Fighting Loneliness in Cities: Opening Our Minds on Open Space

This article is part of The Rooftop, a blog and multimedia series from New America’s Future of Land and Housing program. Featuring insights from experts across diverse fields, the series is a home for bold ideas to improve housing in the United States and globally.

As I travel between my workplace in a former warehouse and my apartment in a former rent-stabilized community, I pass one of New York City’s newest apartment offerings. It’s one of the first completed towers in a five-building complex called Williamsburg Wharf, and it stands atop a plaza two blocks wide. With open space facing the river and apartments for a mix of incomes, this privately owned public space evolved through extensive community review. That review set a template for waterfront real estate, mandating public access to the river for folks who had put down roots in the neighborhood for decades. Problem is, every time I’ve passed the new space I’ve seen it looking desolate. Occasional plaza-passers, presumably early occupants or workers making deliveries, have had earbuds in and heads down.

I started thinking about fine-tuning the public policy that governs the shadowy terrain of spaces that are open to the public yet privately owned. A refresh would aim to spark civic life, guide people to look up from their phones, and lay the financial groundwork for further affordable housing construction. 

Today’s open space fronts onto a different world than the one advocates imagined when New York City hammered out rezoning in 2003. In that era, simply providing open space seemed like a decent guarantee that people would use it to connect with neighbors. Now I’m less sure. Attention has atrophied in American attitudes, so providing and maintaining clean, bright open space doesn’t guarantee that people will avail themselves of its boons. Left alone, open space will leave too many people alone. Cities need new tools to manage it for the sake of residents’ cardiac and mental health.

“In a previous era, simply providing open space seemed like a decent guarantee that people would use it to connect with neighbors. Now I’m less sure.”

Precedent in New York shows that when local groups manage open space, they can spark excitement and fresh experiences for a variety of residents. Guillermo Gómez, who directs programs for the think-and-advocacy group called Urban Design Forum (UDF), says it’s time to push for funding to help local nonprofits pay for permits and incidentals so that public space can resonate with their neighbors. (I have donated to UDF, and my wife knows its executive director personally.)

“Use of public space depends on programming,” Gómez tells me. “There are magical areas like 34th Avenue in Queens,” where vendors sell regional snacks, neighbors offer bike lessons, and people dance. Music, food, and laughter also roll through public and private open space in Inwood, where Manhattan whittles to its northernmost point.

These are mixed corridors in socioeconomically varied neighborhoods. Unlike for Williamsburg Wharf, their stewards can’t always tap elite masterplanners for a glow-up. But places like Williamsburg Wharf, bereft of local management by small businesses or municipal agencies, can grow bleak from silence. “Design is pretty impactful,” says Gomez, “but I go back to the question of who is programming those public spaces.”

Filling public space with stuff to do may have a pronounced impact on daily life, because scads more people now rarely leave their home base. We see more capricious shift changes for retail workers, more remote setups for office workers, and more layoffs than we did around the time of the 2003 rezoning. Today’s city living often comes with surges of depression and resulting health and productivity costs, which urban planners should douse by nudging remote workers to talk to other remote workers nearby.

And while gentle “pulls” like concerts and games already show some tonic effects, public space can become a lab for more radical experiments. Landlords could draw tax breaks if they block certain social media sites on public WiFi for part of each day, hire residents as bike or career coaches, or provide cafeteria-style lunches in their open space (donating leftovers to nearby soup kitchens). They could also manage costs by hiring local people, including teens, to keep public areas looking spruce. 

“Public space can become a lab for more radical experiments.”

Open space near the water can showcase aquatic life, post signs or artwork explaining tides and storm surge, or flag gathering points where neighbors can muster during evacuation. The New York state authority managing Battery Park City in Manhattan, for example, hoisted a flag on a waterfront public path to mark the Hudson River’s height during Superstorm Sandy.  

So, careful decisions about managing, appointing, and maintaining privately owned open space can fuel its usefulness and its use. As they advance new housing solutions, lawmakers and others who approve plans might ask these questions about an open space: 

Who manages it? Rather than placards instructing people to take selfies, which feel sterile, civic leaders who know an area’s history can fill a plaza with music, art, signs, and food specific to the place.

Who uses it? Measures to track this flavor of data smack of artificial intelligence overlords, but residents could self-report how often they go to open space and what they do there.

What economic cycles does it invite? Property owners might let tenants who perform community-building acts like printing newsletters or buying dog treats deduct the related costs from their rent, and the city might also write them off developers’ taxes or fees if the developer provides these amenities. (Every bit helps.) Residents who hire neighbors to do real-world jobs like food service or tax preparation in open space might also qualify for rent relief. 

How does it encourage communal spirit? Developers now presume upmarket renters require help to meet each other: Witness the scheduled game nights and field trips at new Big Apple towers. That’s one way to embolden people toward eye contact—but imagine giving residents a bit more agency. A city could offer tax deferments when activities like lawn games arise if residents can show that they designed or manage the events themselves. It could also offer mini-grants for features like lemonade-stand structures, book racks, or Zumba platforms, all of which residents could manage for the public. 

Any gain in cohesion should pay dividends in durability. People who become acquaintances in public space may be more likely to help each other speedily and skillfully in case of disaster, including the fossil fuel–driven disasters almost certain to occur every few years. Staffing and programming public space to be distinct and busy in each neighborhood might help sustain cities’ desirability amid climate change.

Eventually, a spread of more beloved public spaces could influence resident behavior to power new forms of collective aid and neighborly projects. I might see lots more vibrant public space—and hear lots more chitchat—on my way home.

Editor’s note: The views expressed in the articles on The Rooftop are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policy positions of New America.