Maybe our built environment shouldn't consist solely of isolated houses in isolated gated communities where we drive our kids and sit in isolated cars in the school dropoff/pickup lines.
This may just be me, but I hold the opposite view.
When I lived in a rural area with a few acres of property, I was much more social and engaged with my community.
Now I live at the edge of the city in a medium-high density townhouse area with no private outdoor space. Since I can never really get away from people and be alone, I also have no desire to go out and do things and engage with the community.
I think the variability is nice. If I can get home, relax, not have people around, have some private outdoor space, then I can recharge and have the energy to engage more.
You can have a small town with a nice downtown or park where people meet and hang out. You can have walkable neighborhoods without giant apartment buildings. Neighborhoods where kids ride around on bikes.
That's different than a suburb full of isolated gated communities where each house technically has a yard but you still don't have any privacy and the HOA tells you what color to paint your house and fines you for your grass not being perfectly green all year.
You can also have dense areas without green space, full of cars and noise, and without nice places to hang out with friends.
Cities can and often are poorly designed for humans.
Building human-centric places isn’t only about density. Variety of density is good. Places where people can walk, ride bikes, and hang out with friends and family are good.
Congested 6-lane roads aren’t good, whether in cities, suburbs, or rural areas in between.
Yeah so you can give them all that, but if it's mainly inhabited by single "professionals" and couples with dogs, it can still be antisocial. At least that was my experience in grad school housing and living after in college towns. We had walking/biking centric layout, communal gyms and hot tubs, everything.
