A British colleague told me about walking into the town centre near his home. Although he had errands he needed to run, he also went because he wanted to get out of his house (he works from home) and interact with people. He first went to buy a train ticket, from a machine. He then went to a bank and got money, from a machine. Finally he walked to a grocery store, where he rebelled, refusing to check out his groceries himself. He was desperate even for the few words one exchanges with a fellow human being at the cash register. In Sri Lanka I have met many locals who moved back here after settling in the U.K. for twenty or thirty years. Their two main reasons: the weather, and they didn’t know their neighbours. We wall ourselves off from each other in so many ways and continue to find ways to minimize direct human contact even further, as if mobile phones and Facebook could ever replace face-to-face encounters. It’s part of why I love working on liveable cities: the opportunity to promote more human interactions in our cities, more liveliness, more fun!