Is Your City Getting in the Way of Your Social Life?

Within cities, we spend a lot of time thinking about the access of people to places: to good schools, to supermarkets, to parks, to job centers and transit stops. You’re better off if you can easily connect to all of these things, and there’s a whole suite of research mapping the spatial relationships (and quality of life) embedded in between them.

It’s significantly harder to think about the access of people to other people (we are all, after all, moving targets). But this question – do you have ample opportunity to meet new people, see your friends, encounter ideas other than your own? – is an equally important dimension of daily life. And it’s likely today that you have fewer chances to do this than you would have had in the past.