The Lonely City & Its Discontents (Part 2)

Photo by Ashton Bingham on Unsplash

This is the second part of a response to the article on urban loneliness, which was published in The Conversation. Part one went up last week to introduce the discussion, and this second part is a guestpost by Kamila Soh, who is a tutor in Architecture at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Readers of the blog might remember her essay on losing Notre Dame Cathedral.

As someone who moved to Sydney from Perth nearly three years ago, writing this piece gave me the opportunity to reflect on my initial experiences of moving. I was one of the lucky ones who didn’t have to struggle so much with the difficulties of meeting new people and finding a community for myself. I already knew others from Perth who had moved to Sydney, or Sydneysiders whom I was already acquainted with through other friends and various things I was involved in. Coming into a university environment, I also found university societies where I was embraced in an existing community that knew how to make anyone – from those starting afresh as bachelor’s students, to aloof part-time postgrads like me – feel welcome.

Of course, this is not to deny that there were definitely the initial challenges of moving. Living out of home for the first time. Getting used to new relationships like those with my supervisors. Having to fend for myself in a competitive and sometimes ruthless academic environment. However, one of the things that I found most difficult only came back to me as I reflected on my time back at home over the Christmas break. Over the past few weeks I have had ample opportunities to spend time with my family and old friends. What struck me was how effortless it was to come back to where we had left off – that after the usual life updates, we could laugh over the same silly jokes, discover new ones, muse over novel or persisting ideas, or simply enjoy each other’s presence in silence.

I then remembered how fearful and vulnerable I used to feel in Sydney, despite being surrounded by so many potential friends. The fear that I would have to begin this process, yet again, of having to open myself up to people, to allow new friends to see my struggles and weaknesses. To go through the process of explaining myself to someone, rather than having my usual family and friends who already knew me, was exhausting. In reaching out, I would sometimes end up feeling more alone than heard. Yet I knew that I had to persist, and trust that these interactions would become more effortless with time.

It made me realise, that as much as we can desire spaces and opportunities to encounter people, true community and friendships can only be built through time, and trust. That even in a room that is full of people, one can feel completely alone, despite everything being in place to counter this precise tendency. This is why I am sceptical of anything which promises to counter loneliness through a deliberate shaping of space to facilitate interaction, as if it were simply a matter of an equation leading to a solution.

In his article, Tanzil Shafique identifies that the built environment has the power to either help or hinder social interaction. Shafique proposes that there are practical design proposals that can capitalise on underused everyday spaces, fostering a potential for connection with others. He uses examples such as ‘social engagement paraphernalia’ within railway stations to promote conversation and activity and laneways revitalised with community plant gardens and book nooks. Some of these cater to the especially vulnerable members of the city, with kindergartens connected to nursing homes to give the elderly an opportunity to teach and rediscover a sense of purpose. There is even a proposed community flower garden in a cemetery, where people can find solace and connection with others who are also mourning their loved ones.

While physical spaces can help to create an environment of interaction, a lot of it comes down to people's expectations when they enter into a space. Sure, you could create long, communal dining tables in a café to encourage people to talk to each other during their lunch break. But more often than not, people who come on their own go to a café with the expectation of being alone – to do study or work on their laptop, or simply take a break in the middle of their work day. Here, a forced interaction might be seen as an accosting intervention, rather than something to be welcomed.

Part of the issue is the fact that you cannot 'plan' these interactions, presuming that certain designs would automatically achieve certain ideals. This would amount to a form of environmental determinism, where a person’s psychological and physical state, as well as their social interactions, are dictated by their physical environment. While there is an element of truth to this, as seen in the writings of sociologists such as Janes Jacobs and Richard Sennett, much of their critique actually gets to the root of culture as the foundation block for building these interactions. To put simply, creating social interactions in public space is not a matter of a simple spatial formula that will produce immediate results. Rather, there has to be relationships of trust and an establishment of expected behaviours in these communities, which can only be built over time.

What is vital then, is to create a culture where these organic interactions are encouraged, and expected. A place that comes to mind is a cafe I went to in Newtown, where my friend and I were amazed to see that people were coming on their own, but would immediate start conversations with us on our table. While part of it was certainly encouraged by the communal table format, I definitely believe that a bigger part is the actual culture that had been created in this café. Here a contribution model has been established, encouraging patrons to pay what they could for a meal, or donate a skill in return. While this was implemented to collapse existing economic and social barriers, this has in turn created a community where people go out of their way to make each other feel welcome and included over a meal.

In the words of Dorothy Day, “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” What we need are more intentional communities, which recognise the dignity of each person, reminding them that they are seen and that they matter. Only then can we begin to think of spaces that can become the visible expression of that reality.

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