The thing about our housing crisis is that along with it has come a loneliness epidemic. Perhaps the two things are related.
According to Professor Xiao Qi Feng of the University of New South Wales, whatever we do to solve one problem, we need to make sure it doesn’t make the other worse.
For instance, we can build higher density housing, which is an obvious solution to urban sprawl and even affordability if governments chip in with a big whack of total supply needs.
But let’s make sure we’re not building concrete boxes – or any kind of boxes – instead, Feng says.
Feng, who will speak at our next monthly leaders forum, Blue Zones & and how to make them, on 6 May, specialises in the emerging academic discipline of lonelygenics, which looks at how urban design and architecture can lead to greater loneliness or reduce it.
Think of a small traditional village in Europe or elsewhere where community life is vibrant.
The opposite of this idealised vision – the lack of social life and loneliness – is bad for our health.
And yes, we absolutely need more affordable housing, and that may well be in higher density apartments. But if we’re building unthinking, poorly designed concrete “boxes” – or any kind of boxes – we’re creating more problems.
According to research, “one in four Australian adults feels lonely, and the impacts can be dire.
“Loneliness increases our risks of depression, dementia, self harm and even suicide.
“But likening it to a disease and proposals to treat it with a pill miss the point: we’ve been building for loneliness over many decades and decision makers have been asleep at the wheel.”
The discipline of lonelygenics says we’ve been actively contributing to this epidemic through our buildings and city design.
They’ve become “sprawling low-density agglomerations. Many places are too far to walk from home. Short errands are routinely done by car, erasing opportunities to stop and chat with locals.”
Feng says there’s a lot we can do to design for more human interaction, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot.
A bit of thinking at the start of a project can yield immense benefits. Early sustainability and community organised developments such as WestWyck in Melbourne’s northern suburbs included places where residents could incidentally bump into each other, such as strategically placed letterboxes or community facilities.
Christopher Alexander’s seminal book from the 60s on ideal housing design, A Pattern Language advised having apartment doors easily accessed from the street so that someone wandering past might be inclined to walk up the outdoor stairway and knock on the door, see if you’re home.
This is something far less likely to occur if the entrance is via a heavily guarded lobby that you need prior security clearance to enter.
At Nightingale projects in Melbourne, a favoured design idea is to put big communal laundries on the roof along with community gardens and barbecue areas. Great for meeting the neighbours.
“A lot of solutions don’t necessarily cost very much,” Feng says.
There’s also a lot you can do with existing buildings and facilities by simply changing the functionality or management of these places.
Think libraries. Why close at 6 pm when most people looking for something to do after work hours would be most likely to want to use a library maybe up until till 9 pm or later, Feng says.
The same goes for swimming pools or community rooms.
“This is not blue sky thinking,” Feng says, “it’s why these public spaces are really precious and so important for our health.”
There are great lessons to learnt from other countries. Singapore, for instance, has a lot of very high density living but, at the same time, makes sure there are plenty of community interaction possibilities.
WOHA architects do some great designs to humanise the big densities – gardens, for instance, across entire floors of apartment blocks to create exciting village atmospheres within the development.
It’s all about early thinking in the design process in apartments. “A lot of time developers don’t really think about the family,” Feng says; in tomorrow’s world people won’t be growing up in houses.
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