Thought you might be interested Thursday: housing choices impact adult friendships

David Roberts considers individual and group connections and why adults struggle to make friends and maintain friendships in How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult. In the Vox article, Roberts considers a number of studies and other works on the topic of friendship. But what intrigues Roberts is the built environment: "Our ability to form and maintain friendships is shaped in crucial ways by the physical spaces in which we live."

Further, Roberts writes,

Why do we form such strong friendships in high school and college and form comparatively fewer as the years go on?

I read a study many years ago that I have thought about many times since, though hours of effort have failed to track it down. The gist was that the key ingredient for the formation of friendships is repeated spontaneous contact. That's why we make friends in school — because we are forced into regular contact with the same people. It is the natural soil out of which friendship grows.

This piece is not simply about housing. Think about how connections help improve an individual's physical and mental health. Think about how connections strengthen neighborhoods and communities. What public policy challenges can be solved by improving and increasing connections?