Coincidentally I am reading Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery and just read this passage and immediately thought of this thread:

We are torn between competing needs. None are more contradictory than the push-pull between proximity and isolation. In some ways our needs are at war with each other.

We need the nourishing, helping warmth of other people, but we also need the healing touch of nature. We need to connect, but we also need to retreat. We benefit from the conveniences of proximity, but these conveniences can come with the price of overstimulation and crowding. We will not solve the conundrum of sustainable city living unless we understand these contradictory forces and resolve the tension between them. How much space, privacy, and distance from other people do we need?