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At the intersection of urban and public health policy, the success of higher-density affordable housing solutions to serve an inclusive well-being agenda depends upon reducing the association of these lifestyles and built environments with loneliness and social isolation. We construct a pro-neighbouring index and test its predictors using an ordinal logistic regression model based on resident survey data.
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Target audience
Urban housing policy makers and planners and affordable housing providers; neighbourhood planners and neighbourhood advocates; social mixing and high-density housing advocates and skeptics; Public health in the built environment experts and advocates.
The problem
Greater shares of the population are opting for urban living to improve affordability. Urban and housing policies favour social mixing and higher-density built environments. These trends raise concerns for public health, because high-density urban lifestyles are associated with social isolation and loneliness, associated in turn with serious public health consequences. The strength and direction of these relationships are poorly understood, and little is known about areas where planning and policy interventions might encourage neighbouring.
What we did and why
We surveyed community housing residents and collected data on aspects of their social and neighbourly behaviours and attitudes, their health and well-being, and demographic characteristics. Data were used to construct a logistic regression model that sought predictors of an indexed outcome measure of pro-neighbouring. Among many factors tested, only frequent feelings of loneliness and low use of the internet for socializing were significant predictors of neighbouring; both of them negatively.
Our study’s contribution
Our study offers an index measure of pro-neighbouring attitudes and behaviours that includes dimensions of bonding and social trust and cohesion, bridging and social connectedness, and social participation. This approach to research on neighbour relations, loneliness and social isolation in affordable housing has potential to bring together concerns raised separately in urban policy and public health literatures related to risks of growing social isolation and loneliness, toward integrative policy solutions for inclusive well-being in cities.
Impacts for city policy and practice
Our research finds no reason to suspect age, gender, ethnicity or immigrant background, or length of time in place to inhibit pro-neighbouring attitudes and behaviours, even among our sample of low-income, affordable housing residents, many of whom live alone. On the contrary, we found immigrants within our sample to be significantly more likely to engage in informal bridging, via more frequent conversations with their neighbours. The implications for public health and housing policy in cities with increasing population and density levels are that strategies to increase formal and informal social participation and bonding and bridging social connectedness have potential to improve both health and well-being and satisfaction with housing, via reduced social isolation and loneliness.
Further information
Full research article:
Pro-neighbouring possibilities in community housing for urban health by Olivia Tomlinson, Meg Holden, Sreya Ajay, Ahad Kamranzadeh and Meghan Winters
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