Housing in my city has been expensive for years, and the knock-on effect is that most people I know live so far apart we barely see each other anymore.

When you stack a two hour trip each way on top of the rising cost of doing anything at all, on top of already crushing housing and living costs, you end up with a perfect storm where staying home becomes the default. Not because people don’t want to socialise, but because the effort and expense make it impractical.

This has been a prolem where I live for years and I've actively watched it become worse over time as people have been forced to move further and further apart, and further and further away from the active areas of the city in order to be able to afford to keep a roof over their head.