Active public spaces can protect against multiple dimensions of loneliness: Qualitative evidence from an Australian sample in the COVID-19 pandemic

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Among many long-term policy questions raised by the COVID-19 pandemic, renewed energy has been given to arguments about the importance of built environments to wellbeing. Restricting access to space outside the home helped to newly expose the relational value of public spaces, including mundane commercial spaces. Drawing on qualitative evidence from mapping interviews with 46 Australians during the period of restrictions, we explore the ways that loss of access to public space influenced multiple forms of loneliness—emotional, social, collective, and existential. Public space, we argue, can be seen as a specific kind of relational resource, producing forms of connection difficult to replicate in other spatial contexts: collective, expansive and incidental relationality. Whilst some social connection could be digitally replaced, it was these incidental or emergent forms of connection that were lost in the mass relocation to household space. A full understanding of the relationship between the built environment and loneliness, therefore, needs to integrate an understanding of the full range of forms of connection and belonging, including indirect and collective relational experiences. Implications for design and planning are discussed. • Public spaces offer specific relational resources that can help to ameliorate emotional, collective, existential and social loneliness in different ways. • Impersonal, emergent and incidental interaction are more emergent in public space and difficult to replicate online. • Routine activities are an important relational glue that enables the built environment to facilitate social connection and belonging. • These findings draw on qualitative evidence from mapping interviews with 46 Australians during the COVID-19 pandemic. • Mobility restrictions during COVID-19 highlighted the relational worth of sometimes overlooked mundane and commercial public spaces.