Craving community: How neighborly ties can reduce loneliness and improve public safety

THE BAY AREA has always been a laboratory for community. We’ve written the playbooks for co-ops, eco-villages and bold experiments in alternative living. We’ve crafted neighborhood sanctuaries like the Castro, built on pride and protest, and West Oakland, where the Black Panther Party redefined community power. That spirit hasn’t vanished, but it’s harder to hold onto.

Young people are moving to Austin and New York, parents are exhausted, unsupported and fleeing to the suburbs, and we’re in the middle of a vast loneliness epidemic. Amidst the swirl of the housing crisis, safety concerns, and promising new plans from Mayor Daniel Lurie to tackle both, one theme keeps surfacing in my late-night conversations and group chats: community. Not the abstract kind, but the real, tangible kind: shared childcare, communal dinners, maybe a big plot of land with some tiny homes (hello, Bestie Row in Texas) and a communal chicken or two.

Lurie’s initiatives focus on building more housing and improving public safety — and they’re badly needed. But what’s missing is an investment in the invisible glue that makes cities livable: the everyday ties between neighbors that create real belonging. This craving for closeness isn’t just a vibe shift — it’s a signal that the way we’ve structured modern life might be due for a rethink.