During a recent afternoon walk at Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore, British artist Andy Field studied its surroundings. There were many other people enjoying the quartet of green squares filled with statues and fountains surrounded by some of the largest and oldest mansions in the city. Many of the park’s visitors weren’t interacting with others: Other lonely people were sitting on benches, reading and browsing their phones.
Field’s most recent book, Encounterism: The Neglected Joys of Being In Person, is replete with essays extolling the benefits of mundane encounters with strangers and examining the barriers that prevent such interactions. For many other people, she explained, the awkwardness of meeting strangers stems from not knowing what the other person’s intentions are. But there are things that can help other people let their guard down by redirecting everyone’s attention, like shared activities or a dog.
That’s when Field noticed Harley, a 13-year-old terrier mix, who promptly attracted the guy holding his leash. While easing the puppy’s requests to scratch his head and rub his abdomen, Field engaged in a verbal exchange with Harley’s owner about his own puppy. The barrier that helps keep you from getting close to strangers “may seem very difficult,” he later said, “but it can temporarily melt the moment we say hello and talk about your dog. “
Walking can open the door to social gatherings.
Chance encounters like this, or with neighbors, your local barista, or even a passerby in a park, may not make deep connections, but they don’t have to. The benefits of intellectual fitness, even from the briefest conversations, can be enhanced.
“They invite us to take care of one another and understand our differences,” he said. “They aren’t about depth and intensity. They just kind of ground us in the world,” Field says.
The idea that small talk with strangers is essential for well-being resonates amid a “loneliness epidemic.” A host of factors has been implicated in this trend. More people live alone. In the US, single-person households total an estimated 38 million and represent a third of all households. (In some cities, such as Washington, nearly half of all residents live alone.)
Young adults, many of whom live in urban areas, report the highest rates of loneliness. But the effects of social isolation can be especially bad for older adults. One-third of Americans ages 50 to 80 reported having infrequent social contact with other people. of their homes, according to a 2023 survey from the University of Michigan’s National Survey on Healthy Aging.
Poverty and race also play a role. People with lower incomes and underrepresented racial and ethnic team members are more likely to feel lonely. The same goes for seasonal factors, with a sense of loneliness surfacing during the December holidays for many.
Then the lingering social distancing left by the pandemic, which isolated families from friends and relatives, emptied offices and closed “third places” like coffee shops, gyms, and libraries. ordering, self-service restaurants, and self-checkouts, all of which go through human interaction for speed and convenience.
Such innovations are part of design decisions that ignore the value of social connections. Mounting studies have categorised loneliness as not just an individual problem, but as a byproduct of postwar development patterns.
Many now live in car-centric communities that restrict access to public space, encourage solo travel, and offer fewer opportunities for citizens to gather in person. Meanwhile, participation in the kinds of organizations that once supported civic life, from bowling leagues to unions, has declined with virtual socializing.
But even if new urbanism has been implicated in the loneliness epidemic, built environments can also be a component of the solution. A report from the U. S. Surgeon General A U. S. commentary on loneliness highlighted the strengthening of “social infrastructure,” which can come with public resources such as libraries. and parks, as well as grocery shopping districts, sports venues, and public transportation systems, as well as the expansion of systems and policies that advertise connections.
However, creating spaces where those interactions can take place is more than just creating a new park or plaza. Building a city to triumph over social isolation requires a multitude of sophisticated methods and intentional design decisions.
In 2016, officials in West Palm Beach, Florida, wanted to find out why the city’s waterfront had so few visitors, despite its rows of palm trees and an enviable view of Lake Worth. They hired a team of researchers and consultants, including the urban planning company Happy Cities.
When the researchers sent in volunteers to walk around the space with sensors strapped on, they found increased levels of stress. “They said it’s because they didn’t kind of feel welcome,” said Houssam Elokda, managing principal at Happy Cities. “It’s very pristine, but there’s not much to do. There’s greenery, but no shade. There’s novelty, but no function to it.”
Placing a chair can remove barriers.
In response, the team deployed a series of tactical interventions. Thanks to a local artist, they embellished part of the area with greenery and colorful art boxes, and installed translucent frames with historic photographs of the boardwalk, giving people a reason to enjoy staying and something to talk about. Adding movable chairs and tables creates micro-spaces that allow opportunities for social interaction, but don’t impose them on visitors.
In fact, one of the keys to making other people feel comfortable enough to connect is to take the stress out of interacting with each other. “If you meet a stranger one-on-one, you’re all focused on each other,” Field said. “It can be intense and light-hearted and can often be confrontational. “
Giving people something to focus on or to fuel their curiosity, be it artwork or a dog, can help ease that pressure. Small details like seating arrangements also matter. Benches shouldn’t be placed directly across from one another, said Elokda, or side-by-side, which discourages any interaction. Instead, he advises them to be arranged at an angle to one another, giving users the option to acknowledge or engage with one another. Framing a space with trees or buildings can also make people more comfortable by creating a sense of enclosure or refuge.
These interventions all add up to what Elokda calls the visual complexity of a space. “As you’re walking alongside a blank wall, people don’t feel like they want to walk there,” he said. “The same applies to parks – it’s about what people can see within them and whether there are places to sit and activities to do. It’s a bit of a fine balance.”
Opportunities for psychologically restorative face-to-face interactions aren’t limited to parks and other public spaces. They occur aboard trains and buses, in supermarket queues and apartment building mailrooms, and other sites of workday congregation. Such mundane, everyday encounters were among the things people said they missed most during the height of the pandemic, the Pandemic Journaling Project from the University of Connecticut and Brown University shows.
Some companies and governments are looking to reintroduce small communications into the urban fabric. In Salem, Massachusetts, officials have installed “Happy to Chat” benches in public spaces as part of an effort to reduce isolation for elderly residents. Small Symptoms with messages in English and Spanish invites passersby to sit down “if you don’t mind chatting with someone new. “Gothenburg, Sweden and Berlin are among other cities in the EU and the UK with similar programmes.
Opportunities for socialisation have been created in supermarkets in France.
In the Netherlands, supermarket chain Jumbo has added “slow” checkouts and chat spaces at several of its outlets to inspire discussions between shoppers and cashiers, or with local volunteers, as part of the Dutch government’s anti-loneliness efforts.
These high-friction retail features have also been incorporated into supermarkets in France and Canada. Whether those concepts will gain traction among U. S. grocers remains to be seen. But some chains are adding third-party flavor services to their stores, such as cafeterias and food halls — a popularity that long-term retail is “more social,” as one industry representative told Modern Retail.
Elokda highlights the missed opportunities for socialization in multifamily buildings that are not designed with social well-being in mind. “The key to fostering social connections in a structure is to give people more opportunities to pass each other, but also feel like they have some control to leave if necessary,” she said.
Common areas such as stairwells and hallways, where residents are most likely to walk by one another, are dark and cramped, and often neglected by developers as potential social spaces. Instead, a Happy Cities design guide recommends building “social corridors” into these areas to facilitate both scheduled and unscheduled neighbourly gatherings. They could range from libraries to music corners to play areas for kids. These spaces should be accessible and large enough to fit at least three to four people, with shared furniture and access to natural lighting.
“But there are so many policy barriers and design codes and standards that stand in the way of doing that,” said Elokda, whose company has been working with developers and cities to push for changes. Parking minimums that mandate on-site lots eat into real estate that could be used for socialising, for example, while regulations mandating two stairways in apartment buildings can keep common areas small and uninviting. That’s not to mention the widespread zoning rules that block multifamily housing altogether.
Certainly, there are limits to combating the loneliness epidemic through urban or architectural design. Relieving strangers’ anxiety about others requires more than just arranged furniture, and just because a residential building has social spaces doesn’t mean individual families are willing to spend time together.
Physical social infrastructure may not do much to combat loneliness “unless we think about public spaces in a more holistic and considerate way,” said Setha Low, a cultural anthropologist at the City University of New York and author of the e-book Why Public Space Matters. .
Low advocates the desire to think more deliberately about creating a “public culture” within those areas that welcomes others from other backgrounds and interests, and that invites discussion and dissent. This can be influenced through design and programming: having monuments committed to diverse cultures can sign up for inclusivity, for example, and organize activities such as festivals or sporting events that allow people to connect with each other. But public culture is largely formed through interactions between other people, not just within a space. but also within the wider community.
A positive public culture also makes other people feel more likely to interact with those around them. But right now, Low said, “Americans in general are experiencing a lot of fear. “
This reflects a number of factors, ranging from considerations about public protection that have fueled the pandemic to the broader legacy of racism and housing segregation that has led, in a kind of vicious cycle, to increased hesitation about social interactions with others of other socioeconomic levels. -Economic background.
“The less we interact with each other, the more scared and worried we become,” he said. Such concern can manifest itself in public spaces, eroding social acceptance and further isolating people. “Whatever our strategy is to replace that, you have to go back to creating a really public area that feels safe, and one way to do that is to create areas of wonderful care and respect. “
Grace Kim, founding director of Seattle-based architecture firm Schemata Workshop, calls for a cultural shift around housing in the United States. “We emphasize individualism and independence and the preference for separation and segregation of uses and people,” he said. It’s reflected in land use plan policies that emphasize personal spaces and individual rights to those spaces, such as single-family zoning and other restrictions that save you from the advancement of multifamily housing.
Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Community.
Kim is an expert on co-housing communities, where residents live collaboratively with their neighbours. While each household lives in individual homes, they are clustered around shared amenities like a communal kitchen and dining rooms, and members often split up responsibility over the maintenance and operation of common spaces, and build relationships with one another by participating in community activities.
While it’s a way of life that appeals to others interested in environmental sustainability, shared housing projects also create strong social bonds between citizens, something that can be especially enjoyable for older members.
For Kim, addressing the challenge of loneliness starts with a comprehensive plan for a city, the official roadmap for a jurisdiction’s long-term expansion and development. “It’s a position where jurisdictions and leaders can say, ‘As a city, we want to think collectively. As a city, we want to take care of all of our residents,” he said.
Back in Baltimore, Field examines the park’s secluded spots on their respective benches at Mount Vernon Place and wonders how to break the silence.
The kind of general social responses Kim and Low advise are beyond their capacity as an artist; However, you can believe in all sorts of small interventions that can be added to spaces like this to start conversations. Something, he says, as undeniable as tin telephones placed between banks.
It’s a childish idea, even by Field’s own admission, but he said it could act as “social scaffolding” and help break down the barriers around talking to strangers.
“They’re potentially the key to unlocking some kind of game, and what’s useful about the game is that it doesn’t have an agenda,” he said. “One of the things that we adults feel in the public area is this concern that there is an ulterior motive in the encounter. “
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