Calculating a national Anomie Density Ratio: Measuring the patterns of loneliness and social isolation across the UK’s residential density gradient using results from the UK Biobank study

Abstract Urban life has long been pilloried in history for its negative effects on the human condition and mind. From Thomas Jefferson to Emile Durkheim, high density urban living as an aberration to be rectified has been part of the modern discourse on cities. While empirical studies into the psychiatric effects of unwanted social contact began in earnest after WW2 and we now know much about environmental causes of stress, the evidence of the impacts of increasing urban densification upon loneliness and social isolation in humans still remains inconclusive. We employed high-resolution geospatial built environment exposure data to examine associations between residential density and loneliness and social isolation among 405,925 UK Biobank cohort participants. Residential unit density was measured within a 1- and 2-Km residential street network catchment of participant’s geocoded dwelling. Other health-specific built environment (i.e., street-level physical walkability, density of public transport, traffic intensity of the nearest road, mean street distance to destinations), and physical environment exposures (terrain variability and greenspace exposure modelled from remotely-sensed data) were also measured at individual-level, within pre-specified catchments of each participant’s geocoded dwelling. We found for the UK, that every 1,000 units/km2 increment in residential density within a 1-Km network catchment was independently associated with a 2.8% (odds ratio: 1.028, p = 0.0058) and 11.4% (OR: 1.114, p