Earlier this year, the Office for National Statistics painted a stark picture of loneliness in the UK, finding that almost a quarter of adults felt lonely often, always or some of the time.
While many factors play a role in this crisis, the gradual (yet consistent and widespread) disappearance of everyday shared community spaces across the country cannot be overlooked. Research by Trussel showed that half of the UK has lost access to community spaces such as parks, libraries, social clubs or post offices since 2023.
Part of the answer is of course investment in public health services and community funding to combat loneliness. But alongside, we need to explore what can underpin and support more initiatives, more spaces, campaigns and services to foster much-needed connection and community.
Exploring and strengthening the identity of a place can be a hugely valuable part of this process.
Closing the helplessness gap
Loneliness is not simply a lack of physical proximity to other people. And people aren't lonely and dispersed because they are unwilling or unreceptive. But the fragmented nature of our cities' stakeholders often means it's hard to join the dots, to come up with a holistic approach that truly bridges the ‘helplessness gap' between individuals and the community initiatives that can make a difference.
The process of articulating a sense of place can help here, to bring stakeholders together. City identities may often be initially commissioned by the council, but they become owned and used by all, the people, institutions, business and community groups that all make up a place.
For example, our longstanding work with Sunderland, which included projects across regeneration and city brand, brought together senior figures from across civic life: the council, NHS, education, major employers, the football club, charities and community groups. In some cases, it was the first time those people had been in the same room. That is powerful in itself. Thinking more holistically about a place's identity can become a vehicle for comparing, sharing and building trust.
Taking the right steps
After all, placemaking – or ‘city branding' – is not just a visual exercise: a logo, a slogan, a typeface or a colour palette. Done well, it goes much deeper. It's the process of finding the best version of the truth of a place: what it has been, what it is now and what it has the potential to become.
The Sunderland brand didn't start with visuals and aesthetics but by reframing the post-industrial city as the ‘City of Potential', tying the identity directly to its smart city and digital inclusion infrastructure. This brand narrative underpinned initiatives like Home: The Stories that Build Us, a workshop programme designed to build a shared identity; and was at the heart of Sunderland's connectivity campaign under the ‘no-one and no-where left behind' to support nearly 200,000 residents through local Digital Health Hubs.
To achieve such results, you need to always start from the bottom up, with a representative group of stakeholders drawn from every level of civic life, including those too often left on the fringes. People need to be involved early, listened to properly and brought back into the process as the work develops. This makes sure that the brand is born from the place, not imposed as a top-down visual flourish.
Finding the stories that connect
You then need to dig deep to find the stories that lie at the heart of a city or town: the myths, memories and behaviours that people recognise as true. In Rotterdam, there is a saying that you cannot buy a long-sleeved shirt because people work so hard they immediately roll their sleeves up. It is a myth, but it says something truthful about the city's pride in work. The same principle applies in the UK. Liverpool, for example, is currently exploring how its music heritage can become a wider asset, how ‘the sound of Liverpool' can bring together performance venues, practice spaces, recording studios under one shared vision.
Other places have less obvious stories, but those are no less valuable – and perhaps even more ownable. Take the UK's post-industrial towns and cities whose original reason for being has disappeared. Coal, steel, shipbuilding and manufacturing were tangible stories that people could see and rally around. When those industries vanish, a place can be left with a kind of civic bereftness. And when a shared identity is taken away, a sense of isolation can grow.
City branding here is not about reclaiming the past but identifying the stories that are still true now. The key here is to separate the truly valuable story from plain nostalgia – stories should help a city identify where it's going, not hark back to a bygone era. Bradford's identity to support its 2025 City of Culture status, for example, was inspired by the district's do-it-yourself attitude, its warmth, unfiltered honesty, idiosyncratic character and sharp humour – traits that all Bradfordians could recognise and get behind (eighty percent of residents surveyed said the identity had boosted their civic pride).
Making ambition real
Then there's the challenge of how the identity is expressed. For Sunderland, the ‘City of Potential' brand truth translated into a vibrant and flexible visual system of assets that work across the urban landscape – embraced and adopted widely by Riverside Sunderland, Expo Sunderland, Sunderland City of Smart as well as the council itself. It formed the foundation for numerous initiatives, most recently the new Sunderland Culture House. A multipurpose public building designed as a ‘shared living room' for the city, the centre's brand is directly born from the work gone before.
That balance of cohesiveness and flexibility is essential. A strong city identity needs recognisable elements and clear guidance, but it should not be so rigid that people cannot make it their own. Its expressions should work on a knitted football scarf just as well as on public spaces signage.
Finally, it's important to realise that a new city brand won't change things overnight. The most meaningful changes happen little by little, with patience and determination. And of course, city branding cannot solve loneliness on its own. But it can help create the conditions in which connection becomes more possible – and deliver the tools and inspiration to imagine progress, and make it a reality.
Paul Blackburn is CEO and founder of Studio Blackburn
