For most of human history, we have lived in settlements where we slept a stones toss (not even a throw) from our neighbors, for security and also because travel

For most of human history, we have lived in settlements where we slept a stones toss (not even a throw) from our neighbors, for security and also because traveling a long distance for daily activities took to much physical energy. This was true whether the settlement was as city, town, or village. The discovery of petroleum and the invention and popularizing of cars enabled people to build and live an imitation of the aristocratic lifestyle. Ironically, the aristocrats in their hilltop palaces and castles weren't nearly as isolated since they would always have a cadre of personal attendants to serve them. Quite reasonably, nobody wants to go back to the poverty and hardships of village and tenement life, of course. But people quite reasonably have identified what was lost in the shift away from that spatial arrangement.