My maternal family were old school Italian immigrants, and they were hard people. Oh, they all knew each other. There was work, the Church, and there was the Black Hand too. The second generation left as soon as they could.

Having a motor vehicle allows you to connect with so many more people, because you can pick the folks you want to spend time with even if they are far away. I have a very diverse group of neighbors including hardworking Mexican immigrant contractors, a nice family from Congo, a minister, college students, and a bunch of Google tech bros and sisters with sweet cars. I say hello to everyone and they respond in kind, and sometimes we chat about this and that, but we really have very little in common except that we live on the same street. Sometimes I'll be handed a cocktail or a beer, and that is a substantial enough example of "community" I think.

But mostly I am riding my Suntour Racer and/or taking Port Authority Transit and Amtrak to see my real friends and my family in another place because I can. Most people, and I mean over 90% of the people, would rather take a car to the club, or the course, or the bar, or the restaurant, or the backyard pool, or the bar-b-que, or the meet-up, or the festival, or the concert, or the get-together than hang out in their neighborhood. The automobile offers so much freedom, and incidentally, so many ways to make money. Traveling by foot, public transportation, bicycle, or even an e-micro whatever are degrees harder than taking a car, and most people are pretty lazy.

There were people walking by each other in climate controlled comfort with gurgling fountains, plants, and space age design in indoor shopping malls for fifty years, and where did that go? People go to a mall to shop, not to meet other randos and plan a better community.