Free Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery Page A

American reported having three people he could confide in about important matters. By 2004 his network had shrunk to two, and it hasn’t bounced back since. Almost half the population say they have no one, or just one person, in whom they can confide. Considering that this included close family members, it reflects a stunning decline in social connection. Other surveys show that people are losing ties with their neighborhoods and their communities. They are less likely to say they trust other people and institutions. They don’t invite friends over for dinner or participate in social or volunteer groups as they did decades ago. Like Randy Strausser, most Americans simply don’t know their neighbors anymore. Even family bonds are being strained. By 2004 less than 30 percent of American families ate together every night. All of these conditions are exacerbated by dispersal, as I will explain. But first, a reminder of why they constitute a happiness disaster.
    As much as we complain about other people, there is nothing worse for mental health than a social desert. A study of Swiss cities found that psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, are most common in neighborhoods with the thinnest social networks. Social isolation just may be the greatest environmental hazard of city living—worse than noise, pollution, or even crowding. The more connected we are with family and community, the less likely we are to experience colds, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and depression. Simple friendships with other people in one’s neighborhood are some of the best salves for stress during hard economic times—in fact, sociologists have found that when adults keep these friendships, their kids are better insulated from the effects of their parents’ stress. Connected people sleep better at night. They are more able to tackle adversity. They live longer. They consistently report being happier.
    There are many reasons for America’s shrinking social support networks: marriages aren’t lasting as long as they used to, people work longer hours, and they move frequently (the bank-enforced exodus during the mortgage crisis didn’t help). But there is a clear connection between this social deficit and the shape of cities. A Swedish study found that people who endure more than a forty-five-minute commute were 40 percent more likely to divorce. * People who live in monofunctional, car-dependent neighborhoods outside of urban centers are much less trusting of other people than people who live in walkable neighborhoods where housing is mixed with shops, services, and places to work. They are also much less likely to know their neighbors. They are less likely to get involved with social groups and even less likely to participate in politics. They don’t answer petitions, don’t attend rallies, and don’t join political parties or social advocacy groups. Citizens of sprawl are actually less likely to know the names of their elected representatives than people who live in more connected places. †
    This matters not only because political engagement is a civic duty, and not just because it is one more contributor to well-being. (Which, by the way, it is: we tend to be happier when we feel involved in the decisions that affect us.) It matters because cities need us to reach out to one another as never before. A few years after convincing the world of the value of social capital, the sociologist Robert Putnam produced evidence that the ethnic diversity that is increasingly defining major cities is linked with lower levels of social trust. This is a sad and dangerous state of affairs. Trust is the bedrock on which cities grow and thrive. Modern metropolitan cities depend on our ability to think beyond the family and tribe and to trust the people who look, dress, and act nothing like us to treat us fairly, to honor commitments and contracts, to consider our well-being along with their own, and, most of all, to make sacrifices for the general