My sense: human relationships come from repeated interaction over time. This is why college is easy for friendships and suburbs aren't.
The solution is very different for someone who is within walking distance of a neighborhood coffee shop vs someone who isn't.
It seems like there's 3 levels of solutions recommended here:
1) Individual: join recurring activities, volunteer, join communities, get a dog, work on yourself, sports/physical hobbies
2) Founder: Create third spaces, host events, or just create and initiate activities that bring people together
3) Policy: Urban design reform, third spaces. Make it easier for more third spaces to exist and more walkable neighborhoods.
It's like capex vs opex. A lot of the fixes recommended here are very high ongoing daily effort for individuals. But this is such an important thing for humans! So it would be better if the built environment was better, and human interaction was easier and lower effort to get for more people. More walkable high trust places, more third places.
Should there be lots more affinity based master planned communities? Probably yes. More in person theme parks and activity places? Probably yes. More games like Pokemon Go? Probably yes. Better walkability in existing cities? Probably yes. etc.
tl;dr at an individual level, these suggestions are good, but the fact that so much individual level effort is needed imo points to more of a need for macro solutions so it's lower energy for most people to have nice local walkable communities and friends (like people have in university, cities post-university, and in retirement homes)
The solution is very different for someone who is within walking distance of a neighborhood coffee shop vs someone who isn't.
It seems like there's 3 levels of solutions recommended here:
1) Individual: join recurring activities, volunteer, join communities, get a dog, work on yourself, sports/physical hobbies
2) Founder: Create third spaces, host events, or just create and initiate activities that bring people together
3) Policy: Urban design reform, third spaces. Make it easier for more third spaces to exist and more walkable neighborhoods.
It's like capex vs opex. A lot of the fixes recommended here are very high ongoing daily effort for individuals. But this is such an important thing for humans! So it would be better if the built environment was better, and human interaction was easier and lower effort to get for more people. More walkable high trust places, more third places.
Should there be lots more affinity based master planned communities? Probably yes. More in person theme parks and activity places? Probably yes. More games like Pokemon Go? Probably yes. Better walkability in existing cities? Probably yes. etc.
tl;dr at an individual level, these suggestions are good, but the fact that so much individual level effort is needed imo points to more of a need for macro solutions so it's lower energy for most people to have nice local walkable communities and friends (like people have in university, cities post-university, and in retirement homes)