Building Community
Social Isolation and the Built Environment
Photo by Luke Beard
When we boldly define Social Isolation as a public health crisis, more emphasis can be placed on identifying and implementing solutions.
At its best, the built environment is accommodating. Whether that solves a spatial challenge, coexists in harmony with the natural environment, or thoughtfully considers how a place will be used long after completion, purposeful spaces have a proven ability to impact change.
This paper aims to explore an often-underdiscussed and deeply impactful issue, social isolation, and how physical context influences social behaviors. We explore how human social behaviors and physical environments impact each other and place an emphasis on social isolation in suburban and rural communities.
We seek to support and facilitate efforts reducing social isolation for the purpose of improving resilience against adversities including social isolation itself, in addition to other modern adversities faced by people in sub-urban and rural communities in America, such as education attainment, social mobility, and income inequality. This document explores connections between the built environment and social isolation by identifying risk factors, known interventions, and environmental considerations to facilitate an intervention’s efficacy, all of which are discussed in detail.