Loneliness measured where people live

The mental health researcher Huinan Liu followed 8,638 American children from the age of nine or ten through four years of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study and sorted their loneliness into three courses. Of the three courses, 70.13% were never lonely, 27.44% were lonely for a while and 2.43% stayed lonely throughout. Fewer social services nearby, higher lead risk, more noise, higher residential density, more alcohol outlets and greater distance from a major road separated the transitory group from the never-lonely group.

The chronic group was separated by something else entirely: female sex, internalising symptoms and a personality trait of behavioural inhibition. None of the built environment attributes told those children apart from the rest. Whatever the neighbourhood does, it appears to act on the loneliness that comes and goes.

The public health researcher Anne Marie Kirkegaard followed 14,387 Danes through national registers, matching housing records against first diagnoses of depression. The adjusted incidence rate ratio for living in a rented apartment rather than owning a detached house was 1.32, at a confidence interval of 1.14 to 1.53. A causal mediation analysis put 11% of that down to annoyances inside the dwelling and 8% to perceived loneliness. Rented terrace houses showed a smaller version of the same thing.

The architecture researcher Mohamed Hesham Khalil surveyed 142 healthy adults in England on depression, anxiety and cognitive complaints, alongside how they used their homes. Getting out of the house explained 20.5% of the variance in depression symptoms. Living in a multi-storey rather than a single-storey house explained 16.5%. Loneliness itself explained 26.6%, which puts the two spatial measures in the same range as the social one.

The architecture researcher Zdravko Trivic surveyed 400 residents aged 55 and over across 20 high-density public housing neighbourhoods in Singapore. A sensorially rich environment went with fewer depressive symptoms, fewer memory problems and less loneliness, and the path ran through neighbourhood cohesion and a sense of being at home rather than straight to the outcome.

The geographer Bohumil Frantál collected time-space diaries from older adults in three Czech cities and pulled isolation and loneliness apart. Trips to nature, sport, cultural events, meeting friends and restaurant visits reduced isolation. Restaurants, shopping malls and cultural events reduced loneliness. Women who had raised more children were the most likely to feel lonely in old age once family contact thinned. No building variable is involved in it.

Liu and Kirkegaard are the two large studies here, at 8,638 and 14,387. Khalil calls the study a pilot, with 142 people. Frantál reports no sample size in the abstract, and Trivic’s 400 respondents were surveyed once.