It feels like there's nothing of substance in this article. My own addition to this beyond the "we need third spaces", etc. that gets repeated is that I believ

It feels like there's nothing of substance in this article. My own addition to this beyond the "we need third spaces", etc. that gets repeated is that I believe where you live has a huge influence that maybe scales in a way that is not tangible to a person who hasn't experienced it. My life in NYC is wildly different than what it was back on the west coast. I struggled to make friends in Portland, Seattle, and SF. I found that those cities were not just lacking friendliness but somewhat actively hostile towards building friendships. Seattle having the "Seattle Freeze", SF being full of introverted fobs who had a disdain for anything that wasn't their own culture, and Portland being against anything that wasn't anticomformist. By no means is NYC perfect, it is far from it, but it has allowed me to meet a lot of people who are completely open to meeting new people and making new friends. Will these be friends I have for the rest of my life? Probably not but they sure do make the time pass more easily. I do find it has a "quality" issue when it comes to friendships but I think that is somewhat also due to the sheer volume of people I am thrown. What is alarming to me about NYC is how many people who are native to this region are willing to make new friends. It almost felt that with any place that I lived on the west coast, it was almost a given that you'd never make friends with locals because once they found their little insular group then they'd never branch out of it and never make new friends. It created an overall unwelcoming environment because everyone didn't want to ever try anything new. Anyway, just my two cents. Different cities even within the same country can yield wildly different results. I will miss the accessibility of friendship when I do inevitably move back to the bay area to start a family - but I am hoping I will be so focused on my immediate family that I will not be too bothered by the loneliness of not having as many easily accessible friendships.