Winston Churchill once observed that we shape the buildings and then the buildings shape us. I have written elsewhere about how architects and planners, albeit unwittingly, are complicit in producing an urban landscape that contributes to an unhealthy mental landscape.

Can we think of different ways to be in the city, of a different architecture that can “cure” loneliness? — Tanzil Shafique in Fast Company

”...it might be that loneliness is often due to circumstance.

The thing with cities is we are absolutely surrounded by people...We can see other people living richer, more populated lives than our own. At the same time, we can feel very exposed … there are lots of eyes on everyone. That is why the loneliness of the city has a particularly distinct tang to it.

Loneliness, however, is often like bad weather, “it passes through our lives”. — The Guardian

...the promise of the internet is contact. It seems to offer an antidote to loneliness, trumping even the most utopian urban environment by enabling strangers to develop relationships along shared lines of interest, no matter how shy or isolated they might be in their own physical lives. But proximity, as city dwellers know, does not necessarily mean intimacy. Access to other people is not by itself enough to dispel the gloom of internal isolation. Loneliness can be most acute in a crowd. -Laing — The Guardian