Connection Through Everyday Life:
Nurturing New Pathways for Lasting Connection
Many of the social structures that once created ready-made opportunities for connection—extended families living nearby, stable workplaces, religious congregations, civic clubs, and neighborhood associations—no longer shape daily life for large segments of the population. Remote and precarious work, car- and screen-dependent routines, and more individualized patterns of belonging mean fewer people run into one another repeatedly in shared spaces. In the Bay Area, many of us live near other people and still barely interact with our neighbors.
SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau
This investment focus asks a practical question: if fewer people have regular, in-person contact built into their routines, what can make it easier to form and sustain relationships as a regular part of daily life? Rather than trying to recreate legacy institutions in their historical form, we are interested in new—or redesigned—places, programs, and activities that fit how people live today and make ongoing connection more likely.
We are most interested in efforts that are explicit about tackling loneliness and social disconnection—not as an assumed byproduct of bringing people together, but as a central outcome. That means being clear about who the effort is for, how it is expected to reduce loneliness over time, and what signals will indicate that it is working. Research highlights approaches with several common features:
- Regular contact that is easy to join: recurring, low-barrier opportunities for in-person connection that do not require prior relationships, high cost, or specialized knowledge.
- Connection beyond usual circles: designs that bring together people who might not otherwise meet—across age, background, or viewpoint—through shared activity and shared responsibility.
- A path from participant to contributor: clear roles that let people take responsibility over time—co-hosting, volunteering, mentoring, or helping shape the activity—so connection grows through shared effort and purpose.
- Technology that supports real community: tools that help people move from online interaction into face-to-face relationships, or that shape online spaces in ways that reward cooperation, empathy, and looking out for others.
"You can’t just turn back the clock. You have to rethink the problem entirely—and the potential solutions too.”
~ “Why Is the Loneliness Epidemic So Hard to Cure?”, New York Times Magazine
This may require rethinking the basic design of how people connect—starting with existing public settings such as libraries, parks, schools, health care environments, transit hubs, service programs, and workplaces. It can also mean creating entirely new pathways to belonging—hybrid, digital, or purpose-built spaces designed to go beyond mere interaction to help relationships form, take root, and endure. The work will also require investing in the people who make any setting relational: community builders, organizers, hosts, coaches, facilitators, and peer leaders who can turn a space or program into a place where relationships grow over time.
Examples could look like:
- Neighbor-to-neighbor shared responsibility: block projects, mutual-aid teams, or rotating hosts that turn proximity into relationship.
- Groups built around doing: kitchens, repair cafés, gardens, arts labs, or resilience projects where connection grows through shared work.
- Tech that redefines engagement: tools that shift the goal from clicks, prolonged use, or transactional participation toward purposeful connection.
- Welcoming pathways for newcomers and transitions: light facilitation and recurring gatherings for people new to a neighborhood, city, job, or life stage.
- Workplace cohorts for remote, hybrid, or shift workers: employer- or union-backed peer circles and shared projects that build regular connection beyond tasks.
- Community builders embedded in everyday institutions: hosts and connectors in libraries, housing, schools, service sites, and similar settings who help people meet, return, and take on roles.
Residents gather at a 2025 National Night Out block party on Boulevard Way at the Oakland-Piedmont border. Credit: Florence Middleton for The Oaklandside, a publication of grantee Cityside Journalism.
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