Collective Anonymity

In Search of the Soul of Vancouver

Vancouver is a modern, liveable, and beautiful city. Increasingly, however, Vancouver is becoming a lonely city. One in four residents feel alone more often than they would like and more than half find it difficult to make friends. We could predict this many lonely people in a desolate region of Canada, like the vast prairie plains or the remote boreal forests, but not from one of the country’s major metropolises. Certainly not the one with ocean coastline, mountain access, and a year-round temperate climate. But it’s true; Vancouverites are isolated. Physically together, socially separate—stuck in a state of collective anonymity.

Widespread loneliness poses a real problem for city officials intent on keeping citizens healthy. Loneliness is associated with a range of negative psychological outcomes, such as depression and anxiety. Worse still, lonely people are more likely to experience worse physical health, including conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity. What’s more, those with limited social capital may struggle to find help during times of crisis, adding to feelings of distress. Public officials must intervene in communities upstream from clinical settings to prevent of delay the onset of loneliness before it becomes difficult and costly to treat.

Vancouver’s city officials have implemented policy and programming initiatives to combat the loneliness epidemic. The cause of this city-wide loneliness, they reason, lies in the urban realm. Its design is hostile and isolating. There are too many steely skyscrapers, too many long commutes, too many physical barriers between communities. City officials spent millions on a slew of urban interventions designed to improve connectedness, which included community gardens, neighbourhood branding, and something called “parklets”.

Although these initiatives lent a humanizing face to City officials, who are often critiqued for their impossible bureaucracy, on the metric that mattered most – loneliness – they failed to produce any meaningful change. Loneliness among Vancouverites remains stubbornly high. Overall liveability has taken a hit, too. Vancouver has slid down the Economic Intelligence Unit’s liveable cities list from 5^th place in 2022 to 8^th in 2023. A far cry from the top position, which it held from 2002 to 2010. The urban interventions did not work, which forces the question: what else is responsible for Vancouver’s loneliness epidemic?

I argue it’s the people. I claim we have causality backwards. Rather than conceptualizing lonely Vancouverites as a product of the isolationist architecture, the truth is they are responsible for the architecture. Vancouver’s loneliness epidemic is not due to urban design. Vancouver’s loneliness epidemic is due to self-selection. Lonely people choose to live and work in Vancouver more than they choose to live and work in other places.

This alternate hypothesis is conceptually plausible. Vancouverites are not a random sample of Canadians; rather, they are individuals who, at some point, or their families, made the decision to move to Vancouver. This choice might be influenced by personal characteristics that predispose them to select Vancouver. Higher rates of these characteristics among Vancouverites might be misinterpreted as a result of living in the city, rather than as factors that led them to move there in the first place. For example, it might seem that Vancouver causes wealth because its residents have a higher average net worth compared to the Canadian average. While this is partly true, due to soaring real estate values, it could also be that people with higher net worths are more likely to move to Vancouver, while those with lower net worths choose other locations. Cross-sectional data might suggest that Vancouver generates wealth, but a deeper analysis could reveal that the city's wealth origins lie outside its boundaries. A similar dynamic might explain Vancouver’s loneliness issue.

This alternate hypothesis is supported by anecdotal evidence. Many Vancouverites describe their social interactions as often superficial. Friendships seem to be valued not for personal connection but for the benefits one can provide. The depth of relationships is often lacking, perhaps because there are so many superficial distractions, like ski trips to Whistler, surfing in Tofino, or sailing in the Gulf Islands. Vancouver's stunning skyline, with its skyscrapers set against the calm water and snow-capped mountains, adds to the sense of distraction. In this environment, friends can become mere means to an end—like having access to a rich friend's cabin to avoid the high costs of a Whistler trip. With rent consuming a significant portion of one's paycheck and other daily expenses adding up, it’s easy to see why social interactions might feel transactional.

But the payoffs this life produces are real, even if superficial. You get to live in Vancouver. You can tell your friends this. You get to share it with your Instagram followers. You reap the momentary benefits of adrenaline highs, glitzy photo-ops, trendy restaurants, as well as a substantial return on your investment in time for retirement for property owners. Not bad. For some, it’s enough meaning to build a life on.

And build they do—literally. The architecture of isolation is everywhere. The condo buildings along False Creek look like shimmering crystals that reflect light without offering views in. Vancouver proper, which is a thin peninsula, is occupied like a medieval fortress during siege, filled with people seeking salvation with a wide moat separating them from outsiders. It’s as if every act of occupation and design maneuver works to enhance the geographic and material barriers that separate people. It’d be willful ignorance to believe this isn’t intentional. Those geographic and material barriers act as social distinctions, overtly indicating who is “here” and who is “over there”. There’s a centre, and then there’s the periphery. Prestige is codified in architectural form.

Vancouver is beautiful. There is no denying it. Vancouver is also hostile. City officials were right to identify Vancouver’s architecture as responsible for the city’s loneliness epidemic, but they missed a key part of the narrative. It is no accident that Vancouver’s architecture keeps citizens locked in a state of collective anonymity. For many, that was always the point.

Photo by Spencer Watson on Unsplash.