Friends Are Under-Clustered. Why?
23rd April 2022
Imagine a world in which we could take care of our friends’ kids when they need to pop out, because our friends live a stone’s throw away. A world where any time you wanted to head out for a quick drink there would be a friend within ten minutes’ walk to go with. A world where you can easily get a pal over to set up a barbecue, or where you can play board games or have supper with friends on the slightest whim. Why don’t we live in that world already?
I live in London, a pretty large city. When I want to see my friends I often have to travel 45 minutes or an hour across town to do so. This level of latency is pretty annoying. Imagine how many Friends plotlines would have been broken if they hadn’t always been agglomerating across the hall from one another or in Central Perk.
This is much easier to do if everybody is renting in a dense urban area instead of owning homes in the suburbs, which is more usually the case.