I hate all these artificially created social divisions. As you can see, for me it's the age thing I get heated about, but that's not all that bugs me, just for me the aspect that epitomises it.
Mind you, some cross-age living spaces have been experimented with, but they're private and cost a bob or two. I'm not sure which country the concept came from but I've seen mention of a couple in this country before the pandemic.
It's where you build a complex that's got a care home that's also a student hall of residence. The students pay for their digs by providing care. I've also come across the notion of retirement home combined with student hall.
The reason I think of segregation in age terms is that where I am, when I was a kid when we had the luxury of playing in the streets, old people with limited ability to get out and about could keep their doors open and if it was wet or we wanted a change, we could pop in and sit with one of them.
But then in those days most of our shopping was done at the little local shops or off the milk, bread & grocery van. Some of the shops had deliveries by bicycle. (Hmm, haven't I seen that again recently?) But where's the hardship in an adult 'paying' for the 'babysitting' by doing the neighbour's grocery shopping and other things like mowing their lawn?
And that intergenerational thing can also work inter-class, but how's that supposed to happen when so much is ghettoised?
Where I live in an urban area, you can sit on a bus and go through what I think of as invisible walls dividing different sorts of people. Some people get angry that people of a particular ethnicity seem to self-isolate. No they don't, it's generations of immigrants of different sorts with vastly different financial and educational starting points moving into areas with relevant housing.
See traditional housing changes over the centuries. Not unique to the UK. Village - someone ends up as the boss, has the biggest house, employs (paid or as slave labour) others who live around. Then as time goes by, he decides the area round his house has become a slum as it's become a town, so he moves outwards, maybe with others of his social class, which has also grown in number.
Then others move into where he lived. It becomes a sort of ripple effect. But the time comes when the bit in the middle, which had become delapidated gets pulled down, rebuilt and becomes luxury housing. In the midst of that natural movement, it separates newcomers from existing residents. And, as we've seen, it maps onto other social divides, including private housing and social housing, expensive housing and affordable housing.
Where I live, I map that onto things like postcodes and you've given me a very strong mental map-type image of how these clusters of sorts of people and housing are where you live.
Building mixtures of different sorts of housing, with plenty of cheap housing, enables a mixture.
Ironically, where I live, people think of my postcode area as a bit posh because it's got lots of old houses that these days would cost a lot. I say to people that there'd have been lots of working class people here in Victorian and Edwardian times. They're so often baffled, unless they're into history. I ask them "Who do you think lived in the attics? Where do you think the cooks, maids, chauffeurs etc. lived? Even if it's just one skivvy, it's still a working class person."
But now the 'skivvies' are supposed to live in slums or, if not, travel ridiculous distances at prices they can barely afford. Round the country are government-financed projects to block off lots of roads and encourage cycling. Lovely if you've the money to buy the house exactly where you want it, move as often as you want etc. Not so fun if you're one of the growing number of supposedly self-employed delivery drivers, or a care worker paid only whilst actually at each house, not in-between. Not so fun if you're disabled and need to go by car.
Sorry, this is a pet topic. It's enhanced hurt-wise for me by virtue of the fact that as my father's estate is sorted out and the house prices rise, I'll probably have to move from the home I love, which, when my parents bought it, you didn't need to be wealthy to buy, but which would now cost a bob or two, even in its run-down state. I have to keep telling myself that even if I end up in a bedsit or caravan, I'll be privileged by comparison with the many homeless, and I'll probably get a smaller house.
I say that as someone who once bought a house by working two jobs, then lost it through corruption, which left me unable to trust my local police at all.
Sorry my brain's still not in 'keep it short' mode.