Urban loneliness is the idea that people in densely–populated urban areas are lonelier than people in disperse areas such as the countryside. However, a fascinating article in New York Magazine looks at the ‘science of loneliness’ and suggests that urban loneliness is a myth.
I found this comment, on an evolutionary psychology theory of loneliness, intruiging:
Cacioppo, co-author of W.W. Norton’s recently published Loneliness, is part of the school of evolutionary psychologists—and certain biologists too—that believes our species wouldn’t have survived without a cooperative social instinct. In their book, Cacioppo and his co-author, the science writer William Patrick, argue that loneliness, like hunger, is an alarm signal that evolved in hominids hundreds of thousands of years ago, when group cohesion was essential to fight off abrupt attacks from stampeding wildebeests. It’s nature’s way of telling us to rejoin the group or pay the price. “Nature,” they simply write at one point, “is connection.”
via Mind Hacks
Edit: Ben Casnocha has a nice overview of the article.