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veen  ·  4017 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Life of solitude: A loneliness crisis is looming

    I would say that for example, cities in the the Netherlands tend to be better structured for more social interaction.

That is most definitely true, but the article above was focussing a bit too much on the city side, so I felt compelled to highlight other important contributors to this increasing solitude.

Cities here often have energetic city centres, with lots of bars, terraces and shops, so people nearly always have a place to come together. I noticed when I went to Canada (which is basically America-Light) that there was a distinct lack of space that belonged to everyone. The fact that a mall of all places is considered the main meeting point, even being a trope says something about the lack of public open spaces (and also about the consumer-centric American society but that's a whole different discussion).

    Anyway, I'd be interested in reading more about this from an urban planning perspective, so I do hope you'll take some time to put something together.

I'll definitely work on something! The only problem is that all these things are related and that makes it hard to choose what exactly I want to talk about. But I'll try to work something out.