Those who warn of the risks of loneliness in U.S. cities have been raising the volume of their concerns recently. The epidemic is becoming more and more visible, to the point where it’s become characteristic of the culture, though migrant communities, often more connected to family networks than to town halls, seem to be putting up the best resistance.
In 2023, the U.S. surgeon general published a study that raised alarms about a new epidemic sweeping contemporary society: loneliness, a silent crisis whose impacts on mental health range from suicide to the deterioration of collective well-being and social capital.
The issue, forewarned a quarter century ago by Harvard professor Robert Putnam and his celebrated book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, has only grown stronger. In January, Derek Thompson detailed in an article in The Atlantic the current speed of the process of individualization, which began with the advent of the automobile and television, and has spilled over with the advent of the smartphone, social networks and artificial intelligence. Thompson stresses that the decline of social interaction is accelerating at an alarming rate and threatens to disrupt the well-being of Americans in the long term.
The average U.S. resident is spending more time at home enjoying nearly unlimited access to industrial digital culture and virtual networks, at the expense of public space. Add to this equation complicated zoning battles exacerbated by ideological divisions between rural, suburban and more conservative America versus urban areas, where there is often stronger advocacy for densification and affordable housing polices. Arlington County, which is located outside of Washington D.C., recently approved regulations that would facilitate access to decent middle-class housing in a highly competitive real estate market. But at the moment, a class-action lawsuit by owners of single-family homes with gardens, known as NIMBYs (an acronym for Not In My Backyard), has halted the measure, as house prices continue to skyrocket in the thrall of the seemingly endless gentrification often present in such areas.
The preceding urban planning currents facilitated isolationism during the boom of development at the beginning of the 20th century. At the regulatory level, exclusionary zoning — which disavows interconnected grid streets and separates different urban uses (commercial, industrial, retail, etc.) — and its attendant racial tensions proliferated, normalizing the fragmentation of neighborhoods documented by urban planner Richard Rothstein in his book The Color of Law.: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.
This trend could be exacerbated by the Trump administration’s recent announcement about cuts to federal funding of a central element in 21st century urban planning that goes beyond access to parks, plazas and festivals to the concept of the right to the city. Even though real estate developers are profusely proposing a return to boulevards and pedestrianized commercial streets — shopping malls are beginning to look outdated — it may be too late to reverse the effects of the suburban sprawl of the last century. Although a few years ago voices such as Mike Davis explored the effects of “magical urbanism”, a chaotic but living reality in many cities of the developing world, it is pertinent to re-read and update it, without romanticizing its profound inequalities.
In our current context, which prizes the kind of innovation that is facilitated by the exchange of ideas, cities must invest in their social capital, expanding interconnection and encouraging healthy, cooperative dynamics between the public and private sectors. The resurrection of the “third place,” a concept coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg to refer to areas for socialization that are neither homes nor workplaces, takes on greater relevancy in the facilitation of social cohesion and more harmonic meetings between service providers and consumers that avoid isolation. E-commerce may have emptied out the malls, but it allows opportunities for mixed-use spaces like civic centers, restaurants, movie theaters and pedestrian-only streets on which a diversity of communities, age groups and preferences can interact.
Fortuitously, Hispanic communities boast valuable antidotes to the risk of isolation. Their conception of community, based on support networks, collective savings systems (“pasanakus”), solidarity celebrations and a predisposition to socialization, do not seem to be at odds with urban regulations — in some cases excessively rigid — nor do they pretend to idealize the disorderly flexibility of some cities in emerging countries.
For established migrant communities, the restaurant is not just a utilitarian business, but also a meeting point and a site for the construction of identity. Eating food is not just the acquisition of sustenance, but an act of connection and preservation of family heritage. The public square is not just a space of transit, but a stage for life and observation.
Both Latino and Asian individuals spend more time on educational activities, eating and drinking and family care than those of Anglo-American and African-American origin. Latinos also spend a higher percentage of their time communicating and socializing: 12%, as compared with 11.8% for whites, 9.4% for Asians and 8.7% of African Americans, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Bolivian community in the state of Virginia, which groups 100,000 residents, tries to find balances in cities with full employment and low crime, bringing together thousands of people in dozens of festivals. Other examples abound, such as the “Cholitas Tiktokeras”, a community of bilingual and working class women in the outskirts of Washington, whose indigenous families in the diaspora preserve Andean cultural traits; the Okuplaza initiative of the Chilean collective Ciudad Emergente; or the participatory process of the Salvadoran community in Chirilagua, Alexandria.
Promoting environments conducive to socializing has long been at the heart of advocacy for participatory spaces. Historic building protections have made it possible to safeguard classic structures, but there are less tools when it comes to preserving intangible cultural heritage within real estate markets that threaten to displace certain groups of residents.
If, as a society, we want to combat the loneliness epidemic and defend the very real importance of diversity and inclusion, we should reconsider the value of a more connected life, particularly for youth and seniors. In a world that is hyper-connected in the digital sphere, yet isolated when it comes to real life, cities face the challenge of serving as meeting places. And in that endeavor, Latin culture can offer vital inspiration in avoiding current trends from turning into one hundred years of solitude.
Fadrique Iglesias has a PhD in Cultural Heritage and works as a city planner in Virginia.
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