... how easy it is to make friends? What, what do you mean by that?

Well, you know, I've heard some of your callers talk about, uh, suggesting, you know, we just need to work harder.

We need to reach out to other people.

We need to put ourselves out there.

And yes, but it's not always your fault if you're feeling disconnected or you're having a hard time making adult friendships.

Our cities...

In fact, so much of modern life has been designed in ways that push us apart.

What, what do they do then at this point?

So where's the line between density that helps and density that hurts?

Good question.

My team at Happy Cities has studied this in the last few years.

We were looking at Metro Vancouver.

And what we found is actually social well-being is not strongly correlated with density.

It's correlated with access to amenities.

In other words, people who were happy, who were connected with their neighbors, who enjoyed where they lived, they had more parks, shops, services, transit, all this kind of stuff nearby.

If people are already more trustworthy than we think, why does design matter at all? And what can a place actually do to help people trust each other?