What I've Learnt - Lucinda Hartley

“We’ve lost the village”: Housing expert Lucinda Hartley on the loneliness crisis hiding in plain sight.

Australia is facing a loneliness epidemic and according to housing expert and urbanist Lucinda Hartley, the problem isn’t just our busy lives or screen addiction. It’s the way our cities have been designed. From long commutes and car dependence to apartment buildings that prioritise privacy over connection, modern Australian life is making it easier than ever to move through entire days without meaningful human interaction. 

As rates of loneliness soar, particularly among young Australians, Lucinda says we need to stop treating loneliness as a personal failing and start recognising it as a housing and city design issue. 

Author of Finding Home, Lucinda can discuss why the “village” that once sustained communities has quietly disappeared and simple changes individuals, developers and governments can make to rebuild connection into everyday life.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Well, according to housing expert Lucinda Hartley, we've lost the village. She's commenting on the loneliness crisis hiding in plain sight. Australia is facing a loneliness epidemic, and according to housing expert and urbanist Lucinda Harley, the problem isn't just our busy lives or screen addiction, it's the way our cities have been designed. From long commutes and car dependents to apartment buildings that prioritize privacy over connection, modern Australian life is making it easier than ever to move through entire days without meaningful human interaction. As rates of loneliness soar, particularly among young Australians, Lucinda says we need to stop treating loneliness as a personal failing and start recognizing it as a housing and city design issue. Author of her new book, Finding Home, Lucinda can discuss why the village that once sustained communities has quietly disappeared and simply changes individuals, developers, and governments can make to rebuild connection into everyday life will transform the future of the next generation. So, Lucinda, welcome to the What I've Learned podcast. Thanks, Evera. So tell us a little bit about first of all, the the loneliness epidemic. I love your quote, which I've mentioned in the intro. We've lost the village. What a wonderful quote and what a true statement, in my opinion. Can you elaborate a little bit on that mission statement, which I think is really, really quite telling at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Yeah, absolutely. I think most people feel some level of loneliness. I mean, statistically it's one in two people, but I think the biggest story is that loneliness isn't just something we feel. It's a health epidemic. You know, loneliness is as likely to kill you as smoking or heart disease. And so insane, yeah. Yeah, when we think about it in those contexts, it's this society-wide epidemic. But where I think it's really challenging is we tend to point our finger at the individual, like I should have more friends or I should have more connection around us. But we need to look at it as a community issue because loneliness and social isolation aren't about us as individuals. It's about the village, it's about the community. And we have lost that. And I think that's partly, you know, we're busier, we're more online, and we tend to point the finger at those things. But I fundamentally believe in what a lot of the research would say is that it's to do with the shape of our cities and neighborhoods. The way we live our lifestyles actually make it really hard to have community and connection. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And therein lies some of the solutions too, I guess. So there's a positive story as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Yes, that's true. I mean, as we know, it takes a village to raise a child, is a very common statement. And one that I think resonates. I think for many mothers, for example, they love that they're part of a community when they've got new babies and children. There's a sense, you know, that you actually have your crew or your women who you go to play group with, or who, whatever stage of life you're at. Similarly, with elderly people, they need to know they're part of a community and they're connected. But what you're saying is basically that it's also the way our cities are designed and the way that we're actually living is so disconnected, fostered and facilitated by also this idea that we work from home and you've got young people working very isolated. So talk to me a little bit about that because I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense. You're sort of saying, you know, Australian cities are designing out everyday social interaction. So extrapolate a little bit on that for me.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yeah, if you think about the way that a lot of us live, you know, we're we're optimized for convenience, and I'm no stranger to that. I I work from home, I travel a lot, it's all digital. But when you think about what that means for like the actual shape and design of our houses, you might live in an apartment building where you get a lift down to your car park and your car park out to your workplace and then back, and you may never see another human. Or you might be commuting 90 minutes to work by car, you're stuck in traffic, you're by yourself. By the time you get home, you're driving into your garage and into your home, you haven't seen another person. So, in the pursuit of I guess, convenience, we have designed out the everyday interactions that we used to have, like saying hello to someone in the hallway or in the street or going to the same cafe every day and knowing the brewster by name. You know, it used to be the butcher and the baker, but now we get our woolies delivered rather than going to the shops like that. But these incidental interactions are really important. Now, I'm not suggesting that we go back to an old era of needing to get our groceries from the grocer and the and the baker individually. But if you if you look at what loneliness really is, and I think it's important to understand how loneliness works so that we can understand how to address some of those feelings. Because again, we tend to think of it as like it's a personal issue, like I'm just not social enough, or I just don't have enough interactions around me. But loneliness has two sides. This is what social researchers say. There's strong ties and weak ties. And the strong ties are the close friends, your family, the people that you might call at two o'clock in the morning in an emergency. They're your strong ties. But the weak ties, your colleagues at work, making eye contact with a stranger on the train, uh, doing school drop-off at the same time every day, and seeing other parents hanging around just a little bit longer in the park after kinda, going to the same cafe every day, whatever it is for you, those interactions seem not that consequential. But when you remove them, it actually dramatically increases our sense of loneliness. And when you look at what happened during COVID, particularly, you know, I'm from Melbourne. Yes. Yeah, me too. One of the reasons why people felt so lonely and isolated wasn't because they lost their strong ties, because actually most of us kept our strong ties through Zoom calls or other interactions, but we omitted the weak ties that you have. It's actually, even though it might feel uncomfortable, incredibly important to spend time around strangers to make it. I totally agree.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

I'm with you on that. I think, I think that you, you know, that's a very good point. What I am noticing, you know, in a positive sense, is there's reading parties now. There's there's book clubs that people meet in cafes. There's a turn to the local baker, you know, baker blue is everywhere because everyone wants homemade, beautiful bakeries. So there is a slight, I feel like a shift back. Yes, we've got the whole AI and we've got the whole work from home, and we've got all of that happening, as you say. It's a sort of a good story and a tough story at the same time. Because I think as a consequence of what people were experiencing, COVID was an extreme, and then it sort of kept going to some degree. But then suddenly we're people like, we can't take this for granted. As you point out, those incidental stranger touch bases, whether it be the baker or whether it be your local hairdresser or whatever it is, where you form connections, is absolutely critical to the human condition. I mean, we're not meant to be so dislocated.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

No, that's right. And it's actually, and and where I guess I link it to cities is it becomes harder to do. Like if your home is you drive into the garage and you walk into your home and you don't actually have to even go into the street, or if your apartment is the same, you have to be so intentional because you're not accidentally doing it all the time. It's so true. And even if you choose to work from home or you work from home like I do, I mean, I love that. I love the flexibility, but I really force myself to make sure I do do the kids' school drop-off. And when I go to not be in a rush to have to leave, like I could have a few hellos, because I know that those relationships take a long time to build when you've only got five minutes a day. And that socialization, you know, with others is just so important for our well-being.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

I do agree with you. I think the other thing is that notion of transience. I mean, you talk about traveling and work and just the constant going from signpost to signpost to try and get whether it's in personal sense with your kids or whether it's in a work sense, it can be extremely isolating in that sense because you just don't have the time. So that's a factor as well that I still have to.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Yeah, they're moving around modern life, like the way a lot of Australians grew up, or certainly our grandparents grew up, you know, they had one house for life. They bought in a neighborhood and they weren't deep. Like they've lived 20, 30, 40 years. Yeah. And so you really know it well. And while a lot of Australians still have an aspiration for a forever house, I mean, that's something I really challenge in the book. It's financially difficult, but actually our lifestyles don't suit it. I mean, can you imagine having a forever job? Can you imagine having one job for life in 2026? It doesn't happen. And so because we move around so much, we've got to be so much more creative with how we create community. It doesn't just happen because we happen to live in the same house forever, and then we know the neighbors who lived in the same house forever and we've been to the same shops forever. So you've got to be so much more intentional, which makes it harder. It's like another thing to consider, but there are so many other benefits if we can like start to see these things. Because I think we don't we don't see that we've lost it. And once you notice, it's you can become more intentional.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yes, and I am actually noticing, I don't know if you're seeing this, but I am seeing a lot of communities building on online. For example, there's, you know, it's called Her Circle, and it's a a solo female travel organization that's got hundreds and hundreds of women that have joined who want to travel together, for example. And I'm like, I messaged her, I just went, I love this. I think this is so wonderful what you've created. And she's got them in like 50 countries. We're actually doing a podcast on it because that is an example, I think, organically, as you say, once you identify that the problem is there, you have to be intentional. You have to create new ways of connecting and communicating. And that can be a good thing because maybe, as you say, it's not staying in the one house, the one village, the one community, the one neighborhood, although there are still lots of people doing that. Maybe the aspiration is different, which is to connect in other ways.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Yeah, and there's the individual. There are lots of different ways that people will want to connect. And like online's a good example. I think there are, you know, what we've gained perhaps that we didn't have before is the ability to join extremely bespoken niche sometimes communities that you never would have connected with people like that. Uh, sometimes they're global. I really lean into that. I think it's really important. I would also say it doesn't replace what you might get from a local, like actual place-based community. Yeah. And even if you're not like your neighbors, like even if you're a really different sort of person, you don't really like them, there's a lot of benefit to knowing them, like if something goes wrong in your building, or you're going to have a shared issue about the place where you are, you know, or you need something really immediate. I just needed to pop out for half an hour. Those place-based communities play a really different role. And they're also, yeah, really important to lean into.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Yeah, the tangible elements that you need to have that surround yourself by. You talk about the notion of governments and developers and councils should design new communities differently. So when you go out to, for example, some of the newer developments, my impression, and you correct me if I'm wrong, is that they are creating sort of the village-ish type concept where you have the park, the shops, everything almost like in the 70s, some of them look like.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yeah, look, Australia's been from a like a planning rules perspective, like fairly being in the way that a lot of new communities are developed. And I think we learned from our early mistakes that you can't solve a housing problem only by building housing. If you build suburbs of housing with no schools, shops, then it's resources difficult to build community in that way. Look, we even saw it with, you know, Docklands in the 90s and 2000s when that was first developed. The developers who conceived that and government to an extent, that place, they didn't assume that families would ever live there. And so they didn't build a school or a library. They just assumed that they wouldn't live there. But actually, there's a very high percentage of families living in apartments in the Docklands, and they subsequently had to build the library and the park, and now there's a school there as well. But it came 10 15 years later because we made all of these assumptions about who was there and what they were doing. So a lot of new communities do have planned town centers, and that's a really positive thing. But as an, you know, if you're making a choice about which neighborhood that you're planning to live in, if you're looking in some of those growth areas, I would say really do your research on whether that is planned or proposed or already built. Because the important thing is that it comes first. If it comes 10 years after the houses, I mean, 10 years is a long time. Like your kids, that's that age of your teenagers leaving home and they missed, you know. So 10 years might not seem long in the evolution of a city like Sydney or Melbourne, but 10 years is a real time if you've got kids at primary school. So I would just really ask the questions about when that infrastructure is going to be delivered. Because if it's not going to be delivered now, like you could really be stuck with a home that doesn't have a lot of amenity and it's much harder to build community in that way.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

And so what brought you to this lens? What, where, where, where did your how did your journey take you here? I'm curious just to understand. Is it a personal one or is it a combination?

SPEAKER_00 13:38

It's it's probably a combination at this point in my life as a as an urbanist, but it really began as a personal one. Like I grew up living in a lot of different countries. So, you know, my parents dragged us around the world in the 90s, much against my will at the time.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah. So you didn't enjoy the travel. You didn't enjoy when you're a teenager.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

All that matters is being near your friends. Yeah. But what I really gained from that experience is, I guess, the ability to learn how to make home in a new place. Because you have to re-establish not just living there, but you know, where your home is about your community as much as it is about your house. It's about your neighbors and knowing people locally, knowing where to go. And I think I built a muscle of learning how to do that from moving around.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

To adapt, ability to adapt, basically. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah. And I also became, I guess, a I would say this now as an adult, but I think I did develop an ability to observe different cultures and ways of doing things. People live differently everywhere. You know, even you move a few suburbs across, they've got different ways of doing things. There isn't one right way to build community and or to live. And people live differently in lots of different parts of the world. So that got me really curious about cities because the shape of the cities and the type of home you live in really has a huge impact on not only how you live, but your health, your well-being, your social interaction. And that got me really curious about the overlaps with community. And something that urban planners think about a lot, which is my sort of training and background, is how do you design the city so that it's effortless, so that you don't have to think about, am I going to bump into a neighbor today? Let's make sure I try. It should just happen. And there's that's a solved problem. You know, there's lots of design rules. We can look at great neighborhoods around the world and know how to do it. The challenge is actually making it happen and making sure it gets embedded in all of the decisions that get made about how we build new homes.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

And do you think that that is okay? We obviously know there's a housing crisis, which is a clip-on issue, which is a very major issue. But separate to that, what you're saying, or I suppose connected to that, is that we have to ensure that whatever we do expand on or build has to facilitate this mission so that people are not feeling and also the commute and all of the things that you've referred to. Do you see progress in this area? What did your research bring out? What did you what did you discover on this as you did this book?

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah, I mean, certainly was very enlightening for me, both even though I've spent my career working in this space to work with a whole lot of experts and home buyers and all different stages of their journey and writing the book and looking at different choices that people have made and the impacts that they've had on their life. Are we getting better? Is it perhaps something I'll park for a second? But, you know, housing is extremely topical in Australia, has been for years, particularly right now, around the budget changes announced recently. But has, you know, regardless of your opinion on the budget changes, Australia has the worst housing affordability in the world as a ratio of median house price to average income. And so BAU leaving it like that is not really an option either. And I think what I looked at is BAU when you say business as usual, like just keeping letting housing affordability get worse is is not really an option. So a lot of different changes are needed. And, you know, we are improving supply in Australia housing supply not fast enough. I think there's potentially a risk that we double down on building like homes that are cheap and nasty and have baked-in problems for being too cold and too hot and not sustainable, and that we build houses without thinking about the community. At the same time, addressing housing supply is like the first thing we need to address, but the rest of it shouldn't be forgotten in that mix. What I think's become more extreme because of housing affordability, but also the shape of our cities as population grows is the trade-offs that individuals need to make about their housing. So, you know, previous generations, you didn't have to make such a big choice. You know, you you were going to buy a house in this suburb or that suburb. Now everything's going to be really expensive. So you're making a choice between buying a small apartment somewhere or a house really far away or moving towns, moving cities for affordability. And these things have a disruption and a change, you know, it could be positive but often negative in other areas of your life, like your commute, your work opportunities, your family, your friends, your community. And so on that level, I'd say Australia is sort of like making baby steps towards improving affordability. But we have so much further to go if we think about what we really need to do to address the housing affordability crisis.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Yeah, I think that's very on point. And obviously, it's a big topic of discussion. But what you're saying is that it's not just about building more and more, making sure that these factors are considered. Are you observing that with new developments that is happening from what you're saying? Because I mean, I see obviously certain aspects, but it's your area, so you obviously have a better insight maybe into are we taking this into account with new developments?

SPEAKER_00 18:58

So I think there are some things that are being considered, like from a, you know, we've got a lot of work to do on making planning more efficient, but from a planning perspective, there there are some, there's some regulation around like provision of town centres and new schools and things in new growth areas. And I think that's really positive. But where I think we can really improve if you look at like we actually need more, we need more homes in established areas, not only in new areas. Like that's way more efficient rather than building new roads, new sewers, new everything.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

New infrastructure, yeah. Yeah, building.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Yeah, on top of what we've already got makes a lot of sense. Australia city is actually not that dense. Where I see we can really improve if if more people are going to be living higher density, which I would say is an assumption that we are, like if we really are going to be able to improve housing affordability and provide homes for everyone, we need to think about density as well. And that doesn't have to be a bad thing. But we do need to think about the shape of like apartment buildings, for example. So if you're going to live in a much smaller home, the trade-off or the, you know, the thing that you need for having a much smaller home is much more community space. Because you perhaps are going to be homeless. You need more shared facilities. So you might own less, but you're going to share the park and the barbecues and even the co-working space. And you're not going to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

I was about to say, yeah. A lot of those. Like I have a girlfriend who lives in one of those spaces, and it's just incredible. It's got absolutely everything. The gyms there, the pools there, everything's in the space. And she's a solo mother of two. And she's that is really critical for her because she can actually access all of those facilities. And it's but it's a smaller apartment, but it allows her to feel like she. I think the other thing is obviously nature and making sure that gardens and beaches and all of those things that we've always been driven towards should be part of the planning as well. Like just because you're an apartment, even more so, you need to make sure you have access to those things. So development comes into that and planning. The other thing that is interesting, what you what you just said regarding making some of the existing uh suburbs more dense because we've got that, I suppose, that space. There is also a lot of pushback from, for example, Brighton, right? Massive. Or, you know, there's a real objection to them. The trans, they're concerned about the transformation of the area and its bespoke beachside village inverted commas feel turning into a high density apartment. There's quite a few apartments there anyway, now, but it sounds like it's there's going to be a lot more. So, how do you it's you know, balancing those elements, I think is a challenge for all the councils.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yeah. And I'd say that we really have a NIMBY problem in that in that way. Now, I look, I think there's a level of protection that we need around some kind of heritage and you know, particularly established trees and vegetation. Like we're not talking like a wholesale removal of things. Yeah. You know, we actually only need to change about 7% of the land area in the city to accommodate like hundreds of thousands more people. So we're not talking about apartments everywhere. We're just talking about in some areas because if you look at like most suburbs are quite low density, even established suburbs, and they've got very expensive assets like train stations that only very few people can walk to. And if you think all of that is taxpayer funded, like it should be that more people are able to access that amenity and that asset. And the other thing that I think we struggle to imagine is that it is actually possible to live in apartments and have a good life. Like they are not necessarily second choice. Look at Manhattan, look at Paris, look at New York. Yeah, exactly. Like no one's living in a quarter-acre block. And I don't think they're having a terrible life. So if we can imagine that actually this might actually be good for the suburb, it's going to bring more people, more economy, you're going to get more bars.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Diversity, yeah, stimulation. It's not just it. I actually hear what you're saying, and I agree with you because it actually brings the culture to the suburbs rather than it being corralled. But I I also respect people who have got, you know, maybe big land or homes that they don't want overshadowed by 20 apartments next door. So it's that constant. But your stats were interesting. You know, the the 7% I thought was, you know, it's not 80%, it's 70%.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Yeah, that's just sort of if you look at where the major transport hubs are, and sure, you need to provide more and more facilities if you're going to add more people, you're going to need to improve the parks and the public infrastructure to accommodate more people. But the trade-off for that is that the cities have to expand forever. And that's actually much more expensive for taxpayers. Like, who's paying for the roads and the sewer and the infrastructure? Like, yes, it's partly developer funded, but a lot of it is taxpayer funded. So it's much more efficient for everyone to live in a more compact city. But change is hard. And I think the mindset that we need to adopt is that cities have never been static ever. Like, cities don't exist in a stable state where nothing changes. They're always in a state of flux. Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane today is very different from 20 years ago, very different from 40 years before. And it should be different from 20 years from now. And I think if we accept that we're constantly on a change journey and lean into like, how do we want this to be? Not lock it down and keep it as it is, because you can't really keep it the same.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

It's a good point. Not to mention the population is exploding and we've got constant growth. Of course, that makes sense that there's an adaptation and that there's an evolution, is what you're saying. And that evolution needs to be intentional, thought through. Also, a lot of people are rent vesting. Is that something that you observed? Or yeah, certainly.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

And you know, potential tax implications for rent vesting may slow that. But a lot of people are making the choice, you know, they know where they want to live and they can't afford where they want to live, partly because there aren't enough new homes in the areas that they want to live in. That's, you know, a supply problem. So if there were more homes, they may not have to, but they're making a choice to rent somewhere and buying somewhere else as an investment instead. And like, I think that's a very logical choice. But I also would hope that we can build cities where that's not the only choice. Where you don't have to make a decision between where you want to own and where you want to live, that we can provide the housing diversity and choices so that you're able to live in suburbs that suit the life you want to live.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

And particularly keep you connected, which is the whole premise of what your book and what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

I'm very, very grateful for you giving us this great insight. I think it's a really important topic, and I hope we stay in touch, literally, to keep talking about this issue. I feel it's it's very important and it's evolving very quickly and slowly at the same time. So there's a lot of people talking about it, and there's a lot of governments talking about it, everyone's talking about it, but it's slow to actually action change from what you're saying. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Yeah, look, cities move at a slow pace. I'd love them to move faster. I think change can happen quickly when we want it to happen, if we use COVID an example of an ability to change policy and move really fast. So it is possible. And I think we need to think about loneliness and social isolation as a crisis. Like it is actually something that's affecting most of us in some way, but one that's solvable. And it's solvable by the everyday decisions about how we live. And there are things that we can do individually, but there's a lot that we can do about the shape of our homes and neighborhoods to make it easy.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Absolutely agree with you. And I think that there is the good news is there is a conversation. It's happening. Yeah. Exactly what you're talking about. I'm seeing a lot of it online. I'm seeing a lot of it in communities out in the real world. People are actually saying, I actually saw a guy, it's strange because I saw an incredible post yesterday. This guy posted that he'd arrived in Melbourne and he was here on his own and he was feeling deeply lonely. He actually, it was the most, he would have been about 28, 25, 28, I don't know what age he was, but young. And he did this post and it was so raw. And he was like, I just don't know anyone. And I've been trying and trying and trying. And he got thousands of comments. You should see if you read these comments, it was so uplifting. And everybody was saying, I got you, go here, do this, connect here. Like it was incredible. I was quite blown away. So, on that hopeful note, that people are still resonating and communicating and being empathic about loneliness. Let's hope that the transformation is happens sooner rather than later. Absolutely, it's within our reach. Thank you so much, Lucinda. Thank you for joining us at What I've Learned. Well, thank you for joining us on the What I've Learned podcast. I hope you enjoyed that interview because we are so privileged to have a wonderful platform where guests come on and share lessons learned, rivers crossed, mountains climbed. We love our shared humanity, and we are so grateful to have such a beautiful community. So remember to stay curious, kind, and connected. And we'll see you next time at the What I've Love Podcast.