is the gym the new country club?

When somebody asks about my life in New York, I can’t help but start talking about the gym. That may surprise you because I’m known here on substack for my erudite observations about urbanism, but my other passion is becoming a huge meathead. (I’ve been calling it “meathead summer” since June 2023)

Of course, I didn’t just join any gym - I joined Chelsea Piers fitness, which is a fancy gym. It has free classes, you never have to wait for equipment, it has a steam room and a sauna, it has Malin + Goetz soap in the shower, AND it has a correspondingly egregious monthly cost. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I joined a country club in the middle of Brooklyn.

While there isn’t space for an 18-hole golf course at Chelsea Piers, the pampered exclusivity is certainly giving country club. And this is hard for me to admit because I’m an urban chauvinist, and I like to think I’m better because I live in a big city that provides a diverse environment with people from all different backgrounds. So I’m sort of embarrassed to say that I spend a lot of my time in an institution that is very obviously catering to a bunch of yuppies just like me. (You should see the 5pm work-from-home crowd. It’s like looking in a mirror).

These gyms, just like natural wine bars, specialty coffee roasters, and high end restaurants, are symbolic of the wave of preppies that have taken over Brooklyn in the last few decades. Aesthetically, we may be different from our parents (we dream of townhomes instead of McMansions) but as wealth and power continue to be concentrated in urban cores, they increasingly offer the services that drew wealthy people to the suburbs.

In fact, the more I see similarities between these gyms and country clubs, the more I see similarities between urban and suburban lifestyles. No matter how dense our neighborhoods are, we are drawn to institutions that provide opportunities for us to gather and get to know others. These institutions play a critical role in shaping our social networks - and when they come with a high price of entry, that creates a filtering mechanism for who gets included. It’s easy for us to imagine political deals being brokered in smoky rooms at country clubs, but maybe these days it’s more likely that they’re happening at the Equinox juice bar.

While they have their downsides, we seem to be drawn to social clubs across urban, suburban, and rural settings and they have major impacts on our social experience of a place. This may seem obvious, but it contradicts a traditional belief among urban planners: that if people live in denser environments, they inherently get to know their neighbors better (i.e. there is “more community”). I live in a dense urban neighborhood and my social network is far more driven by my job, my family, my college social network, and even the gym than by mere proximity. Perhaps if we want to create more integrated and equitable cities, we should focus our energy on these institutions instead of worrying about housing density.

Bennett

City Speak #37