Social isolation is often associated with city life. The assumption is that residents of rural areas are less likely to be lonely or socially isolated than city dwellers.
Allegedly, villages have a strong sense of community, family ties are stronger, and societal participation and involvement are more self-evident than in the cities.
For this reason, in this chapter we focus on the comparison between city and countryside. We first look at the composition of the population in urban and nonurban areas, because it can have consequences for interaction patterns and social neighbourhoods. The presumption is that the possibilities for enduring social
contacts are greater as people in the immediate vicinity have more common characteristics and as they share more values, norms and manners.
The place where people live forms the spatial context for an important part of their social and societal activities. The question we raise here is whether an
urban environment offers fewer possibilities for social and societal participation than more small-scale rural environments. We will then compare the social
neighbourhoods of residents of urban and non-urban areas, various forms of societal participation and the orientation towards the social environment. We will finish with the main conclusions.