> mind boggling to me sometimes how the two communities exist in nearly the same space but don't often overlap

You may enjoy China Miéville's The City & the City [1]. The less you read about it ex ante, the better. It's one of those books that gives you a mental model and language that proves surprisingly useful in describing what you saw.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City