If Britain does build a million homes, let’s not make a million more people lonely
The chancellor has pledged to fix the UK’s “broken housing market”. The investment he announced in this week’s budget – which included £15.3bn of new funding – is meant to deliver at least 300,000 more houses by the 2020s. He has also pledged to deliver five new garden towns by 2050 which would mean almost a million more houses.
What is not being talked about is the design of these houses, and whether this would have any bearing on another current crisis. Social isolation has reached a critical point with recent studies showing that loneliness is one of the key drivers of depression in old and young people.
Shelter is a primitive need, but so is the need to connect with others. We are so focused on housing numbers (perhaps understandably, given the shortage of homes and the price rises of recent decades) that we have lost sight of the role that design can play in creating a healthier, more cohesive society. Environmental psychologists have long argued that physical settings play a key role in promoting mental and physical health. Sense of place, meaning the feelings of attachment to a location and formation of memories connected to it, is critical to human wellbeing. English Heritage has shown that adults living in more historic areas with distinct landmarks reported a higher level of self-esteem, rootedness and connection to the environment than other people.
People are increasingly forming and identifying with communities online, and this is connected with the shortcomings of “real” places. Our houses and high-rise apartments do not provide us with enough opportunities to meet and integrate, especially as the cities sprawl into suburbs and commuter belts. The political scientist Robert Putman argued that every 10 minutes of commuting results in 10% fewer social connections. With increasing pressures on land, there are reduced possibilities for scenic views, interaction with nature, easy access to physical exercise, and social interactions – all of which are key to wellbeing.
When I came to the UK from India, the strange feeling of moving to a new country combined with terrible homesickness left me feeling depressed. I was isolated. I remember walking the long streets with identical houses on either side and among high-rise buildings, and feeling sad. I longed for the corners where you are forced to engage and interact with others; where I might bump into someone I knew. Traditional Indian architecture facilitates such intimate community spaces. I had connections to the places I had grown up in that I lacked in my new home. Since then, working with people from many backgrounds as an academic researching and writing about spatial cognition in the UK, I have found many echoes of my own displacement. Mental mapping exercises show how many of us lack a true sense of rootedness in the built environment.
Urban living has been shown to lead to an increased risk of depression and anxiety, but cities continue to thrive, and moving everyone to rural settings is not the answer. The solution also cannot lie in simply increasing the number of green areas: we have to provide the incentive for people to use them and think about the accessibility of these areas, as well as how they link with other services. Local green spaces for older people to walk in, children to play in, and parents to meet and chat in would increase the communal interactions that are so important for fostering place attachment.
Places that encourage us to form connections with our neighbours would help dispel some of the isolation that newcomers can feel. Such spaces are designed on a human scale – rather than with cars and public transport in mind – offering easy access to facilities, to the corner shop where social interactions can happen, to green areas that encourage interaction with nature. To enable different social groups to integrate better, we have to enable these community interactions. Design is one way of doing so.
The risk with redesigning and redeveloping existing housing is social cleansing; spaces can become unaffordable to existing residents who are then muscled out by others. Involving residents of an area in any planned changes, often called co-design, is one way forward. Creative projects, temporary public art and community events can also help, especially in allowing residents to find their place in the wider neighbourhood and surroundings.
In order to create spaces that allow for a sense of place, we have to move away from focusing solely on functionality and maximising space. Instead, we must move to a more context-based model of design, where social inclusion and wellbeing for people of all ages is at the heart of the consultation process, and where fostering community spirit is a goal of any development. One format does not fit all.
We need much more than promises of more housing. We need to start talking about housing that is social in the true sense: design that fosters social cohesion, encourages social integration and promotes social capital.
• Pragya Agarwal is a spatial scientist and architect
The risk with redeveloping housing is social cleansing; spaces can become unaffordable to existing residents