#57 Capital cities in captivity of their national governments
25/10/2023
Urban Research & Practice – Volume 16, Issue 5
25/11/2023
Conversation #58
Thoughts on loneliness in the European city
by Nina Goldman
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
For me, living in a city centre apartment means a short walk to my office, access to a dense transport network and proximity to a dazzling array of food and leisure options. However, living in the city centre also comes with a great deal of anonymity. I so rarely see my neighbours that I don’t even know what most of them look like. I’ve quickly realised that building a social network in a new place would be very difficult without the connections provided by my local university work. In her memoir, The Lonely City, Olivia Laing writes “[y]ou can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people [and yet feeling connected to none]” (2016, p.1).
Although we often link loneliness with the solitary aspects of rural life, research indicates that loneliness – perhaps of a different kind or quality – is also endemic to cities. This is in part because the benefits of urban living, such as density of and proximity to jobs, educational institutions, transport options, food and leisure activities are not evenly distributed across the urban landscape. Not having access to good quality transport links can be incredibly isolating for those living on the city’s fringe (Finlay and Kobayashi, 2018). And a number of population groups -- e.g. older adults, people with disabilities, care givers and receivers -- can face great challenges in urban environments when their needs are not prioritised. For people who rely on walking aids, wheelchairs or prams, even a few steps can create significant accessibility barriers, preventing them from using public spaces to engage in (social) activities.
If, in line with view expressed by Ignazio Vinci (EC#2), we understand proximity to be a key aspect of urban life, we might ask what kind of proximity does the city offer, for whom and to what? Failure to prioritise the needs of these groups can lead to social isolation, and as a result, feelings of loneliness. This is a pressing societal and public health issue because loneliness can have detrimental effects on both mental and physical health. It can contribute towards depression, anxiety, and even increased mortality rates (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015).
Many scholars (e.g. David Harvey, Anna Minton, Bradley Garrett) have argued that the privatization and commercialisation of public space can lead to a number of negative outcomes, such as reduced access, displacement and exclusion. This decrease in a sense of place and social cohesion also contributes to loneliness. But as Matthew Carmona (2015) puts it: “Ultimately, the rights and responsibilities associated with spaces and what this implies about their ‘publicness’ are far more important than who owns and manages them. How, not who, is key” (p. 400).
Access to good quality public spaces is especially important for newcomers living alone in a city. This became clear to me when I moved from Basel to Manchester city centre this year. It made me realise that, if I want to connect with others, it needs to be pre-arranged, and unless I want to be constantly entertaining people in my flat, I need a good public space where I can meet my new friends. I would welcome a well-designed common space in my building, one that occasionally had events for residents, where I could bump into my neighbours. This would greatly improve the sense of community in my building. Finlay and Kobayashi (2018) have shown that high-rises with common areas and nearby public spaces can reduce loneliness.
What can cities do?
We know from literature that perceptions of neighbourhoods have an effect on experiences of loneliness (Bower et al., 2023), so tackling social isolation requires prioritising the design and management of public spaces to promote inclusivity, build community and create a sense of belonging. This might involve policies that promote public spaces as essential components of urban life and limit the extent to which these spaces can be privatised. Rosenbaum et al. (2007) argue that cities should invest in creating and maintaining public spaces that can serve as ‘third places’, i.e. informal public spaces where people can gather outside of work and home (Oldenburg, 1999). They also suggest that businesses and organisations should be encouraged to create welcoming and inclusive spaces where people can gather and socialise.
Marichela Sepe (EC#6) has generated some useful principles for creating healthier places that support connectedness and community. The Superblocks in Barcelona are a great example of how to create new spaces in a neighbourhood that follow these principles. Each superblock has created four new public spaces where streets used to intersect, with the aim of increasing neighbourhood cohesion, reactivating neighbourhood economies and promoting ecological change (Rueda, 2019). These superblocks highlight that designing a high-quality space is just as important as creating one. Projects like these are one way if increasing walkability (e.g. EC#50) and designing spaces where people want to be in.
To address loneliness in cities, we should also think about creating space for positive alone time (solitude), as suggested by Heu and Brennecke (2023). For example, the Hulme Community Garden Centre has become my solitary happy place in Manchester. I can sit in the café and strike up a conversation with someone, or if I want to be less visible in my aloneness, I will head to a more private space in the garden to read a book, call my family or listen to a podcast, while surrounded by organised chaotic greenery. What makes this place particularly appealing to me is the ability to easily transition between being around people and being on my own. Being comfortable to be alone in public can pose a great psychological hurdle to us (see chapter City of One in Leslie Kern's book Feminist City). We should rethink how we can make public spaces more appealing for solitary use. This helps to increase the visibility of aloneness and therefore reduce the stigma attached to being on your own in public (especially as a woman or a member of a minority group).
References:
Bower, M., Kent, J., Patulny, R., Green, O., McGrath, L., Teesson, L., Jamalishahni, T., Sandison, H., & Rugel, E. (2023). The impact of the built environment on loneliness: A systematic review and narrative synthesis. Health & Place, 79, 102962.
Carmona, M. (2015). Re-theorising contemporary public space: A new narrative and a new normative. Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 8(4), 373–405.
Finlay, J. M., & Kobayashi, L. C. (2018). Social isolation and loneliness in later life: A parallel convergent mixed-methods case study of older adults and their residential contexts in the Minneapolis metropolitan area, USA. Social Science & Medicine, 208, 25–33.
Heu, L. C., & Brennecke, T. (2023). By yourself, yet not alone: Making space for loneliness. Urban Studies, 00420980231169669.
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227–237.
Laing, O. (2016). The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. Canongate
Oldenburg, R. (1999). The great good place: Cafés, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts at the heart of a community. Marlowe; Distributed by Publishers Group West.
Rosenbaum, M. S., Ward, J., Walker, B. A., & Ostrom, A. L. (2007). A Cup of Coffee With a Dash of Love: An Investigation of Commercial Social Support and Third-Place Attachment. Journal of Service Research, 10(1), 43–59.
Rueda, S. (2019). Superblocks for the Design of New Cities and Renovation of Existing Ones: Barcelona’s Case. In M. Nieuwenhuijsen & H. Khreis (Eds.), Integrating Human Health into Urban and Transport Planning: A Framework (pp. 135–153). Springer International Publishing.
Your rich description of (lonely) life in the city match the way that many people, including I, perceive it. When I started researching this topic around 2013, in both Moscow and New York City, I encountered a phrase in Russian: “Moscow is the loneliness of many.” It matches what you have written, early sociological writing on the topic, e.g. George Simmel’s “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, and my own experiences.
Your contribution highlights one of the interesting paradoxes of this problem as well. Although the city ‘form’ of life might seem to increase both isolation and the likelihood of loneliness, cities also have a lot of potential resources that can help people to manage it. We referred to some of them in a recent article entitled “Social Infrastructure and the Alleviation of Loneliness in Europe”, where we found that things like internet penetration, the welfare state, the civil society, and culture may be contributing to ‘managing’ loneliness in ways that are quite particular to cities.
I like how you also point out that such resources are unequally accessible, depending on a variety of factors. It is great that scholars are now communicating with the public and policy makers about how communities might be better designed to help manage loneliness.
I use the words ‘manage loneliness’ because I agree with many scholars that loneliness is something that is universal and fluctuating in various forms for everyone. It is the side effect of having social bodies, and it is a good thing that we start to recognize it as important. I would be most worried, however, if loneliness would completely disappear. That would signal, to my analysis, that something central to human societies (and the human body) has been lost. What do you think?
Thank you for your insightful comments, Christopher, and I’m glad to hear that they are consistent with your observations and other sociological work. I appreciate your suggestion that we use the phrase ‘managing loneliness’ rather than ‘alleviating loneliness’. I think this is a more accurate and nuanced way of describing our aim, as it recognises that loneliness is an inevitable part of life. An experience of loneliness can also have an activating energy, leading people to reassess their relationships or to want to reconnect with others. Therefore, our aim should be to find ways of coping with loneliness that are healthy and productive.
Nina, many thanks for the dense, insightful description of how loneliness can affect the life, even the health, of individuals within contemporary cities. I liked particularly how you were able to merge personal experience and what we can learn from science and literature, exactly what we need to talk about what a city is and why, at the end, we cannot do without urban life.
And thanks also for making various references to past contributions within EURA Conversations, that was created when so many scholars – right after the Covid eruption – have felt the need to write about loneliness and proximity, among other things. You rightly state that an increase of proximity does not mechanically imply a solution for loneliness: how many experiences within cities in our everyday life are led without establishing any social contact? How many urban places are only apparently approachable and a source for socialization, while they are restricted to few people or even privatized.
The topic of your contribution calls me into question also as an urban planner. For more than a century, enormous efforts in my discipline have been made to understand how better places could be designed and managed. Globalization, with its power to shape places indifferently from local cultures and identities, is showing us that the question is not merely technical. Better designed places can certainly help, but what we truly need is a new ‘politics of living’, taking care of the commons while respecting the individuals. We have many reasons to forget the pandemic, but maybe that experience has taught us something.