Is the Shape of Our Cities and Towns Eroding Our Critical Social Fabric and Stoking Divisiveness?

Among more obvious geopolitical and environmental threats, the threat of civic and cultural degradation may be just as important, if much less obvious. But the answer may be around the corner - literally - in how we shape our neighborhoods and streets.

NOTE: This article is part of a series of discussion posts leading up to the 62nd International Making Cities Livable (IMCL) conference in Potsdam, Germany, 15-19 October, 2025.

POTSDAM - Recent research literature has been full of cautionary findings about fraying social fabric around the world, in the wake of social media and other influences. Less discussed -- but perhaps deserving more scrutiny -- is the connection to the patterns of our cities, towns and neighborhoods.

After all, it is in our cities and neighborhoods that we move around, consume resources, interact, produce wealth, and generate all the impacts on our well-being and quality of life, for better or worse. While the shape of our neighborhoods doesn't determine our social condition -- an old straw-man argument too often used to dismiss the importance of our environments altogether -- the pattern of neighborhood and building connections certainly affords, or conversely prohibits, our ability to connect with people and places. As the saying goes, if you don't believe that, try walking through a wall.

Equally clear is the decline in daily social connections, and the increase in social isolation, as we increasingly isolate ourselves in the capsules of our cars, our homes, and even our offices -- where we generally meet people we already know, and with whom we have so-called "strong ties" of existing social connection -- co-workers, family members and so on. But the research is demonstrating the importance of "weak ties" -- people we don't know, or don't know well, but who bring new knowledge and new ways of looking at things.

The insightful urban journalist Jane Jacobs observed that it is exactly these "weak ties", formed on the "sidewalk ballet" of the street and its adjoining "third places," that accounts for the knowledge expansion and creativity of cities. Her insights -- now known as "knowledge spillovers," or "Jacobs spillovers" in her honor -- are now well-documented in the literature. (See for example Roche, M. P. (2020). Taking Innovation to the Streets: Microgeography, Physical Structure, and Innovation. Review of Economics and Statistics, 102(5), 912–928. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00866.)

Put differently, if we want to move beyond existing (likely diminishing) economic assets to create new knowledge and new wealth, we should pay close attention to the role of our public spaces in supporting this expansion. We need "propinquity and serendipity" -- the happy accidents that occur when we encounter others up close in public spaces. There is also evidence that this new wealth can come with increasing resource efficiency and lower rates of emissions and depletion - an important goal for a durable, sustainable economy, and healthy people and planet.

It also appears that the resilience of a neighborhood in crisis depends to a surprising degree on the physical structure of that neighborhood, down to its "lowly" sidewalks. For example, the sociologist Eric Klinenberg documented that in the 1995 Chicago heat wave, neighborhoods with well-connected sidewalks, good connections between the houses, and adjoining "third places" -- shops, cafes, libraries and the like -- had dramatically lower death rates than neighborhoods without them. Klinenberg called these assets "social infrastructure" -- and they are not just an amenity, they can be a matter of life and death.

Evidence is also beginning to emerge that our increasing social isolation is having a dramatic impact on our social fabric, and our ability to interact with, and tolerate, people who may not share our views. Of course, social media allows us to be in contact with vast numbers of people -- but too often, these are people with whom we already agree, or have dismissive or even hostile attitudes. Rarely do we learn from those who are different, or share common bonds.

By contrast, in public spaces, and in their well-connected private spaces, we do tend to come into a more sociable form of contact with different people -- at least, if they are well-structured to afford this kind of contact. A good example is the office of the Lennard Institute in The Dalles, Oregon -- which is also the home of Leslie Barrett, our conference manager. The neighborhood, dating from the 1920s, is a classic walkable layout on alleys, with small cottages lining the street. Leslie's house, like most others, has a friendly wrap-around porch that faces the street, and that allows people to chat in passing, and perhaps to be invited up for longer chats.

ABOVE: The Oregon office of the Lennard Institute, and also Leslie Barrett's home, features a street-friendly wraparound porch. Photo by Aiden Chanter.

In fact, Leslie reports that she has had a number of friendly conversations with neighbors of widely differing political and social views, all of them cordial. The sidewalk and porch bring them into proximity, they begin to chat, and one thing leads to another. Soon, they are gathering on the porch to discuss a wide range of topics -- the weather, pets, and yes, political and social issues. As often as not, Leslie says, if they disagree, they "agree to disagree." They are neighbors, after all, and they know they can rely on one another in a crisis.

This friendly exchange of different views is in dramatic contrast to online encounters, which tend to be all-or-nothing, fully agree or, in effect, be seen as "the enemy". Meanwhile, it's not surprising that the social fabric of the physical neighborhood also unravels when residents retreat indoors -- typically because there are no appealing, well-connected adjacent public spaces to lure them into contact.

The literature on this growing social isolation is telling. In 2000, the American professor of public policy Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone, famously documenting the collapse of civic associations, clubs, and neighborhood organizations, and showing how Americans were retreating from the community bonds that once provided connection and social capital. Even earlier, Richard Sennett published the classic The Fall of Public Man (1977), warning of a retreat from vibrant urban public life into privatized, individualized realms, where anonymity and spectacle displaced genuine civic engagement.

Most recently, Jonathan Haidt, in The Anxious Generation (2024), has documented the alarming trends especially among young people of increasing social isolation, mood disorders, and even suicides. From 2010 to 2019 -- the decade when smartphones and spocial media surged -- Haidt reports that rates of depression, anxiety, depression and suicide more than doubled on most measures. He observes that smartphones and social media are replacing direct social encounters in public spaces with algorithm-driven, too often anxiety-producing online interactions.

In Japan even earlier, a worrisome trend of social isolation was observed, known as hikikomori, literally “pulling inward, being confined”. It is described as a state of prolonged, severe social withdrawal and isolation, where individuals -- often adolescents and young adults -- remain confined to their rooms, often for years or even decades. The environment seems to play a contributing role to this phenomenon, since many young people live in small apartments in tall buildings, with limited opportunities for daily incidental encounters in safe, inviting public spaces. This can reinforce social isolation, when combined with personal or cultural stressors.

These phenomena are not only happening in the USA and Japan -- they now have growing prevalence in other countries too, along with growing political divisiveness. Researchers in environmental psychology note that access to restorative green spaces, parks, and “third places” (cafés, community hubs, libraries) can buffer against isolation, depression and alienation. Their absence may exacerbate withdrawal.

Taken together, these authors chart a sobering arc: as face-to-face interaction diminishes, and as civic and public spaces are hollowed out, societies risk losing the connective tissue that sustains democracy, trust, and the everyday experience of belonging. There is at least one obvious antidote: better cities, towns and neighborhoods, with better streets and public spaces, able to bring us into contact, and to create, and sustain, a flourishing society.

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The 62nd International Making Cities Livable (IMCL) conference will take place in Potsdam, German, from October 15th through 19th, 2025. For more information, please visit https://www.imcl.online/potsdam-2025.