nacirema redux

Abstract

This article attributes a range of disconcerting public health trends and social isolation in the USA to a pervasive sense of fear along with certain aspects of the built environment. Far too often, the built environment fails to support life adequately, in turn, requiring other forms of “life support.” Americans have been coping with urban fragmentation, environmental degradation, and lack of character or “sense of place” reactively—through denial, deflection, and distraction—manifest as an obsession with the private realm, and a corresponding deflection of energy and attention from investment in the public realm. At the same time, there have been significant proactive efforts that are successfully enhancing quality of life by improving environments at all scales. © 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.