Suburbs often have physical constraints with the way houses are laid out making this "stoop coffee" approach more difficult, if anything. Houses laid out in a way that you're more likely to drink your coffee on your back patio surrounded by a fence or hedges to avoid being seen. And even if you are sitting in front of your house, neighbors are more likely to be driving by instead of walking so not very likely to stop and chat.
In densely populated cities, you are often in close proximity with other humans you haven't met yet. But there can be social and cultural norms to keep walking and avoid eye contact because social interaction with all the countless people you pass is completely impractical.
I think we're a long way off from the communities when Jane Jacobs lived. An except that I frequently think about, I can't even fathom in a large city in the current era, and not because technology has solved the key problem.
>Joe Cornacchia, who keeps the delicatessen,
usually has a dozen or so keys at a time for handing out like
this. He has a special drawer for them.
>Now why do I, and many others, select Joe as a logical
custodian for keys? Because we trust him, first, to be a respon
sible custodian, but equally important because we know that he
combines a feeling of good will with a feeling of no personal
responsibility about our private affairs. Joe considers it no con
cern of his whom we choose to permit in our places and why.
Around on the other side of our block, people leave their keys
at a Spanish grocery. On the other side of Joe's block, people
leave them at the candy store. Down a block they leave them at the coffee shop, and a few hundred feet around the corner from that,
in a barber shop. Around one corner from two fashionable
blocks of town houses and apartments in the Upper East Side,
people leave their keys in a butcher shop and a bookshop; around another corner they leave them in a cleaner's and a drug store.
>In unfashionable East Harlem keys are left with at least one
florist, in bakeries, in luncheonettes, in Spanish and Italian groceries.
>This still happens in my experience, I've picked up keys from friends and Airbnb hosts via a local business in the past few years.
Seems strange to me, I've never done anything of the sort and wouldn't consider it. The closest is maybe leaving things at school for another parent to pickup because they left them with my kid.
But there is usually a code with some app and all of the social aspects have been removed. It’s not much different than being a higher scale realtor key box.
Well, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't but the idea that a local store owner wouldn't give me if I were to give off a "dangerous vibe" would be somewhat concerning. But maybe I have ancestry etc. where I just don't give off that vibe. More generally, I guess I'm just pretty used to lodging where a delayed flight doesn't mean I can't get in.
I'm a paying customer, why tf should I care what the clerk thinks?
I paid the money, give me the key. Plus at no point did I pay them any money -- they're just, essentially, key escrow.
It's good marketing for them since being in and out of a pizza place means someone will likely buy a slice, but as a BnB customer IDGAF what they think outside of giving me that bloody key.
In the context of a lot of discussions here, Jacobs also seemed to believe in community driven development. Yes, she helped stop some highway development that many people here would (mostly rightly) hate. But a lot of people here would also consider her a NIMBY--even a fairly strong one--for supporting the right of communities to drive their own development whatever outsiders might desire.
I’m not sure it’s so much hostility to outsiders as such, as we like things mostly the way they are and we won’t appreciate if you come in and agitate for big change.
I live in an inner-ring suburb of Chicago (Oak Park) and stoop coffee would be much easier to do here than in San Francisco (where I lived many years ago).
There's no official definition of what the "the suburbs" means, but when people say that they usually mean "areas that follow a post-war suburban style of development". Think culdesacs and no sidewalks. The area you linked looks to me more like an older "streetcar suburb", which I think most people would just call "the city".
Nobody I know would call that street the city. In my mind, "the city" is, minimally, houses that are a few feet apart, small yard in back/front, pretty much nothing on the side. Frequently, it's 2-3 story buildings, with whole floors rented out as an apartment. That's my "least dense" vision of a city. Anything less than that (ie, full yards) falls into my vision of suburb.
Those houses are more densely packed than in what I'd call a suburb. And much more importantly, nothing in that area is more than a few blocks from some sort of commerce. Suburbia (at least in the US) isn't so much about the houses themselves, but what's around them. I'm in one of those "streetcar suburbs" and the nearest store is a mile away and the bus comes every 20 minutes. I could get by without a car but it would be very annoying. You might find a fairly similar set of houses in the nearby city, but they'll be near a lot of stuff and living without a car would be far more practical.
Yeah, I wouldn't call that a suburb either for practical purposes. It would be one by the definition of "small city near big city," but in terms of how it functions it looks like city to me.
This is the Chicago block I grew up on. It's less dense than Oak Park. It's easy find blocks like it elsewhere in Chicago. Jeff Park in Chicago and Oak Park are basically clones of each other.
This is really what most of Chicago looks like (modulo economic conditions in the different neighborhoods --- they're not all this upscale). It's a city of neighborhoods. Most of the streetscapes that jump to mind about Chicago, if you don't live here, are places people basically don't live.
Wow, you weren't kidding about the relative density between those areas. I'd consider Oak Park dense compared to most suburbs, just not as dense as some neighborhoods in Chicago. I'm most familiar with the north side neighborhoods and had those kind of lots in mind, with their near non-existent front yards, with front steps right off the sidewalk, and virtually no front driveways.
Apartment building on Pine Grove in Lakeview for me and then a beautiful old two flat in Ravenswood. My rent in Pine Grove in 1999 was $400 I think for a two room apartment.
Small world, my wife and I literally just moved to Beverly not far from there. This area is a bit of liminal space between city and suburbs (or at least my definition of them) and it can vary quite a bit block to block. I'm walking distance to a grocery store, the Metra, coffee shops, restaurants, parks, etc., which is unfortunately more than many areas of Chicago can say.
I moved from a denser part of Bridgeport, so it definitely has been an adjustment (particularly in variety). But even some areas of Bridgeport, which is much closer to downtown, had pockets that are equivalently walkable to where I'm at now, or maybe even less so. Anyone surprised to see SFHs and front yards in Chicago probably hasn't ventured far out of downtown/a handful of North Side neighborhoods.
Some US cities incorporated their lower-density "streetcar suburbs" over the years and other US cities didn't. This is why "Kansas City" proper has literal farmland [0] within its city limits, while "St. Louis" proper [1] on the other side of the state doesn't even include most of the skyscraper development that's occurred there within the last 40 years.
This is entirely arbitrary and knowing whether a particular place is technically part of "the city" doesn't really tell you anything about it. As you might expect, this causes a ton of unnecessary confusion.
They're pretty clearly not using "the city" to refer to city but instead to a certain density threshold, so pointing out that city limits are arbitrary doesn't really help anything.
What you're describing is called "agreement." I'm very plainly arguing that if the distinction between "city" and "suburb" is to mean anything at all, then it can't just be about what's within municipal boundaries and what isn't.
So you were agreeing with OP's comment, not disagreeing?
> Nobody I know would call that street the city. In my mind, "the city" is, minimally, houses that are a few feet apart, small yard in back/front, pretty much nothing on the side. Frequently, it's 2-3 story buildings, with whole floors rented out as an apartment. That's my "least dense" vision of a city. Anything less than that (ie, full yards) falls into my vision of suburb.
That's why people have been using paragraphs to clarify what they mean. Paragraphs that you seem to have ignored in favor of critiquing the utility that specific words have when taken out of the context the author intentionally put them in.
No clue about Seattle, but they definitely do in Northern VA where I live. Every new development that requires a change of permitted use goes through a lengthy review process with plenty of opportunity for locals to object.
Edit - sibling comment indicates Seattle has something similar.
> but when people say that they usually mean "areas that follow a post-war suburban style of development". Think culdesacs and no sidewalks.
Define people?
When most people I know say suburb they mean this: You're far enough the urban core that you probably have to drive to get to shops and jobs, but close enough to the urban core that you don't pass through farmland to get there. Some suburbs are like what you describe, but most are exactly like what OP links to.
I'm not at all sure what the utility is of a using a definition of suburb that excludes most of the not-high-density but not-rural US and only counts the absolute worst-designed spaces. It just means we're all talking past each other, with some of us saying "not all suburbs are terrible" and others insisting that suburbs are by definition terrible and anything that isn't terrible isn't a suburb. It's a bit of a True Scotsman fallacy and doesn't make for very useful dialog.
I believe the colloquial definition has changed substantially over the last ~100 years in the US. As a concrete example, Travis Heights (part of Austin) was initially advertised as "Austin's first suburb", but is very much inside the city core today. In the UK, this is true of places like New Malden or even Wimbledon, which were as-built not part of London and were referred to as "suburbs", but are categorized that way by approximately no-one today.
You're right that people in practice use the word "suburb" to talk about all these different things, but that just reinforces that the word isn't very useful. Oak Park and Naperville are both "suburbs," but this reveals nothing to us. In fact, it mostly obfuscates.
A suburb is outside of the city in low density housing, typically not within walking distance of anything. That reveals plenty for a lot of purposes, and if you want to critique something more specific than that you should use a word that people will recognize as being more specific than that.
Clearly the author of TFA believed that this was the definition of suburb, because they were clearly thinking of a space where people could in fact just hang out in front of their houses and meet neighbors. So for the purpose of this conversation, this definition of suburb is the only one that makes sense.
There is nobody in Chicago who would describe Oak Park and Evanston as anything other than "suburbs". You'd get laughed at if you called them "the city".
Right. I'm not at all sure why some people on here think "suburb" is only meant to refer to a very specific type of housing development, rather than a description of a location's spatial and cultural relationship to "the city".
I mean, you’re making the same sort of NTS argument here, aren’t you?
> Some suburbs are like what you describe, but most are exactly like what OP links to.
Without defining what constitutes a suburb, how can you argue that most are good? Your argument hinges on your own definition of suburb IMHO.
I’m not sure what the right answer is, but in my experience most people mean post-war development patterns when they talk about suburbs, but in any case it probably doesn’t hurt to be more precise about what we are praising or criticizing.
No, I'm not, because I'm not saying that what you are identifying as a suburb isn't a suburb, I'm saying it's not representative of all suburbs. I provide a perfectly valid definition:
> You're far enough the urban core that you probably have to drive to get to shops and jobs, but close enough to the urban core that you don't pass through farmland to get there.
Since my definition is broader it's less susceptible to NTS fallacies. What you identify as a suburb is a suburb but it is not all suburbs.
> but in my experience most people mean post-war development patterns when they talk about suburbs
Even this is too broad to sweepingly say all suburbs are bad. I've lived in 5 different suburban neighborhoods as an adult, 4 of which were developed post-war, and all had sidewalks and plenty of walking around and neighborly interaction.
That is a definition you're making up to suit an argument you're making. It's not the actual definition of the term. Anybody can just look it up and see that! The Oxford Languages dataset that Google uses for the definition literally uses Chicago's suburbs as an example.
And, seriously, who cares? Why would you want your argument to die on this hill? What could it possibly matter?
I'm not sure why you're critiquing my definition, given that I'm trying to emphasize that your specific Chicago suburb very much does meet the typical way that people think of suburbs. So yes, I agree with Google: Chicago's suburbs are suburbs. Oak Park is not within walking distance of anything that most people I know would identify as "the city", which puts it squarely in the suburbs in my book.
Did you read me as disagreeing with you, or did I misunderstand and you were trying to say that Oak Park isn't a suburb? Or is Oak Park actually within walking distance of "the city" as Chicagoans would identify it?
Oh I may just be reading the thread backwards! Sorry. Yes, Oak Park is definitely a suburb. Oak Park is also extremely within walking distance of the city; it's across Austin Blvd from it.
Yes, both the parent and I agree that Oak Park is a suburb (and a lovely one by the way; I hit up Amerikas every time I visit)—I was pointing out that he was making an argument of the same style that he was criticizing (using his own definition of a suburb to advocate for his own definition of a suburb).
In any case, I think there are multiple valid definitions for suburb—one which talks about smaller towns on the periphery of large cities and another which emphasizes postwar design principles/philosophies. I don’t see the point in arguing for a single true definition; language doesn’t work that way.
Agree. Lots of US cities have neighborhoods like this outside of the downtown business districts. Even in NYC, famous for concrete-jungle apartment dwelling, you find this in Staten Island and in parts of Queens.
we each can only rely on our own experiences, but mine don't agree with you. suburbs in the US northeast have sidewalks. most of LA looks like a suburb to a nor'easter. No sidewalk? rural.
I agree, and outside of Fly.io the thing I work hardest on is advocating for more density here; we're slowly transforming into Winnetka (if you're not a Chicago person, Winnetka is the John Hughes suburb you have in your head when people say things like "suburbs are nothing like the city"). Thankfully, we have a board consensus that has us pointed in the general direction of eliminating single-family zoning, allowing as-of-right 3- and 4-flats everywhere in the Village.
Lol this is the most chicago looking chicago that has ever chicagoed. I clicked the link before really registering the comment, and was confused why I was looking at a random Chicago neighborhood. While I do like the way chicago neighborhoods are set up (especially the space between houses and general greenery) I think the compactness that SF has creates more opportunity for interaction.
That being said, we did have this sorta thing on my block during covid times (once ppl stopped caring abt the social distancing and mask nonsense) but then the main families that did this moved away to bigger houses (as their families grew) and now it’s basically dead as there wasn’t a lot of intention behind it like the OP clearly has.
My wife and I, several years ago, stayed in an Oak Park hotel while visiting Chicago. There was a sort of food festival we happened upon and everyone was extremely friendly. As we rode the el train in, we were fascinated by the view of the closed Brachs factory.
hey neighbor :) we should totally do this in oak park. oak parkers already kinda do "stoop coffee", but usually only twice a year during a pre-planned block party. i could see this expanded to something a little more frequent, like maybe sunday mornings from memorial day to labor day.
I'm amused to see so many of my neighbors on here - we could do a Hacker News Stoop at one of the coffee shops (Whirlwind is my regular, but it's not like any of the ones in OP are hard to get to!)
My thing since I moved houses a couple years ago is just hanging out on the porch, and I'm probably just going to start telling people when I'm going to be out there and inviting everyone to just come over.
I live in a big city in central Illinois, and we have neighborhoods like that in the city. It's hard for people outside to understand that I have suburban style neighborhood but I could walk to the DMV.
Sen was a lifeline during the pandemic when going into the city for Japanese stopped being an option. One of the better Oak Park restaurants, in a suburb that is not exactly known for great restaurants.
Looking around the neighborhood, I'm seeing sidewalks on many of those streets, paved paths along public green spaces that run between the houses, multiple apartment buildings and a retirement center. Looking at the map, there also appear to be trails through the woods leading to a nearby sports center that's a 5 minute walk away, as well as a nearby bakery.
> Suburbs often have physical constraints with the way houses are laid out making this "stoop coffee" approach more difficult, if anything. Houses laid out in a way that you're more likely to drink your coffee on your back patio surrounded by a fence or hedges to avoid being seen.
This has not been my experience in the surburbs. A typical suburban home has both spaces: a front yard/patio and a back yard/patio. If anything the physical constraints are substantially more conducive to hanging out out front than what I'm seeing in these photos here—people in the suburbs have some amount of space that they actually own in front of their home, they don't have to occupy the sidewalk.
As OP said, which one people choose to use depends on the personality of the individual, not the layout of the space. For example: our last four homes, like every home in each neighborhood, have had both, and I always prefer to be out back while my wife loves being out front interacting with the neighbors as they walk by (which, yes, they have regularly done in all four neighborhoods!).
Apparently there's some idea that suburbs by definition don't have sidewalks and have half acre lots with oversized McMansions. If that's your definition of suburb, I take it back: I've never lived in a suburb. But I also strongly question the utility that definition for discourse like this.
If some people here think that a suburb has to be the absolute worst stereotype of NIMBY living to count as a suburb and others are talking about anything with detached single family homes and yards, we're having very very different conversations. It seems more useful to work with the definition of suburb that simply means "outside the urban core".
There's a spectrum of density, and perhaps the sweet spot for front-porch interactions is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. I live in a neighborhood with ample front porches and sidewalks -- and I've heard it referred to both as a suburb (by dense city dwellers) and "the city" (by people who live further out from the dense urban core). But it's easy to imagine both a dense city neighborhood and a semi-rural far-flung suburb with no front porches and no culture of interacting with neighbors.
Even the definition of "outside the urban core" is hard to pin down; I'm pretty sure you could get disagreement on whether where I live is within the urban core or not.
Yes, counterexamples exist. But the vast majority of American suburbia is quite like what you describe: isolated homes with very low density where the only way to get to anything you’d want to do is drive, even within the neighborhood!
I don’t have a front yard in my home in the city. But I do have a million things outside my front door. So I walk to them, and I see and meet neighbors along the way.
But you know what suburbs typically do have? Pleasant areas to walk in.
I walk my dog and meet neighbors who are sitting outside their houses. I also sit outside my house and meet neighbors who are out walking their dogs or just out for a stroll.
When I've spent time in big cities I simply don't see this, because there aren't good places to walk dogs and it's generally unpleasant to just be out in the street for the sake of it.
The idea that all suburbs are isolated nightmarish hellscapes of pavement and car accidents is some combination of a myth spread by city dwellers and a minority experience in a few types of McMansion housing developments.
I think this may vary massively depending on what suburbs in what country and even what city you are talking about. The "usable front yard" or "front patio" is an almost non-existent design feature in free standing homes in Australia, at least in the more moderate climates in the southern side of the eastern seaboard.
I'd heavily agree with the idea that my suburban experience is that I do not know my neighbours, and the only time I've known them has been for bad reasons (harassment, fencing disputes etc.). In the inner city, I may not know my neighbours, but you probably know and interact with your general community in public spaces a lot more than the suburbs, mainly because you don't get everywhere by car. The small coffee shop on every corner in the gentrified inner city where people wait on the path for their coffee is a bit reminiscent (to a lesser degree) of the "stoop coffee" idea. That experience in the suburbs only really exists through your children (i.e. via schools and sports clubs) and doesn't exist much for child-free people.
With growing high density development near train stations in the suburbs, there is a bit more of this experience further from the city center. However it is really limited to a few square kilometers of urbanism and apartment living that then gives way to endless free standing houses and car dependent suburbia.
It’s easier to sit out in the suburbs, but the layout and infrastructure don’t generally encourage walking around, so there are a lot fewer neighbors walking past.
Generally, surburbs are better at encouraging walking/cycling around (since there's very little traffic), but worse at encouraging people to walk to commercial areas (since they're usually far away and the path there is unpleasant).
In my experience, you're far more likely to see kids biking/wandering around neighborhoods in the suburbs than in the city. This is the reason why people want things like cul-de-sacs, because eliminating through traffic means that people are able to use the area much more freely without having to worry about cars.
This doesn't match my personal experience, at all. Even the cutest and most pedestrian friendly suburbs have far less walking than typical cities, with faster more dangerous traffic, and less infrastructure for alternative modes of travel.
> far more likely to see kids biking/wandering around neighborhoods in the suburbs than in the city
This also doesn't come close to matching my personal experience (though it does match many people's inaccurate stereotypes, which I have heard repeatedly in conversations with people who don't live in cities). There are tons of kids and families around in cities.
> eliminating through traffic means that people are able to use the area much more freely
Quite the opposite. Cul-de-sacs cut places off from easy pedestrian access and make it usually significantly more difficult and dangerous to get anywhere by walking, because to get to destinations requires crossing massive (sometimes 6–10 lane) quasi-highways with high-speed traffic. Such places typically also come with separated residential and commercial zones and few useful destinations nearby: not as many schools, museums, libraries, parks, coffee shops, restaurants, retail stores, etc. within a reasonable distance, and lower population density with much more pavement per person. The predicable result is that in most places with many cul-de-sacs hardly any trips are made on foot or bike and people end up driving everywhere. Public transit also tends to suck in places with cul-de-sacs everywhere.
> (though it does match many people's inaccurate stereotypes, which I have heard repeatedly in conversations with people who don't live in cities)
I run into the opposite problem - people who grew up in the suburbs, move into gentrifying city neighborhoods as adults, and who carry idealized view of the city they moved to, will often accuse others - even people who have lived in the city there entire life - of being an outsider if they don't hold the same idealized view.
Judging by how shocked this type of person often gets when I tell them I was born and raised here ("You from here? 'Here' here? Wow, that's pretty rare!"), I get the impression that many of these people live in a bit of a gentrification bubble. Which is fine, but it would be nice if they were aware that there was much more to the city than the gentrification bubble (including people who have lived here far longer than them, sometimes for generations).
Anyway, you'll notice I never claimed there weren't "tons of kids and families around in cities," but rather that seeing kids roaming around neighborhoods on their own was more common in the suburbs than the city (at least based on my personal experience).
> Cul-de-sacs cut places off from easy pedestrian access and make it usually significantly more difficult and dangerous to get anywhere by walking, because to get to destinations requires crossing massive (sometimes 6–10 lane) quasi-highways with high-speed traffic.
This is a non-sequitur. I already mentioned in my post that in the suburbs it's more difficult to get to commercial destinations. That doesn't change the fact that a cul-de-sac is an area with little traffic, that most suburban developments/neighborhoods have pretty light traffic, and that you're typically going to encounter very little traffic inside these developments/neighborhoods.
> Generally, surburbs are better at encouraging walking/cycling around
Having lived in both, this is just categorically untrue.
Cities are filled with pedestrians and cyclists. Both recreationally and for practical purposes. In a given hour I might see over a hundred pedestrians outside my window and perhaps twenty cyclists. This would be an order of magnitude higher if I was on a commercial corridor or actually busy street.
In contrast you might see ten pedestrians a day in most parts of the suburbs. And maybe one or two cyclists, unless you leave your neighborhood.
Suburbs also have far worse traffic. City streets have small roads and slow-moving vehicles. Suburbs have giant thoroughfares and fast-moving vehicles. As a pedestrian and cyclists, I know which of the two I’d rather be in.
Really? My experience in the suburbs is that there are a lot of people "going on walks" with dogs and kids in the evening. People aren't walking TO places, but there is a lot of just walking around.
Suburbs are not hostile to pedestrians. They are hostile to getting anyplace on foot so cars are common. However they are great places to walk for exercise and many people who live there do that. (see the sibling comment about walking the dog)
My experience with suburbs is different from yours. I have lived in places where walking is downright dangerous because the architecture is oriented around cars and the drivers are not accustomed to yielding to pedestrians.
Many homes are designed such that the inhabitants rarely use the front door, using only the garage.
That doesn't sound like suburbs I know. The streets are so empty you can safely walk down the middle of them most of the time. People don't, but you could. (kids used to play baseball/basketball in the streets, stopping play when cars come). Of course to get anywhere you need to leave and so it is never far for a major road that is dangerous to be near.
I am sure that you have seen some pedestrian friendly suburbs. So have I. I never said that they are all hostile to pedestrians. Some are designed for people instead of cars. It is rare.
It also depends on the suburb. I was sad when I lived in Mountain View, heading in sight unseen, but there were a lot of sidewalks and a little main drag with some bars and shops.
A lot of "suburbs" in the Midwest lack sidewalks -- you can have the cops roll on you if you try to walk anywhere.
Where I am in the suburbs, all the dogs know each other, because most of them are on invisible fence lots and they all visit every other dog when on a walk. And it's common for the owner to come out and say hi, too. That being said, I know some of my neighbors by their dog's name ("That's Taj's dad").
>Suburbs often have physical constraints with the way houses are laid out making this "stoop coffee" approach more difficult, if anything.
Sure, but they are a lot more setup for walking dogs and casual walks and bike rides with your family and friends. The version of stoop coffee in my neighborhood is people walking their dogs and then stopping to chat. That and leaning on their fence talking to their neighbors.
Suburbia houses are usually right next to each other. Densely populated cities stack housing so you have to go down to get out. I've found that its much easier to meeting people in single family homes than five level flats. In any case, the US even in cities, is not set up for gatherings like it is in Europe where there are large spaces people go to socialize.
His thesis is some of the US must be torn down to rebuild it in a
friendlier community-enabling way.
Curiously, to the OP's "stoop coffee" topic, he already recognized
the communicative potential/value of the space in front of houses, and he
points out that old European cities "got that right" (and having a central
market square, too).
In my city, the only places I see neighbours gathering on their front porches is in prewar neighbourhoods with single family style homes (many actually split into apartments).
These houses have narrow lots, a porch right up to the sidewalk, and are on narrow streets. Newer neighbourhoods don't have that magic combination - even when the lots are narrow and there is no garage in the front, there is always a setback, a useless front yard, and more often than not no porch (or a "vestigial" porch that's too shallow to use comfortably).
Editing to add: The old neighborhoods are nearly always on a grid of streets, where every street has passers by. Newer neighbourhoods will have hierarchical streets that include crescents and cul de sacs, which connect to nothing and have nobody just passing through (although that does seem to be changing in the newest neighbourhoods).
I live in the burbs and I feel like almost everyone in the neighborhood has a dog. No matter what time I'm leaving my house, there's always someone walking their dog. Of course some times are busier than others, but I feel like dog walking itself can become a pretty good sense community.
I agree with your points about the challenges in both suburban and urban environments. I think the design of public spaces also plays a significant role. Intentional design can help overcome some of these challenges and foster more impromptu social interactions.
In densely populated cities, you are often in close proximity with other humans you haven't met yet. But there can be social and cultural norms to keep walking and avoid eye contact because social interaction with all the countless people you pass is completely impractical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AoNuz1gjQo
So both environments have their challenges for impromptu social interactions.