SOCIAL WELLBEING

Relationships make us what we are. They help to establish our identity and provide us with a sense of support and solidarity. People thrive when they have strong, intense relationships with a few other people and also weaker, dispersed ties to a much larger group.

As Dan Hill has pointed out, the phrase social distancing is inherently paradoxical ‘in only two words, something that feels like a fundamental challenge to humanity itself.’57 The weeks and months of lockdown have brought home the extent to which human beings are social animals. We are not meant to be distanced: being in the same space as both those we know well and those we don’t matters to us.

Cities offer us the ability to reinvent ourselves and find our own groups. In relative anonymity, it is possible to forge more mutually satisfying relationships than the enforced and authoritarian ties of the past. The city has long been seen as an escape from traditional authority (behaviour decreed by village elders) into a more authentic and expressive way of being.

Given the human history of tribalism, cities have shown themselves to be remarkably successful in uniting disparate groups in a communal whole. There is plenty of evidence that people who live in cities are more tolerant and outward looking. At their best, cities unite strangers in a shared project, building community out of disparate cultures and perspectives, and creating collective and engaged citizenship.

57. https://medium. com/slowdown-papers/6-a-language-incrisis-b88b39475fee

58. https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/02/ city-race-class-neighborhood-whiteblack-rich-segregate/583039/

59. ComRes poll for the BBC https://www. bbc.co.uk/news/ uk-england-24522691

At their worst, cities concentrate poverty and discrimination. The old idea of the ‘inner city’ versus the affluent suburbs no longer makes much sense now that so many former industrial urban centres have become appealing to artists, the young, and the affluent groups that follow them. For example Chelsea, Soho, Tribeca and the Meatpacking District in New York City. But neither is the pattern fully inverted, poor suburbs surrounding a vibrant centre; rather, it is what Elizabeth Delmelle, a geographer of US cities, describes as ‘a patchwork of polygons.’ What has not fully changed however, is cities’ ability to function as a sorting mechanism, keeping ethnic groups and the native poor apart from the rich.58

Cities can be lonely places. More than 9 million people in the UK, almost one-fifth of the adult population, say they are always or often lonely. London is the loneliest part of the country; more than half of its citizens (52%) say they experience varying degrees of loneliness.59 Feeling lonely increases the risk of developing coronary

60. Campaign to End

Loneliness https:// www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/threatto-health/

61. Alex Evans, A Larger Us, The Collective Psychology Project

62. William H White, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, republished by The Project for Public Spaces, 2001

63. https://www. citiesalliance.org/ Global%20Programme-gender

64. ibid

65. https://lac. unwomen.org/en/ noticias-y-eventos/ articulos/2018/11/feature-women-in-guatemala-steer-changeseek-solutions-to-endsexual-harassment

66. Stop street harassment (2018) The Facts Behind the #MeToo Movement: A National Study on Sexual Harassment and Assault. Unites States heart disease, stroke, cognitive decline, depression, and raises the risk of mortality. A lack of social connection is as much of a risk for early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and worse for you than obesity.60

There is also strong evidence (70 years after Hannah Arendt said that ‘loneliness is the common ground of terror,’) that loneliness is a factor in vulnerability to radicalisation. Feelings of powerlessness are on the rise. As Alex Evans of the Collective Psychology Project notes, a sense of powerlessness nearly trebles the risk of anxiety and depression, and is strongly associated with authoritarian beliefs. He sees loneliness as one part of what he calls an epidemic of disconnection.61

In short, many people feel left behind, let down, and left out.

For a time during lockdown, social purpose trumped profit as an organising principle of society. It remains to be seen whether the lifting of restrictions will lead to a desire to return to business as usual. There will undoubtedly be an urge to put the months of lockdown behind us. But a new awareness of the strains of isolation could potentially lead to greater focus on ways of supporting social connection and bringing people together.

The public realm has a very important part to play in increasing connections, especially in enabling that web of looser ties that comes with nodding to someone in the street or exchanging a few words at the market.

In his classic 1970s study of New York City plazas, William Whyte found that the best public spaces allowed people to be together without pressure to socialise.62 He discovered - in findings subsequently reproduced in places as different as Denmark and Australia - that these successful social spaces typically offer places to sit, trees, warmth, an absence of draughts, food, and water that isn’t simply ornamental, but accessible, touchable, and splashable.

Street safety is important, particularly for women. More than 83% of female citizens of Cairo say they have been sexually harassed on the city’s streets.63 In New Delhi, a rape is reported every 29 minutes.64 More than half of the women in Guatemala City feel unsafe in public spaces during the day. 65 Much of this is due to cultural inheritance - but there is a good deal that city planners can do to mitigate its effects. And, lest it be thought that this is solely a problem of emerging economies, research from the US shows that around two-thirds of women have experienced some form of sexual harassment in public spaces in their lifetimes.66

Liveable neighbourhoods reproduce the good things about village life, including collective hubs such as parks and squares. People who live in walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods are more likely to know their neighbours, more likely to engage in social, political or voluntary activity, and more likely to trust people around them.

Many cities have to contend with a growing privatisation of once civic spaces. Therme Group is committed to the principle of free space - undetermined and flexible areas that foster creativity and wellbeing - and our vision is that Therme facilities will include public spaces. A grand piazza is planned for the front of Therme Manchester, alongside the creation of a biodiverse environment including footpaths and cycleways across the whole of the TraffordCity site, which currently lacks greenery.

Green space is known to increase empathy, trust and generosity. Parks have positive effects on mental health. They shouldn’t be seen only as destinations. The best neighbourhoods have pockets of greenery everywhere.

Designing for sociability is also important for an ageing population, whose social networks may be declining.

Freiburg is one of Germany’s most attractive cities, with a pedestrianised centre of medieval buildings painstakingly rebuilt after the bombing of World War 2. Two brownfield sites became available for development within easy reach of the centre: an old sewage works at Rieselfeld and a former French army barracks at Vauban. Tram connections (15 minutes from the centre) were built before any homes were started. Cars are banished from home zones except for loading and unloading and kept in communal underground basements or car parks on the periphery, making most journeys easier by bicycle or tram.

There are no high-rise buildings: the principle is that parents should be able to call in children from the top floor. The streetscape was designed for sociability, with areas between blocks for children to play and residents to meet. In Rieselfeld, while several adjoining homes may share facades, internal designs were customised to individual needs. More than a hundred different builders were involved. In Vauban, superblocks around a semi-public open space were undertaken by local building groups, each with its own architect.

Future residents were involved in the design process from the start. By the time people moved in, there was already a community. Design focused on good contemporary architecture with uniform height and massing. The result, as Peter Hall, the leading commentator on cities, has written, is a contemporary version of Georgian London.67

Freiburg is Germany’s most sustainable city, and its new suburbs make the most of solar energy and sustainable waste and rainwater management. Rich and poor live alongside each other in mixed neighbourhoods and Rieselfeld and Vauban are sought-after places to live.