The COVID-19 pandemic provides a stark reminder of the importance of community and why we must nurture it. As planners and designers we devote plenty of attention to making our cities more environmentally sustainable, but surprisingly less time understanding what makes a socially sustainable city – that is, one that connects us with other people. After all, cities are a human invention designed for us to co-locate and co-exist.
As social beings, relationships are important to our health and wellbeing. A lack of social connection with other people can lead to psychological conditions that both in the short and long-term, are detrimental to good mental health. The concern is that there is increasing evidence social isolation is on the increase in Australian cities. Social planning research reveals that our friendships and social networks in the places where we live and work have steadily declined since the early 1990s.
What does this mean for a city’s places and spaces and the way we plan, build and organise them to either help or hinder how we connect socially? Poor planning, and especially a lack of social planning, can intensify isolation, with long-term detriment to people’s quality of life and their physical and mental health.
The consistent (and unsurprising) finding from the research confirms that people attract people. Urban planning and design are not the answer to every challenge nor is there a community crisis – COVID-19 aside – because relative to many countries, the indicators of social connectivity in urban Australia remain positive. But if as projected, our cities and towns are to accommodate more people and if we are to sustain their liveability, they must meet our psychological as well as our economic needs.
The so-called ‘wicked problems’ confronting all Australian cities such as affordability, food security and congestion, are proving difficult and expensive to fix. As citizens we could easily hold the view we have very little say in the decisions that shape our daily existence. Improving how people connect with and in cities, however, is not necessarily hard or costly. Through sensitive place planning and open engagement big social capital gains can be realized through small but well-directed outlays. The flip side is, where a sense of community is lacking and people’s social needs are not met, society pays dearly.
So, in measuring a city or town’s wellbeing, shouldn’t we be assessing how well it addresses people’s needs and not just how many cranes there are on the skyline or the number of development applications that have been approved? In both policy and political terms, material needs are usually given priority because they’re easier to measure. But our psychological needs, such as social connection, need to be given equal weight and cities, in how well or not they are designed and managed, play a highly influential role in whether those needs are been met.
For my city of Canberra, the positive news is that it outstrips other Australian cities in social capital. On virtually every social measure, the ACT is at or near the top, relative to the other states. It has the highest share of charitable donors and volunteering rates. Each year, typically 85% of Canberrans give money to community causes, compared with 73% in NSW. When it comes to giving time, 38% of Canberrans volunteer each year, compared with 33% of Victorians.
Many of the essential elements for positive social connection are offered in cities. Often portrayed as places of loneliness and alienation, they provide multiple opportunities for people to come together and benefit from interacting with each other. Proximity, density, accessibility and the availability of well-designed and managed spaces to gather in are essential to making cities work well for everyone. Notwithstanding other ways we can connect, face-to-face exchange continues to be the most important way for us to form and sustain our interpersonal relationships.
The preconditions for good social connectivity – such as respect, trust and cooperation – are more easily achieved through direct, rather than virtual contact. Digital relationships complement, but do not replace direct contact. We might be able to communicate more frequently and differently through the internet and social media channels, but we collaborate more effectively when we are in close physical proximity to each other. Or to put it another way, we need Facebook and face-to-face in combination.
A city that unthinkingly ‘plans in’ social disconnection because of a lack of housing choices or social infrastructure or poor transport accessibility to name just three current problems, can have serious consequences for the strength of people’s relationships and for our physical and mental health. Of course, the physical environment by itself does not determine what happens. Design is not destiny and despite the barriers, people find ways to meet and connect.
In acknowledging how our cities influence social connection, we need only reflect on how well-intentioned but ultimately misguided planning policies can go badly wrong. Levels of poverty, social disadvantage are, by way of example, on the increase in most Australian cities but are highest in their outer lying suburbs, on the so-called urban fringe. The evidence is that understanding social connection is critical, not just for decisions about how we design new communities not just on greenfield sites but increasingly, in existing precincts where the older parts of our cities are being renewed.
In implementing our renewal program, the City Renewal Authority applies a core principle from our sustainability strategy which is to achieve people-centred urban design and liveability. The different ways we’re doing this range from encouraging mixed-use developments which include communal meeting spaces and better access to local community facilities, through to an all-seasons activation program for our precinct’s many public spaces. We think of ourselves as being in the ‘community design’ business and by investing both in place and people we are already reaping the social benefits.
So, does having great public spaces and activities in them, encourage us to mingle and meet both with people from our own social networks, or of similar ages and backgrounds and with people who are very different? The answer is categorically yes.
Confronted by the forces that conspire to weaken our connections with each other in cities, now more than ever we need to take more care and interest in not only how we plan and design them but also in how we sustain them socially.
In his seminal book People and Plans written in 1968 American urban sociologist Herbert Gans criticized urban planners for primarily concerning themselves with the physical environment and only secondarily with the people who use those environments. Nearly 60 years on we should perhaps reflect on whether this is still the case.
We acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as traditional custodians of the ACT and recognise any other people or families with connection to the lands of the ACT and region. We acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region.
