Yeah it sounds like we have a large gulf of personal experience on this matter, so it makes sense that my description doesn't resonate with you. IMO these sort

Yeah it sounds like we have a large gulf of personal experience on this matter, so it makes sense that my description doesn't resonate with you. IMO these sorts of conversations tend to fall down because we don't have the appropriate context to talk about our experiences. For example, I've lived in cities, car-dependent suburbia, and a bike-centric university town. Of those, the city and bike-centric university town were orders of magnitude better to live in. However, I haven't lived in a rural environment, which seems like a very different experience, so I can't speak to the relative quality of the rural vs other-options lifestyle. I like to think, though, that if we had an actual conversation (instead of an ephemeral textual exchange), I could probably explain why city living would likely facilitate many/all of the elements you are looking for in a community. Sadly, nearly all Americans simply haven't gotten to experience living in a city for themselves, and so don't have the context required to understand how cities facilitate community. America has precious few non-car-dependent cities (car-dependent cities don't count as cities IMO, since car-dependency is incompatible with the requisite transportation structure necessary for city communities to thrive).