The Art of Manliness - #227： The Art & Science of Loving the Place You Live

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. So there's

00:00:18.640 a tendency in people to think if they only lived in a super cool place, their lives would

00:00:23.280 be infinitely better. And while it's true that geography can influence our well being,

00:00:26.960 we often vastly overestimate how much moving will actually improve our lives. I mean,

00:00:31.260 if you're miserable in one city, you're probably going to be miserable somewhere else. There's

00:00:34.780 truth to the adage, wherever you go, there you are. And let's face it, we often don't have complete

00:00:39.780 control over where we live due to jobs, family obligations, and other factors. So how can you

00:00:44.740 learn to love the place you live, even if you don't feel it's the place of your dreams or the

00:00:48.460 most ideal location? My guest today has spent a year researching the burgeoning science of what's

00:00:53.840 called place attachment in order to answer that question. Her name is Melody Warnick,

00:00:57.140 and she's the author of the book, This Is Where You Belong, The Art and Science of Loving the Place

00:01:01.100 You Live. And onto the show today, Melody and I discuss what place attachment is and what you can

00:01:06.820 do to have more of it for the place you live. It's a great podcast filled with some extremely

00:01:10.460 actionable advice. After the show, check out the show notes at aom.is slash place, where you can find

00:01:16.600 links to resources you can delve deeper into this topic. All right, Melody Warnick, welcome to the

00:01:27.460 show. Thank you so much for having me. So your new book is called This Is Where You Belong,

00:01:32.000 The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live. I'm curious, what got you started down this path

00:01:36.640 exploring the science of loving the place you are? For me, it was what happens to a lot of Americans.

00:01:44.120 I was moving a lot. I moved six times among five different states in 12 years, which I know for

00:01:51.800 some people is just a drop in the bucket. But it was my latest move to Blacksburg, Virginia,

00:01:57.800 that really made me want to delve into this. My family had lived in Austin, Texas for a couple of

00:02:05.360 years and really thought, oh, this is going to be the place. We're going to stay here forever.

00:02:09.560 And then after a couple of years, it just didn't quite feel right. And my husband got a new job

00:02:16.580 offer at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, and we moved again. And every time we moved, we would have these

00:02:23.760 high hopes that this new town would somehow magically solve all our problems and make us better people and

00:02:33.200 make us happier. And when we moved to Blacksburg, it was kind of this realization, again, that that

00:02:42.120 doesn't always happen. That doesn't usually happen. And I needed to figure out a way to be happy where I

00:02:49.160 was right now instead of waiting for the next town or the best town.

00:02:54.700 Right. Yeah. I think there's this tendency in all of us think that, oh, if only we live someplace we

00:02:59.520 love, sounds like the coolest place ever, someplace different, our lives would just magically be

00:03:03.720 better. I like how in your book, your friend calls this the geographic cure. Is there any truth to the

00:03:09.380 idea that our geography can affect our well-being? Or is it really true that wherever you go, there you

00:03:14.320 are? They're kind of both true. I mean, you would have to be really ridiculously blind to insist

00:03:22.320 that every place in the world is the same. And so a lot of us have these fantasies of how different

00:03:29.040 our lives would be if, you know, if I moved to New York City or if I lived in Toronto or, you know,

00:03:35.840 a beach town in the South or something. And it is genuinely true. Your life would be really different

00:03:41.620 in a lot of ways. And there are studies that show really huge geographic disparities in things like

00:03:50.140 income levels or marriage rates or levels of well-being. So if you live in Hawaii, you're more

00:03:57.460 likely to be happy than if you live in Kentucky or West Virginia. So there's definitely truth to this

00:04:05.100 idea that our geography affects our lives and how happy we are. On the other hand, we don't always have

00:04:15.360 ultimate control over where we live. And even when we do, there will for certain be disappointing

00:04:24.080 things about our town or things that make our place hard to live in. And so there's a point at which you

00:04:32.080 need to learn to simply make the best of where you are. And there's also this idea that, you know,

00:04:41.940 no matter where you live, you're taking yourself with you. I always had this idea that, you know,

00:04:48.080 every time I moved, I was kind of shedding this baggage and, you know, all the friendships that

00:04:53.460 hadn't quite developed right or, you know, the home improvement projects you didn't finish. You were

00:04:58.460 leaving those behind and you were starting fresh. And that's an incredibly addictive idea,

00:05:04.460 this idea of starting over. But at a certain point, you have to realize those things come with you

00:05:12.840 or they start over in your new place. So the best thing that most of us can do is simply become

00:05:20.820 settled. And urban design mentioned a lot, which is that millennials are more likely than any other

00:05:28.940 generation in the past to pick the city where they want to live and then find the job to get them

00:05:35.620 there, which is totally different from how we think of people finding jobs. You know, you graduate

00:05:39.980 from college and you just, you know, throw out an enormously wide net and you go wherever anyone

00:05:46.360 will have you. But now people are being a little more choosy about it. They want to end up in San

00:05:54.100 Francisco or Austin or they want to live in Raleigh and they will just target their search to those

00:06:00.760 places or they'll move there and then get the job. But is this just a manifestation of the

00:06:06.260 geographic cure? I mean, they think that if they live in this cool place, their life would be

00:06:10.200 fundamentally different. Yeah, I think so to a certain extent that, you know, we have this idea

00:06:15.740 that we want to experience a certain kind of lifestyle and we see that that might be possible in this

00:06:21.440 place that we haven't lived before. And sometimes a place that we have lived before. I certainly meet

00:06:26.800 a lot of people in my town, which is a college town who moved here to go to college and just never

00:06:33.480 left. They loved it that much. But on the other hand, there's something valuable about this sense of

00:06:41.720 paying attention to place, acknowledging that it is important in our lives and being thoughtful about

00:06:49.600 where we live rather than just kind of randomly moving places.

00:06:55.380 All right. So you talk about in the book that there's research about it, and I'm surprised that

00:06:59.160 there was research about how we feel about where we live. You talk about how there's some people are

00:07:04.180 movers and some people are stayers. What causes a person to establish roots in a community and what

00:07:09.200 does the research say about the differences between movers and stayers?

00:07:12.580 So the thing that really interested me about moving and staying, as I looked into the research,

00:07:19.420 I discovered this idea of place attachment, which is this concept of feeling really connected to

00:07:28.080 a town or a city or the place that you live. Most of us have experienced that in some way. Maybe

00:07:35.000 it's your hometown or it could be the place that you live right now. But a lot of us identify with

00:07:42.000 some place that feels really close to our hearts. I've seen it identified in the scientific literature

00:07:50.100 as your heart home, which is kind of a woo sort of way to describe it, but it really is an emotional

00:07:58.120 feeling. It's an emotion tied with action. So when we feel place attached, not only are we more likely to

00:08:10.940 stay living in a place longer, but we feel more satisfied while we're there. We want to be involved

00:08:18.540 in the community. We want to know what's going on. We feel like the people who live in this place

00:08:23.720 are our kind of people. They're like us, or we feel socially connected and supported. So when you have

00:08:32.020 all these factors in place, and you don't have to have all of them, but some of these factors,

00:08:36.760 they make you feel place attached, and that makes you less likely to move overall. There's studies

00:08:45.720 that show some people are just stayers. According to the Pew Research Center, 37% of Americans still

00:08:55.020 live in their hometown. When I read that statistic, I was shocked by it because I feel like in America

00:09:04.180 now there's a stigma to staying put that people think if you are upwardly mobile, you're also

00:09:11.980 geographically mobile. You're moving around to get to college or to a new job. But there are advantages

00:09:19.480 to being stable in one place. There are studies that show that especially adolescents who move a lot

00:09:29.640 tend to have worse grades. They're more likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol. They have

00:09:36.140 fewer friends than teenagers who stay put. And the ramifications can be kind of long lasting for

00:09:45.380 children and teenagers who are introverts who move a lot. Even 30 years later, they show

00:09:53.420 lower levels of well-being and higher levels of depression. Simply liking where you live can have

00:10:01.260 a really important, have some really important health benefits. There's a study of Japanese senior

00:10:09.700 citizens that found that people who felt connected to their community and their neighborhood, who liked

00:10:17.600 where they lived and knew people, tended to live 6% longer than people who didn't. So it can even

00:10:26.300 increase your lifespan.

00:10:27.860 Wow, that's amazing. So does place attachment require that your city or town be amazingly awesome

00:10:32.600 and hip like say Austin or San Francisco? Or could you live in Claremore, Oklahoma and still have place

00:10:38.320 attachment?

00:10:39.280 You can definitely live in Claremore, Oklahoma and be place attached. And that's kind of the funny thing

00:10:44.640 about it is you probably know people who are really attached to their hometown or the place they live

00:10:50.940 now. And you as an outsider are like, what? I do not understand what's going on. One of the experiences

00:10:59.920 that first made me think about this was meeting a woman named Gertie Moore who lived in this tiny 0.96

00:11:04.680 little holler in West Virginia. And she lived there her whole life, you know, lived on the same street 0.76

00:11:10.140 her whole life. And, you know, meeting her as part of a research for a magazine story I was writing,

00:11:19.360 I was kind of dumbfounded because her town was not a place I would ever live, you know, in a million years,

00:11:27.620 I would never choose to live there. But for her, this was home. And home meant, you know, not only the

00:11:34.080 geography of this place, but she was incredibly socially connected. She belonged to every club

00:11:40.520 in town. She, you know, helped her neighbors. And even in a state that struggles with well-being

00:11:47.100 levels, I think that sense of place attachment made her happy. You know, she was kind of at the

00:11:53.060 center of the community and there's value in that. So a lot of how we develop place attachment is simply

00:12:00.220 perception. There's a great study that was really integral to my research called the Soul of the

00:12:07.380 Community Study. It was a collaboration between the Knight Foundation and Gallup. And they surveyed 26

00:12:12.900 communities across the United States, communities of all different sizes. They talked to 26,000 people

00:12:18.900 and asked them questions about, you know, how much they liked where they lived and what mattered to them

00:12:24.900 and things like that. And some of the cities that did really well in this study where people were

00:12:31.940 really place attached were really surprising. In the second year of the study, Grand Forks, North Dakota

00:12:38.020 was tied for number one out of these cities. And, you know, a lot of us do not have North Dakota on our

00:12:46.860 radar as, you know, someplace we're desperate to move. But, you know, it doesn't really matter that

00:12:53.660 objectively Grand Forks has, you know, fewer museums or fewer big sports arenas or whatever.

00:12:59.900 The people who live there are happy with what they have and they feel good about it. And

00:13:04.380 that increases their well-being. Does place attachment happen right away

00:13:09.140 when you move to a place or does it take some time to feel attached to a location?

00:13:13.420 So it usually takes time. Studies show that attachment peaks between about three and five years.

00:13:19.920 Um, my goal, you know, working on this book is I wanted to speed that up. You know, I was new in

00:13:27.000 Blacksburg and kind of didn't like it, didn't really feel comfortable. And I wanted to head off that 1.00

00:13:33.020 feeling of, you know, wanting to just call it quits and move on somewhere else. And so I wanted to,

00:13:39.060 uh, you know, accelerate the process of developing place attachment by doing these place attachment

00:13:46.520 experiments, you know, love where you live experiments, doing things that have been shown

00:13:51.740 in the literature to boost place attachment and kind of like doing them all at once in the course

00:13:57.520 of a year. So I would feel better about where I live. Um, and so there are behaviors, there are

00:14:05.340 things that you can do to feel better faster. But I think if you're new in a town, you have to assume

00:14:11.300 that the first three to six months are just going to be chaos. That's like survival skill

00:14:18.200 sort of level, you know, where you're finding your way around, you're trying to figure out where the

00:14:23.080 tortillas are in the grocery store. And it's really hard to even lift your head. Um, but once you've

00:14:30.620 been there for a while, you can work on loving the place you are.

00:14:35.480 All right. Well, let's talk about some of those things you did in your experiment. You start off

00:14:38.160 talking about walking more in your community. So how does walking more and driving less foster

00:14:43.120 place attachment? At a certain level, it's just, um, the really basic sense that walking tends to

00:14:50.900 make us happier, especially when you compare it to commuting by car. There are studies that show that,

00:14:56.640 um, you know, commuting, whether by car or by subway can be more stressful than being in like a

00:15:05.000 military operation, you know, it's incredibly stressful. So, you know, part of being happy

00:15:11.500 in your town is simply being happy and walking or biking is something that does that for you.

00:15:18.800 But there's also a process, especially when you're new of developing a mental map, um, you know,

00:15:25.800 sort of a sense of where things are in your town and how to get from point A to point B.

00:15:31.880 Uh, there's a study that shows, um, that studied children and children who, you know, never got out

00:15:40.820 of the car who had what's called windshield perspective. Um, when they were asked to draw

00:15:45.500 maps of their neighborhoods, they drew less detailed maps and less accurate maps than kids

00:15:51.560 who spent a lot of time on bike or on foot. So when we're biking or walking, we were going at a

00:15:59.780 slow enough pace, a human pace, um, that not only do we have a better ability to develop these mental

00:16:07.840 maps to kind of suss out how your neighborhood streets all connect to each other, but you're

00:16:13.400 more likely to have interactions, um, or experiences that help you. Um, I call it putting pins in your

00:16:20.980 map of your place, you know, like little happy experiences that make you feel more comfortable

00:16:27.120 there. And it can be anything from like saying hi to a neighbor who's out on his porch to learning

00:16:33.120 the name of the dog at the block or smelling your neighbor's roses. It can be a sensory experience

00:16:39.360 that helps you feel immersed in your town, um, or your city. And that can be really helpful to helping

00:16:47.040 us feel more at home.

00:16:49.040 So what can people do? I mean, I'm sure there's people who are listening that they there's like,

00:16:52.660 that sounds great, but my city is completely unwalkable. It's made for cars. What can these

00:16:57.920 people do to, um, take advantage of the walking benefit of place attachment?

00:17:02.980 So there's a guy I talked to for the book named Matt Tomasulo. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

00:17:08.700 And when he moved there, he was just, um, coming home from a study abroad in Europe where everyone

00:17:14.340 walked all the time or they biked. I think he was in Copenhagen. He moved to Raleigh and was really

00:17:20.440 irritated by this fact that like no one was on the streets and he lived downtown and no one walked

00:17:25.980 at all. Um, and people had this perception that, you know, it was just too far to go anywhere. So

00:17:32.040 he developed this project, he called it walk Raleigh, where he made these signs that just pointed out

00:17:39.040 that, um, it was only like a 10 minute walk to the grocery store or five minute walk to get to,

00:17:45.220 you know, this statue or, um, the bell tower at NC state or something like that. And he went out,

00:17:52.120 um, you know, no permission for this, like nothing was permitted, but he went out in the middle of the

00:17:57.980 night with some friends and, you know, zip tied them to street signs in an effort to make people

00:18:03.760 start walking more. Um, and it totally worked. Um, you know, people would see the signs and it's just

00:18:10.620 something, something kind of clicks like, Oh, that's not that far. I can walk. Um, it became

00:18:15.860 really popular in Raleigh. He, it spread to other parts of the city and he eventually developed it

00:18:20.460 into a website called walk your city where anyone can go and, you know, put up signs encouraging to

00:18:26.700 walk, encouraging others to walk. Um, so I asked him this question, you know, what if you live in a town,

00:18:33.560 you know, where there's not a walking infrastructure or where no one walks or it doesn't feel safe.

00:18:39.160 Um, and you know, you can't go crazy with it. Um, especially if you're worried it's not safe,

00:18:45.700 but he was kind of like walk anyway. You know, the thing that makes a place walkable is when people

00:18:52.300 just start walking, um, you can sort of be a trailblazer in your neighborhood and, and just

00:18:59.840 get out there. Um, even, you know, in little doses, maybe it's not your neighborhood, but maybe it's the

00:19:05.700 local park or maybe it's downtown or, you know, someplace in your town where you can get outside

00:19:12.420 and experience life on foot. I love that idea. I was tempted to make some signs. I mean,

00:19:18.220 the library from my house isn't that far. I think it's like 20, like a 20 minute walk,

00:19:22.440 but I always drive to it because I'm just, it's out of laziness and habit.

00:19:26.740 Right. It's totally habit. You know, that we just,

00:19:29.280 you know, we just get in the car because it's hot or it might rain or, you know, whatever. Um,

00:19:36.720 so it's kind of like, you have to get over that initial inertia against doing it. And honestly,

00:19:43.560 you're, you're probably not going to do it all the time. I recommend the book,

00:19:47.440 you know, just making a swap, like, you know, one trip that you would normally make by car,

00:19:53.180 try making it by foot or, you know, go on a walk in your neighborhood for exercise or something.

00:19:57.560 And when you start like having the good experiences, um, you, you'll enjoy it more. Um,

00:20:05.940 I've, I've lived in my neighborhood now for four years and it was seriously like a month ago that

00:20:11.200 someone pointed out that like a half mile from my house is this beautiful path through the woods,

00:20:17.600 like this hiking trail that I never knew was there. But, you know, those are the kinds of things that

00:20:25.060 make people love their neighborhood is, you know, those, those hidden paths that you explore that

00:20:31.060 is a cool process. So another activity you encourage or you experimented with, and you're

00:20:35.880 loving the place you are, um, experiment is, uh, buying local. So how can buying local create place

00:20:41.940 attachment? So what I love about buying local is that it helps you and it helps your town. Um, you know,

00:20:48.860 there's a lot of studies, um, that when we buy local, more money stays locally, um, you know,

00:20:57.020 feeds local taxes, stays, um, among local people than, uh, would when we shop at big box stores,

00:21:05.480 it's actually, you know, about three times as much money stays local. It's called the local multiplier

00:21:10.500 effect. So part of loving your town is doing what's good for your town. Um, and shopping local

00:21:16.980 definitely is, there's a total social and psychological benefit to buying local as well.

00:21:25.160 Um, I have always been, you know, an Amazon and Target devotee. That is just where I bought my stuff.

00:21:35.060 But, um, the thing that makes Target and Amazon so efficient, you know, that it's the same everywhere,

00:21:41.280 uh, and it's so easily accessible, you know, especially Amazon, you just do it from your couch.

00:21:47.500 You don't have to leave the house, um, is exactly the thing that makes it bad for towns. Um, it takes

00:21:55.480 away money from your town and it's completely non-social. So I made an effort to try and buy local,

00:22:04.840 which was hard for me. And in most towns it's, it can be hard to find, you know, necessities and

00:22:11.540 things like that. Um, but one thing I did recently was, uh, transfer all my prescriptions to a locally

00:22:21.520 owned pharmacy that's on the main street in my town. You know, they were like at Target and the

00:22:26.140 grocery store and this new pharmacy opened up and I'm like, okay, you know, like this is my thing.

00:22:31.840 I have to transfer my prescriptions. And I did. Um, and this pharmacist is so awesome. Like he

00:22:40.120 reminds me of Andy Dwyer from Parks and Rec, just like so happy for your business. So happy to talk

00:22:47.240 to you, willing to bend over backwards to get you what you need. Um, they do delivery, which is awesome

00:22:54.400 for me. Um, but there's also just kind of a relationship there. Um, I know, you know,

00:23:01.460 I know Jeremy, my name, he knows me by name. He knows the kind of stuff I'm, you know, I need and

00:23:06.780 we've talked, um, those are the kinds of relationships that a lot of us don't have anymore. But when you

00:23:13.460 have some of those, um, you know, loose tie kind of relationships, they make you feel, um, more at home

00:23:20.660 where you live. And that's a great thing. I love that. I do too. And something you suggest in your

00:23:25.620 book, you, you argue that if you continue to buy your stables at Target or some big chain grocery

00:23:30.320 store, you suggest to, you suggest people to at least spend $50 a month at a locally owned store

00:23:36.200 shop. Right. There's, um, there's this idea it's called the three 50 project. And, um, you know,

00:23:43.620 you're not going to spend everything at a locally, locally owned store. You're definitely going to keep

00:23:48.460 shopping at Target and Amazon. I know I do, but if you can just transfer some of that money, you

00:23:53.400 know, aim to spend $50 at three local stores every month. Um, even just that small amount can make a

00:24:01.380 difference. I recommend that people think of one thing that they will always buy local and maybe

00:24:09.040 that's eating at a restaurant or, you know, I will always buy toys from this locally owned toy store or

00:24:15.500 books from the independent bookstore in my town and just commit to that. And that's,

00:24:19.840 that's your thing. And you always shop local for that. Yeah. I love that idea. Cause it's something

00:24:24.780 we do in our family, you know, for Christmas presents, my wife and I, we buy our toys at this

00:24:29.060 locally owned store, which is nice. It's a, it's a pleasant experience. Right. And the people who work

00:24:34.320 in those stores, they, they value it. They know you. Um, it's just a different experience than

00:24:40.340 shopping at Target. So you talk about neighborliness. I think everyone kind of bemoans the fact that

00:24:45.280 being neighborly is declined. We're not as neighborly, but you say we're actually still

00:24:49.900 neighborly, but the definition of neighborly has changed. So how has that definition changed

00:24:55.100 some say like the 1950s? Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, 40 or 50 years ago, neighbors

00:25:02.500 were fairly likely to socialize with each other, you know, once a week or once a month, you'd have

00:25:08.920 the bunco group or the poker night or the neighborhood potluck or something like that.

00:25:14.740 Now being neighborly mostly involves leaving other people alone. You know, like you're a great

00:25:22.400 neighbor if your dog doesn't poop in my yard or you're a great neighbor. If, um, you know,

00:25:28.800 you deliver the mail that got missed delivered to your house and you don't throw parties late at

00:25:33.960 night. So we tend to think of, you know, being neighborly as simply keeping yourself to yourself,

00:25:40.980 minding your own business. And there's something to be said for that. Um, but on the other hand,

00:25:47.440 I love the old fashioned idea of neighborliness, um, which is that you get to know your neighbors by

00:25:54.220 name. You trust them. You maybe ask them to, you know, house at your cats while you're gone.

00:26:01.780 Um, um, you socialize with them on a small level and you actually know them.

00:26:09.320 And what does the research say about communities that have a strong sense of neighborliness?

00:26:13.220 I mean, what are the benefits that come with that for the community as a whole?

00:26:17.180 On an individual level, um, neighborliness has been shown to really, uh, have an important

00:26:23.700 health benefit. Um, there's a study from the university of Michigan that showed that, uh,

00:26:30.920 people who know their neighbors, you know, who know their first names, who trust them,

00:26:35.260 who have a relationship with them are 60, 67% less likely to have heart attacks and 48% likely,

00:26:42.440 less likely to have a stroke, which is an enormous, uh, kind of stunning study there. Um, but for

00:26:51.520 communities as a whole, crime tends to go down when neighbors know each other. Um, and, you know,

00:26:58.420 there's a great quote from, uh, someone at Harvard who said, if you had to choose between 10% more

00:27:04.360 cops on the beat or 10% more citizens, knowing their neighbors, first names, the latter is the

00:27:09.820 better crime prevention strategy. So this is something that communities themselves are investing

00:27:15.700 in, you know, developing, uh, neighborhood councils or one, uh, one program I talked about

00:27:23.080 was from surprise Arizona. They have a block party trailer where they have this trailer just stocked

00:27:28.600 with everything that you need to throw a good block party. And they'll throw in, you know,

00:27:32.440 a hundred dollar gift certificate to the grocery store so you can get food and party supplies.

00:27:38.060 And they want people to get out in the street and talk to each other. When you have those

00:27:45.060 relationships, um, it tends to ward off ill feeling. It makes people happier. It helps neighbors solve

00:27:53.780 problems before they escalate. Um, and it makes a community feel better. Um, there's also something

00:28:02.600 called neighborhood social cohesion. And the idea is that a cohesive neighborhood where people know each

00:28:10.460 other and trust each other can also work together to solve its own problems. And this is

00:28:14.920 really effective, especially in communities that are struggling, but even in, you know, your average

00:28:20.900 middle-class communities, sometimes neighbors have, have issues. One person that I talked to for the

00:28:27.780 book, and I think you've had him on your podcast, Mark Dunkelman told me this, um, story. He moved

00:28:33.500 to Providence, Rhode Island, and their street got ripped up for, you know, some work and it didn't get

00:28:39.520 repaved or didn't get repaved properly. And he took the initiative to go around to all the

00:28:44.760 neighbors. They all called the city council people, signed petitions and got the, got the repaving

00:28:52.120 done. So, you know, that's something that ordinary citizens can do, but they have more power when they

00:28:59.200 band together and make it happen. And the thing that Mark said about it is having done that, he was like

00:29:04.660 the mayor of the street. People loved him. Um, so there's a happiness benefit too.

00:29:09.660 The other experiment you did was to do something fun in your community, which sounds great, but what

00:29:14.560 if your community doesn't have anything fun to do? What if it's just strip malls and nothing else?

00:29:20.100 So that's, that was my town, or at least that's what I thought my town was. You know, I moved here

00:29:25.620 from Austin, which is a big city, totally happening. People love living there. And I moved to Blacksburg,

00:29:30.700 Virginia, which is a town of about 43,000. And we have a university here, but you know,

00:29:36.500 it was a lot slower. And that was one of the things that bugged me when I moved here is like,

00:29:41.840 what do people do for fun? The thing that I realized researching the book is that basically

00:29:47.620 every community has fun stuff to do, but we don't always pay attention to the fun stuff our town has

00:29:54.740 to offer because it's not our fun stuff. It's not the stuff that we wanted. You know, maybe

00:29:59.460 we want a big art museum and what our town has is some bars, or we wanted Disneyland and our town has

00:30:09.000 a historic plantation. So we tend to sort of ignore the things that our town is good at.

00:30:18.740 But a lot of how we feel about our town is perception. We create our cities with how we think

00:30:25.200 about them. One of the places I went to as I researched the book was Sierra Vista, Arizona,

00:30:30.420 who's doing a rebranding project. And it opened my eyes because I talked to, you know, one person who

00:30:36.700 was like, oh, Sierra Vista is the best place. There's so much to do. I love it here. And then 20

00:30:42.940 minutes later, I would talk to someone who'd be like, Sierra Vista as a whole, I can't wait to leave.

00:30:48.120 And it made me realize that towns are not the same for everyone. You know, we all sort of live in a

00:30:56.840 different city based on how we think about it. So I have two ideas about this fun stuff. You know,

00:31:04.380 first, if you want to stop seeing your town as this drag, you know, a boring place to live where there's 0.99

00:31:11.340 nothing going on. You have to figure out what your town is good at, you know, and accept those things,

00:31:18.400 even if they're not the things that you would prefer. So you do that by asking around, you read

00:31:23.440 the local newspaper, you find the online event listings, and you start showing up for stuff

00:31:28.780 that's going on. I write in the book about trying to pay more attention to what my town was good at by,

00:31:37.180 you know, starting to attend hokey football games. And I probably should not admit this on the Art of

00:31:43.100 Manliness podcast, but I'm not that into football. But it was something that I did just to be part of

00:31:50.640 the town, you know, to experience what people in the town got excited about. My second thought is that

00:31:56.520 if your town isn't amazingly entertaining and interesting, there's nothing that says that

00:32:01.500 you can't make it amazing. A lot of us in our cities sit back, and we wait for stuff to come to

00:32:08.020 us. You know, we wait for entertainment to descend from on high. But one of the things I love right now

00:32:16.240 is this idea of placemaking, which is a concept that the average citizen can shape their place for the

00:32:25.420 better. By, you know, opening a pop up store or starting a festival in the town, I read about people

00:32:34.140 in Fargo, North Dakota, who started something called the hammock initiative. And what it was

00:32:40.200 literally was people gathering at a park and lying in their hammocks. But you know, they built a website

00:32:46.900 for it, they invited the press, and it became a thing, like an event that was going on. So in the same way

00:32:54.380 cities can develop entrepreneurial ecosystems where they nurture and invite entrepreneurs to start new

00:33:01.500 things. Cities can also become placemaking ecosystems where they encourage community initiatives, you

00:33:10.580 know, parklets or benches or murals or anything that makes the town a cooler, better place to live

00:33:17.740 and more fun. One of the ideas that you suggested and I started doing is pretty much every city probably

00:33:23.620 has an Instagram account around the city where they're talking about the events that are going

00:33:27.520 on or just things about your city. And I've been following a lot of Tulsa Instagram accounts. It's

00:33:31.940 been fun. I've actually discovered some cool events I had no idea that was going on that I would have

00:33:36.180 known that was going on, you know, going on if I weren't following these accounts.

00:33:40.680 Right. I love that. You know, there are exactly social media accounts, Twitter, there are blogs,

00:33:47.840 almost every city in the world has online event listings. And one of the benefits of that too is

00:33:55.380 you connect with other people who are really in love with where they live. And when you're hanging

00:34:00.740 out with people who are boosters for your town, who are really enthusiastic about it, that attitude

00:34:06.200 tends to rub off on you.

00:34:08.360 All right. I love that. So another part of your experiment was you got out into nature more.

00:34:12.280 How does getting out into nature, and I guess this kind of ties in with walking too, but how does

00:34:18.120 that develop place attachment in us?

00:34:20.180 I love encouraging people to get out in nature because it's sort of the purest

00:34:26.140 manifestation of place. You know, it is literally your place without all the houses and the buildings

00:34:33.180 as just the sensory experience. It's full of sounds and smells and sights. So experiencing

00:34:41.060 nature can be a really powerful, positive way to feel connected to where you live.

00:34:46.660 Studies have shown that nature is almost primal in the way it affects our bodies. Scientists

00:34:52.680 call time spent in green spaces vitamin G because it's so effective at things like reducing your

00:35:00.060 rates of cardiovascular disease or pain or migraines or lowering your blood pressure. It definitely

00:35:06.880 lowers stress levels and also helps neighbors form closer community ties. I found one study that

00:35:13.300 showed that neighbors who live near parks are more willing to help each other out and trust each

00:35:20.120 other than people who live farther away from parks. So when we talk about nature, it doesn't have to be

00:35:25.760 like the primeval forest or something. It can just be, you know, your local greenbelt or a park or

00:35:32.720 someplace, you know, the High Line in New York City, someplace that helps you experience

00:35:38.320 something a little green, something outside the normal town setting. And the interesting part is

00:35:48.040 that the kind of nature we gravitate toward can feel really personal. You know, everyone has their

00:35:54.620 thing. This is kind of the thing that you sit around and talk about with your friends when you're

00:35:58.340 kids. You know, if you could live anywhere, would you live in the mountains or on the beach? You know,

00:36:04.820 some of that is evolutionary biology. We tend to prefer places where we have a vantage point and a view

00:36:12.100 that includes water. You know, so you imagine a hunter on the savannah trying to get a bead on a lion

00:36:18.080 without being killed himself. And somehow that has transferred to our preference for, you know,

00:36:25.400 flat, park-like places with some trees and some water, but where we can still see where we're going.

00:36:34.140 And our preferences in nature also have a lot to do with where we're from, you know, where we grew up.

00:36:40.480 There's a study by some Swedish environmental psychologists that found that 73% of study

00:36:48.120 participants who grew up near the coast settled near the coast as adults. And 63% of people who grew up

00:36:54.940 near a forest settled near a forest as adults. So we tend to gravitate towards, you know, things we've

00:37:03.580 experienced in one way or another. But even so, all levels of nature can, you know, be positive. So we find

00:37:14.200 the aspect of nature that speaks to us. And it can be really important in our sense of place.

00:37:22.480 One aspect of place attachment is called place dependence. And it's this idea that when we depend

00:37:30.000 on certain places to do the things we love, we love that place. So if you're a skier, you might

00:37:37.360 develop a sense of place dependence for the mountains. Or if you kayak, you develop a sense of

00:37:42.840 place dependence for the river near your house. And that can, those can be activities that make you

00:37:48.940 fall in love with where you live. Well, Melody, we've talked about a lot of great ideas. There's

00:37:53.160 more we could talk about. But I'm curious, what were the results of your place attachment experiment?

00:37:57.460 Did you learn to love Blacksburg? So I did. And I was a little skeptical of the results at first.

00:38:04.300 I started noticing it because I was traveling to research the book. And I'd come back to Blacksburg,

00:38:10.300 and I would just have this feeling of, oh, I'm home. You know, I miss that. I miss those mountains,

00:38:16.420 or I miss these trees. And I would, you know, I would ride my bike around town. And I'd be like,

00:38:23.120 that's, that's beautiful. Look at the sky today. I started having these experiences where I just

00:38:28.920 sort of noticed where I was, and I loved it. And I kind of worried that I was, you know, I was

00:38:35.080 tampering with the evidence, you know, I was researching this and writing a book about it,

00:38:39.080 of course, is in my best interest if I fall deeply in love with Blacksburg. But the thing is,

00:38:45.880 you know, my whole study, you know, trying to do things that build place attachment was really like

00:38:53.340 this long extended exercise in positive thinking. And when you are determined to see good in your

00:39:00.640 town and feel part of the community, you do, you do after a while. I really do feel like Blacksburg is

00:39:08.460 home. And we've, my family has rented a house here ever since we moved here. And we finally

00:39:14.940 got a realtor and started house hunting because we're like, okay, this is it. We are, we are committed.

00:39:21.580 Um, and I really can't imagine living anywhere else right now, which is not to say that I will never

00:39:27.400 move. Um, you know, jobs happen elsewhere. Families sometimes draw you away. So, you know, being place

00:39:38.260 attached or loving where you live doesn't mean that you have to stay there forever. It just means that

00:39:43.480 while you there, while you're there, you just love it really hard and you, you make it your own. Um,

00:39:52.000 and you just live it up for the time that you're there. And if you leave, you can do it in the next

00:39:58.940 town too. All right. I love that. So I'm not sure if you like these types of questions about to ask,

00:40:02.920 because I'm sure you just say, do all the things, but if there's one thing that you'd recommend that

00:40:08.060 our listeners could start doing today, if they want to start the experiment, what's the one thing

00:40:12.400 that would probably provide the most immediate results in learning to love the place you are?

00:40:17.100 I'm going to say the really, um, basic one and say, go meet your neighbors. A lot of us don't know

00:40:25.140 our neighbors, you know, 28% of us don't even know their names and neighbors in all the research

00:40:32.220 that I looked at, knowing your neighbors can be one of the most powerful things for helping you

00:40:39.700 be healthy, helping you feel connected, helping you feel happy in your community.

00:40:44.900 So seriously, just like, you know, take banana bread to your neighbors or invite them over for

00:40:52.240 ice cream or, you know, just say hi. It will make you feel better about your town.

00:40:58.540 That's fantastic. Well, Melody, where can people learn more about your book?

00:41:01.420 I have a website, which is my name, melodywarnick.com, um, where you can find tons more info about the book.

00:41:09.280 There are links to buy it and, you know, there's a book club guide and a blog and all kinds of good

00:41:14.760 stuff. So that's a great place to start. Melody Warnick. Thank you so much for your time. It's

00:41:18.520 been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Brett. I appreciated it. My guest today was Melody

00:41:24.040 Warnick. She's the author of the book. This is where you belong. The art and science of loving

00:41:27.580 the place you live. It's available on amazon.com. Go check it out. It's a fantastic book. Um, if you want

00:41:32.620 to learn more information about the book, you can go to her website, melodywarnick.com. Also check out

00:41:37.500 the show notes at aom.is slash place for, um, links to resources. So you can delve deeper into this

00:41:43.220 topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and

00:41:59.100 advice. Make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy the

00:42:03.060 show, I'd appreciate it if you'd give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher really helps us out a lot.

00:42:08.300 Thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

00:42:11.860 manly.

The Art of Manliness - August 19, 2016

#227： The Art & Science of Loving the Place You Live

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