The mix of, fewer cars, better transportation systems that's cheaper than cars, more concentrated populations, and fewer people out in the suburbs leads to many people having to walk to work, the place they will eat, or anywhere they need to go really. There are thousands of people out on the streets of any city you point on the map in Europe, meanwhile streets outside of select few areas in the US are devoid of any life, everyone is in their car. Even if people do go to work in their cars, and are willing to put up wih he inadequade streets which are inadequate for the amount of cars on them, they still need to eat. People don't use their cars to find food since you don't have huge parking lots where hundreds of cars can park. You meet people on the street just getting food.

I cannot think of a single way that I can actively use to not meet people and socialize, for better or for worse, in a European city. Meanwhile if I am as passive about socializing in the US, ouside of the before mentioned handful of cities, then I will just not meet people outside of work.

Answer me this. Do you have to be active in said town? If all you did was just go to work and get food and meet with your buddies, how much would you have socialized with the other people there? You yourself said you were active, what if you weren't? Believe it or not the one or two random guys every few days really adds up to a lot at the end of the year, ad by the end of several years it's a big amount.

The closest thing to being actively social in the US, outside of NYC, are college campuses where I can jsut passively go about my day and meet a wide variety of people without being active in groups or any of those things and evenrtually I meet new friends. In fact, a college campus' social environment is exactly the way cities work in Europe, and you know just how many new people you meet on a college campus in the US.

In the US, 1 out of 4 people have zero people they can confide in. In fact the average number of close friends, and this is for the US but I am sure it's true for Europe as well since it has been getting more Americanized lately, has been steadly dropping over the last 20 years. I dare say, tha of those those random people you meet every day or two, at least one will end up being a friend given enough time.

I would have socialized with the same number of people as if I walked to work in a major city. Again, saying "excuse me" while you walk by a random stranger or ordering a cup off coffee by the 3rd new cashier register that month does not count as socializing, and neither does it provide you with someone to confide in.

There is a far greater chance of a conversation being struck up the more people you encounter in your day. Even by ust excusing yourself more often you increase the chance of some random conversation being struck up. Can you deny that a person meets and makes many more people in their college campuses in the US than they do when they start work? Because I can tell you that a European city is literally, one big US college campus when it comes to socializing. The same way you met more people in a college campus, is the same way you meet people in a European city.

But then let's hear it. Why do you think people in the US have less and less close friends and fewer people they can confide in?

Edit: And don't bother with blaming the Internet, Europe also has it and it is in fact much better in the US actually in several countries.

Well, I've lived in Europe all my life and haven't ever kept in touch with (or even remembered) a single random person I've talked to (and that's usually about which bus goes where and stuff like that).

Meeting people is still a friend-of-a-friend thing/parties, or a common interest thing. Or alternatively trying to pick up a date. At least that's how it's been around me and frankly I wouldn't want the signal-to-noise ratio of listening to or talking to strangers in the streets.

The amount of people you know/talk to being all that important is also something that doesn't quite click with me, closest thing it resembles is facebook with its frends of friends and walls of text with random notes by people you don't really care all that much about to follow their everyday life.

I'm fine with having 2-3 really close friends and a couple more people from class/work to meet up with (outside of said class/work) and chat with occasionally. I really don't have the time for more.

You're assuming people want to talk to you and most people don't though.  Even in your example of New York you sure as fuck don't want to talk to random people on the street or subway.

Whatever the case, I can be just as antisocial on the bus as I am in my own car.  Just because you're walking to work doesn't mean you're social because only a crazy person talks to every person they see on the street.

Maybe it was just me, but when I had to drive to places in my car I met a total of 0 people during those times in a year, whether it was going to work or getting food or whatever.

Meawhile when I had to walk places, I met 2 people in the same amount of time in Madrid. That's 2 more peopla I know in about a year just by walking places instead of a car. That's not counting acquintances or people to have a good conversation with that I have met in eateries and bars that are all over the place in cities in Europe, and far less common in the US.

But you met people because you were actively trying to meet people, not because you were forced to.

You may walk down a street and meet two people but someone else may walk down the same exact street and meet zero because they aren't trying to meet people.  It really doesn't matter where you are.

My goal when I left home wasn't "I'll mingle with people," it was just "it's early/late and I want to get to work/home." While I exchanged random words with people on the days I was in a good mood, those were very rare. The two cases I mentioned earlier were just pure coincidence. A late metro once followed by a coicidential run in/conversation, and a stop unroutine stop at a coffee stand outside the metro. In either case I wass not even remotely trying to be actively looking for people for me to know down the road.

I ever said that what I did will work for anyone else. All I said wass that there is a miniscule random chance that you will get to know any person you meet. In Europe you meet people by the thousands by simply doing your routine, not so in the US. By increasing the number of occurrances the chance of an outcome is increased. If you play to lottery and you play it thousands of times, you have a much greater probability of having a winning ticket in those thousads than if you have bought only several hundred.

Yeah, but again, that's because you're just a social person, not because of where you live.  I'm sure if you drove home every day you would find some way to go out and talk to people.