Estimate the life-course associations between different aspects of the urban neighbourhood environment and residential architecture and loneliness using geospatial population-based cohort data totaling over 10,000 individuals followed up for several decades.
Loneliness is a growing public health and urban challenge — highly prevalent across ages and genders, and harmful to both mental and physical health. Research has largely focused on individual and social factors, overlooking the places where people actually live, which are far more amenable to change. LoNePlaces addresses this gap through a multidisciplinary, multi-method study of the Porto Metropolitan Area — over 1.7 million people — through the following specific aims.
specific aims
What we set out to do
Understand how urban neighbourhood features influence feelings of loneliness by considering the perspectives of individuals from diverse backgrounds and territories through the conduction of semi-structured interviews coupled with mental mapping and photo elicitation among an information-rich sample of participants.
Develop and test the effect of place-based interventions to reduce loneliness using experimental research designs. More precisely, we wish to test the effect, against a control group, of Forest Bathing and Urban Walk and Talk groups.
Co-create solutions to build prosocial and anti-loneliness spaces through participatory workshops involving citizens, authorities, social organizations, planners, and other stakeholders.
Produce a white paper with urban planning solutions aimed at creating healthy and prosocial neighbourhoods, while also pursuing other sustainability goals and meeting healthy city standards.
contribution to knowledge
How this moves the field forward
Comprehensively addressing an increasingly relevant, but understudied, public health and urban issue using a multi-method and fine-grained life course approach.
Using novel statistical approaches towards the identification of prosocial and lonelygenic urban features.