What makes the difference between a good place to live, and a place where day-to-day life feels difficult? Why do some places have a rich and vibrant public life while others feel empty? And why do some places seem to encourage loneliness more than friendship? One answer to these questions is social infrastructure.

The spaces that hold community life together

Social infrastructures support social connection. They are the pubs and parks, cafes and community halls, libraries and leisure centres where people meet, friendships are made and sustained, and community life encouraged. These spaces and places aren’t just incidental or nice-to-haves, they are as essential to healthy neighbourhoods as easy access to food shops or transport.

But what is sometimes overlooked is that social infrastructures are both varied, and greater than the sum of their parts. Public libraries, parks, squares, schools, coworking spaces, pubs and allotments should not be seen as isolated spaces, but as a network. A neighbourhood or city’s social life doesn’t hang on any single space, but on the health of the web of places that hold it together.

Then there’s what happens within social infrastructures. In such places, people volunteer, play sport, and sustain social networks, with both older and younger people finding support. Different groups need different things; mile after mile of playing fields will nurture a much narrower social life than a neighbourhood with a library, football pitch and community café.

Building better neighbourhoods through social infrastructure

This gets to the crux of why thinking about social infrastructures carefully matters. These spaces do not just appear. They are made, managed and maintained by the (often extraordinary) efforts of local people. Across the UK, we see residents self-organising play streets, we see urban design workshops to increase accessibility for teenage girls, we see municipal-led planning reform for walkability. We also see the impact economic turmoil can have on a place.

A cast of actors – public, private, and community-led – are all involved in creating the spaces and places where people can connect. Understanding how social infrastructure gets made is a key step in understanding how it can be made available to more people in more places- and in understanding its role in facing contemporary challenges. What was really at stake through the social isolation of Covid-19? What can be gained through the introduction low traffic neighbourhoods? What opportunities arise in the changing use of libraries? And how can social infrastructures help communities connect in the aftermath of disasters, and around our ever-shifting policy environment? People are trying to find ways of living together to better support social connection.

My interest in the concept of social infrastructure started in 2018 during my PhD, has grown through my work at the Institute for Community Studies at The Young Foundation since 2023, and now informs my work with Professor Alan Latham (UCL) on our book, Social Infrastructure in Neighbourhoods and Cities. In recent years, I have seen how important social infrastructure is to communities that don’t have it, how different institutions can shape their assets to function as social infrastructure to support health and wellbeing, and how government are supporting communities to capture the value of their local assets.

But there is still so much to do.

There are pressing questions to answer. We know social infrastructure is important, but we are some way from being able to say with confidence which spaces matter most and to who. Nor have we been able to begin unpacking how different spaces work together. There is a need to take a whole-neighbourhood approach to understand the network of spaces and places people rely on to build and sustain their social networks.

The challenge of measuring social infrastructure

Measurement is part of this. If we can better identify a place’s social infrastructure we’ll be able to better understand the difference social infrastructure can make. In turn, this can support communities and decision-makers in their efforts to preserve valued assets. The better we get at measurement and evaluation, the closer we will also be to understanding why some neighbourhoods are better provided for than others – and what it would take to close that gap.

There is much to be done on the policy front here. Social infrastructure often sits across awkward boundaries – owned by one group, funded by another, maybe managed by yet another, and relied upon by multiple different communities. More can be done to understand what makes providing social infrastructure easier, and what makes it harder. And communities will play a key role, because nobody is better placed to understand what a neighbourhood needs, than the communities in that place.

Answering these questions will not be easy, but it is important. Our social infrastructure can guard against social isolation and loneliness, it can support economic security, it is where community is made. If we are serious about making the UK’s towns and cities the best places that they can be, then getting the social infrastructure right is the perfect place to start.

Jack is a co-investigator on the UKRI-funded Centre for Collaboration in Community Connectedness. Social infrastructure is one of the centre’s key interdisciplinary research themes. His new book, Social Infrastructure in Neighbourhoods and Cities, was co-edited with Professor Alan Latham (UCL) and published by Bristol University Press, May 2026.

Health and Wellbeing Housing and regeneration Places social connection social infrastructure Posted on: 4 June 2026 Authors: Jack Layton,