Heads Up! Cities Need Your Attention.

(Source: Unsplash/Kelli McClintock.)

I sometimes joke that I’m becoming a mid-life grouch, always complaining about “kids these days.” It’s a side of me that’s been coming out lately due to my frequent trips to Baylor University’s campus, where my husband is a professor. I can’t help but groan every time we pull up, in part because of the ever-prevalent “fashion” trend of lampshading that just won’t die, but (and perhaps more frustratingly) because of the apparent inability of kids these days to walk around campus without staring at their phones. By the time we arrive around noon, we’re surrounded by dozens of students shuffling across campus, their heads buried in the screen in their hands.

It reminds me of my last year living in New York City. I remember surges of shock overtaking me upon boarding the subway at rush hour. Everyone aboard was staring at a screen. I don’t know if there’s a term for the feeling of being surrounded by people who refuse to make eye contact with you, who are not really aware of you and who are not really in the space they inhabit alongside you, but the feeling of alienation and social unawareness was so intense that I literally felt minor symptoms of a panic attack.

I’ve been a little discouraged to see that this phone addiction epidemic is sprouting up in cities of all sizes, including smaller ones like Waco. I’ve been surprised at the extent to which it is beginning to saturate interactions that were once considered “no tech zones.” Young adults in customer service roles now regularly greet customers with Apple earphones in their ears. I’ve even seen a young man texting while bagging my groceries at H-E-B. At a taco shop two weeks ago, two guys ordered food, grabbed a table and proceeded not to chat with each other, but to pull out their phones and check TikTok, only looking up here and there to show each other the video they were laughing at. Is this the new “hanging out”?

In some ways it’s even worse here: a few friends and I recently commented to each other in despair at the frequency with which we see drivers navigating the city in massive trucks and SUVs while staring at their phones. While driving on highways, my husband and I are seeing more and more cars swerving between lanes or driving too slowly. “Distracted driver,” he’ll say and most times, when we pass them, our suspicions are confirmed: there they are blazing down the highway while staring at that shiny screen.

Beyond the obvious implications for mental health and public safety, this epidemic of phone addiction also has implications for our towns and cities. In her essay “Upstream,” poet Mary Oliver offers us this exquisite reminder that “attention is the beginning of devotion.” Few things sustain our cities more than attention. It feels almost too obvious to point out, but the greatest asset any city can have is citizens who pay attention to their cities and who know how to take action on their observations.

Our collective growing addiction to smartphones poses a formidable challenge to this essential precondition for civic participation. Not only must we be able to pay attention to our cities, but we must become comfortable with the kinds of rigorous, sustained attention and thought that goes into care and stewardship of any kind. Everything about smartphones and social media undermines these mental skills. The user experience on these devices and apps is designed to move the user from one bite-sized, entertaining piece of content to another, slowly chipping away at our attention spans and our ability to sustain complicated thinking over the long haul about extremely non-entertaining topics.  

The upside to this is that we can get our attention back. It’s the most natural and free resource we can contribute to the cities we care about. All it takes is some discipline, practical action, and creativity. Here are a few ways to cultivate a more attentive presence in the town where you live:

1. Keep your phone in a pocket or purse while moving between destinations.

I know from firsthand experience that the lure of the phone is its ability to solve problems immediately. A million questions, curiosities, and ideas pop into our head in the course of the day and having the Internet in our pocket makes it so easy to scratch the information itch. Try not to give in to the impulse to do so the moment it strikes. Schedule your internet time for later; be in the present for now. Better yet, if you can, just leave your phone behind.

2. Intentionally see your city.

Try giving yourself a challenge every time you leave the house of noticing a business or design feature that you’ve never seen before. Smartphones teach us that digital realities are more worthwhile than the boring, messy ones right in front of us. While it’s more entertaining, you can only be fully human where you physically are. Learn to be in the world you’re in. Embrace the discomfort of boredom. Reject the urge to escape to a more stimulating world through your phone.

3. Get around in different ways.

If you’ve never walked or cycled for an errand close to home, try that instead of driving and take notes of what you see, hear, or even smell. Put your senses to work. Experience the landscape of the city without the mediation of an automobile. Where are you surprised by the previously unnoticed physical traits of your city? Perhaps your neighborhood has some hidden hills?

The value of paying attention in the context of civic stewardship and participation cannot be overrated. As I’ve pointed out before, citizens and politicians have fundamentally different sensitivities and priorities. What’s needed to ensure a safe, beautiful, and productive sphere may not always shape the priorities of those with power. The only ones who can change that will be those who are disciplined enough to resist the lure of digital devices, fully inhabit the world around them, and pay sustained attention to it.  

In closing, here’s Oliver’s full piece: 

“Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin-flowers. And the frisky ones—inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones—rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms. Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

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