Tackling loneliness through the built environment

Campaign to End Loneliness, 2022

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The design of our neighbourhoods can play an important role in tackling loneliness and helping people connect.

This report sets out why the built environment matters for loneliness, what features make a difference to our experience, and how this can be achieved. It was developed out of two seminars the Campaign to End loneliness held during the summer of 2022 which brought together designers, policymakers, planners, and architects.

• The first seminar looked at what we knew already about how the built environment can tackle loneliness.
• The second seminar identified what this meant for practitioners and how we could ensure that our built environment could help tackle loneliness in practice.

The way we plan and design our built environment needs to encourage different kinds of interaction. We need bumping spaces like benches where we might see neighbours or acquaintances (‘weak ties’) and we also need places where we can develop and maintain real friendships (‘strong ties’).