Places, spaces and social relations

The review looks at the global evidence base for improving people’s wellbeing through changes to community infrastructure. The original review, published in 2018, included 51 studies and explored the difference to wellbeing and social relations as a result of:

• Public places designed for people to meet, which include streets, squares, parks, play areas, village halls and community centres.
• Places where people meet informally or are used as meeting places, such as cafes, pubs, libraries, schools and churches.
• Services that can facilitate access to places to meet, including urban design, landscape architecture and public art, transport, public health organisations, subsidised housing sites, and bus routes.

In the intervening years we have of course experienced the Covid-19 pandemic, which has further highlighted the importance of local places and spaces to communities, particularly green spaces and community hubs.

We wanted to see whether the evidence base on community spaces and places had changed in the last five years. We found – somewhat to our surprise – that the evidence base has doubled in the past five years. Another 51 studies were included in the refresh, making 102 studies in the review.

We combined all of these findings together to produce stronger evidence statements, and we were able to conduct a more detailed and nuanced analysis than in 2018.

In 2018, most of the evidence was graded as being of ‘moderate’ strength, but due to better quality research studies being published in the last five years, some of that evidence is now strong. This improvement in the quality of the research may owe something to the recommendations that we made in the original review – though we can’t prove this!

For example, there is now strong evidence that community hubs and community development improve social relations, individual and community wellbeing.

We saw that different types of interventions can have impacts on different aspects of wellbeing. For example:

• Changes to green and blue spaces, such as parks and canal paths, predominantly affect individual wellbeing, especially physical activity and mental wellbeing
• Changes to community hubs, and community development, bring about positive changes in social connections, skills and knowledge, and social cohesion
• Events such as festivals, street parties, and other short-term changes in how community spaces are used bring about positive changes in hedonic wellbeing (also known as fun!), social connections and a sense of belonging and identity.

We also saw better reporting of some of the potentially negative impacts of changes to local places and spaces. This is really important for policy makers and other people to know, to try to avoid any harm or conflict when making changes in future.

For example, although events can have a very positive effect on community wellbeing, they can also lead to feelings of exclusion for some residents, often those who have lived in the area the longest. There may also be longer term negative impacts relating to ‘gentrification’ when neighbourhoods become seen as more desirable, perhaps due to improvements in green space, and wealthier residents move in, leading to negative impacts on sense of belonging and sense of identity for the longer term residents, as well as potentially encroaching on existing community spaces.

During the pandemic, as more people used local outdoor spaces, there was some contested use of space between different groups. In our report, we have recommended that people implementing changes to local spaces tackle these issues head on, by meaningful engagement with local communities before changes are made.

We expect this review will have a significant impact, as the What Works Centres have a remit to influence policy.

Find out more

Find out more about the Places and Spaces project:

Places, spaces and social connection: five years of new learning - a blog post by Stewart Martin at What Works Wellbeing.

Review refresh: Places, spaces, and social connections - The Places and Spaces project briefing.

Systematic review of community infrastructure (place and space) to boost social relations and community wellbeing: Five year refresh - The project's full report.

Places, spaces and social connections review refresh - The Places and Spaces project website.