I am not sure why you would say that. I mean it is true, but I am not sure how it is relevant here. If one avenue is not there, ones that crave it badly enough will venture forth. If I don't go to work and WANT to engage with others so badly, I will. And besides, meaningful relations is a meaningless term.
Example. My parent has neighbors. They have lived closely to one another. So closely and long, in fact, they had to sue to resolve some outstanding issues. In other words, neither prolonged proximity or meaningful relationship is a useful metric. I will trade those for a new neighbor every year.
Humans work like they always worked. Their predilections move them. If those are not satisfied, they are channeled.
The big problem these days is age. My neighhbors seem fine but are in different stages in life. I more or less inherited this house but it's a house built for families to be raised. So all my neighbors are 40's+ taking care of at best very young teenage kids, and I'm a 20's tech dude. Not much clicks.
>If one avenue is not there, ones that crave it badly enough will venture forth
I guess all my 20's demograpic in town don't crave socialiation. Or I guess literally all of them are in bars. Not my scene.
This is what I have seen so far. The younger cousins in my extended family consciously opted to live in Chicago-Chicago specifically due to night life. I will admit that I never understood it ( and I moved to suburbs as soon as it became an option for me ). Naturally, all anecdotal, but I doubt people changed that much over 20 or so years.
You have a point and I actually understand that rationale. I have no real argument against it beyond general question of whether individual loneliness should be solved with my forced presence.
Example. My parent has neighbors. They have lived closely to one another. So closely and long, in fact, they had to sue to resolve some outstanding issues. In other words, neither prolonged proximity or meaningful relationship is a useful metric. I will trade those for a new neighbor every year.
Humans work like they always worked. Their predilections move them. If those are not satisfied, they are channeled.