Our Cities Are Designed for Loneliness

South Park Studies: Social Infrastructure

LEARN

A scarcity of public places in urban areas is contributing to what sociologists are calling an epidemic of loneliness. This rise in loneliness is a real public health problem — it contributes to depression and mental illness, and without adequate social support networks lonely people are more likely to experience major financial and personal problems.

Planners, politicians, and physicians are uniting to focus on this pervasive loneliness, and the ways a well-designed physical environment can create opportunities for meaningful social connections.

Our Cities Are Designed for Loneliness
VICE news, December 13, 2018

There’s a space in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan that’s not a storefront or an apartment. There are daffodil bulbs waiting in a bucket outside, and a yet-to-open coffee bar surrounded by potted plants. In the wide open main room are tons of milk crates holding up desks and separating spaces and doing things I didn’t know milk crates did so well.

Michelle Jackson walks me up to the terrace where she’s creating a rooftop garden. It’s sectioned in two, one part to grow things to sell, one part for the community here at Prime Produce, a co-op that is something between a community center, coworking space, nonprofit, workshop, and event space. And it grew out of an idea that many of us have felt as we navigate our cities alone: We are meant to have lives that intersect often and fully with other lives. We are meant to be part of communities.

“There’s been a lot of research around nature and how it affects mental health, so getting people together is very important,” Jackson, who has worked in community gardens for years, tells me.

Community gardens grow things that are frequently absent in urban landscapes. Nature itself, as Jackson points out and as dozens of researchers have chronicled, is a tonic for our minds. But the gardens also make for a few extra square feet in the city where people can come together. And this second part — the confluence of our built environments and human connection — is where many urban planners and architects are now looking to solve what has become a pervasive and persistent problem around the world and here in New York City: loneliness.

Loneliness, partly social isolation and partly our own subjective interpretation of our lives, is a public health problem in our cities: It makes our lives shorter, our bodies more subject to disease, our minds vulnerable to depression and other mental illness. And it’s pervasive: A report by the nonprofit research firm Kaiser Family Foundation found that two in ten American adults reported loneliness or social isolation, with about half of those saying they had one or no confidants. And in a survey of more than 20,000 people, the health insurance company Cigna found that young adults (18- to 22-year-olds) are actually the loneliest generation of all.

Read the full article here.

SAVE THE DATE

At the end of this series we’ll be hosting a discussion on social infrastructure in our community. Save the date and plan to join us for conversation at 10 AM on Saturday, June 15th.

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ABOUT

South Park Studies is a new initiative designed to bring you news and resources on the topics we hear questions about the most — homelessness, daycare and school availability, transportation, and more. Each topic will consist of a multi-week series of article recommendations, volunteer opportunities, and more. Catch up on previous series, exploring homelessness and safety in the public realm, by clicking here. Learn more about South Park by visiting southpark.la.