Don Martin

But if we start off by talking about Animal Crossing, if I'm a little self-deprecating, if I invite you into the conversation and reframe things in a way that feels accessible, approachable, and uplifting, not only can you learn, but you can learn how you matter inside of all of it.

Oh, God.

Actually, I'm going to steal an answer.

From one of the people that I interviewed, and it was a woman named Sherry who spent decades as a city planner.

And I asked her a similar question.

I said, okay, so you have a magic wand and you can change one thing about society.

What would you change?

And she's okay.

So if it's not mixed use spaces, if it's just like something magical, I would move the garage behind the house.

And I was like, what do you mean?

He's like, we aren't entering or exiting our homes from our front doors anymore.

And in my experience as a city planner, people self-reported feeling lonelier in places where the garage is in front of the door.

Because we are entering and exiting our homes through our garage.

We are entering and exiting our homes through our cars.

So that even that little bit of time that we spend going in and out of our front door, waving at our neighbors, seeing how lives are being lived next to us, across from us, we're not getting that anymore.

We haven't gotten that in a really long time.

So I think...

Some level of putting people in proximity to one another and encouraging one another to literally just spend time with each other.

Going in and out of your front door, more mixed use spaces, communities that are actual communities and not just isolated islands of big boxy houses.

I think that starts at the street level.