The modern city is a place of social circles; clusters of contacts who know each other and strangers who don’t. It is a place where diverse relationships are in decline. In the city, strangers seldom meet beyond daily functions. Instead they brush by with a haste and preoccupation that so defines a century of ‘too little time’. Where once we valued common courtesy, now we encourage the message of “stranger danger”. Often we do not test this message as we grow older. Instead we live side by side with strangers, and remain firmly as ever, psychologically miles apart.


In this book I attempt to address this problem. I ask the following questions:

1) How can we bring back mutual understanding, empathy and common concern between ourselves, strangers and other groups?

2) How can we reduce our instinctual urge to categorise other people?

3) How can we restore a sense of “community” into modern cities?

My own research reveals a large body of evidence leading to a single conclusion: if we want to connect with strangers in our society, and form diverse, cohesive communities, we must minimise the categorical distinctions in our everyday life. We must once again bring people together, in close physical proximity, even if they are from different segments of society.

We can use physical proximity to overcome our natural urges to seek out ‘one of our own’ and foster communities that are more diverse and inclusive by nature. By bringing disparate groups into the same space, we can foster mutual understanding, empathy and in some cases friendship. This could mend some of the categorical division that exists in society today, including issues of racism, sexism and religious intolerance.