How do I keep the energy flowing? When I know someone is unfamiliar with downtown, I invite them to join me at one of my favorite places. I get a chance to catch up – and they get a chance to see what our urban core has to offer. In my perfect world, they'll use the light rail to get here.

How do I keep the energy flowing? When I know someone is unfamiliar with downtown, I invite them to join me at one of my favorite places. I get a chance to catch up – and they get a chance to see what our urban core has to offer. In my perfect world, they'll use the light rail to get here.

For some reason, the light rail inspires much more passenger chat than buses do, especially on weekends. My wife and I spent a day visiting places along light rail and we chatted with all kinds of people while we were riding the train. These kinds of interactions, however casual and fleeting, are important. Even the small amounts of human contact give the city a better sense of connectedness. Driving down the freeway or street in your car involves isolation, but even simple chit-chat on the train helps to feed people's need to be connected.

Coffeehouses fill that niche particularly well; however, I can think of two other third places that I've had recent experience with:

First, light rail itself is a third place. You and I met up unexpectedly when we were on the same delayed train last week. Our serendipitous meet-up made a potentially frustrating commute a little better. I've had several occasions on which I've run into old friends on the train and have had a chance to catch up with them. If I had seen those same friends on the freeway, we could not have done much more than wave at each other.

Second, the traditional men's barbershop can be a third place. At the Downtown Barbershop, I recently found that the person sitting in the chair next to me was Ben Bethel, owner of the Clarendon Hotel. I had long followed him on Twitter, but it was an unexpected pleasure to meet in real life. Chairs in a traditional barbership are equalizers in which people of different backgrounds and professions sit side-by-side and chat to pass the time. You can't get that experience at Great Clips or Super Cuts, nor at most metrosexual salons.

Density certainly is important and CenPho needs to get denser to become a sustainable urban core. But there doesn't need to be, nor should there be, a single place where people go to interact. CenPho itself should be the destination with diverse places for people to go.

This is why I think critical mass is a key for getting CenPho past the cusp and into what it can become. We need more people encountering each other to build a really great and sustainable urban core.

Yes, Phoenix has been a place without a lot of human connections. I'm sure there's a couple of blog posts worth of discussion as to why this is the case, but it's reality. With the advent of free wifi and portable computing, coffee shops have changed in the way in which they connect people.

I don't think coffee shops are the best place to meet new people as they may have been in the midwest in previous years. What they have become are great places to strengthen existing relationships. Now that the concept of coworking has spread throughout the ranks of office-free and independent workers, people find that coworking together at a coffee shop is a good way to be productive and deepen relationships with others. Sometimes coworking is planned, sometimes it happens just because people randomly wound up in the same place.

I've found that social media and other events have become a far better forum for making new connections. I met both Tony and Tyson through Twitter and their blogs, rather than meeting them in a coffeehouse. But it was because I knew them in other forums that I had great planned and unplanned conversations with them at Royal.

As a side note, if you're looking for ways to interact with more people, check out events like Phoenix Friday Night or the monthly Smunch.

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm one of the organizers of Smunch. I recommend it because I've made some great connections through it and I know other people have as well.

My thought is that because Phoenix tends to be such a “transient” sort of place, there is not as much “accountability” for what I call “Minnesota nice.” People just don't talk to each other as much in this city as in other places (in MY personal opinion.) Or at least they're not talking to me… ha.

There have been days when I've walked into say Lux, and not only is there no talking because everyone is plugged into their computer with their headphones on – but there's not even any eye contact! We're losing our “human” connections, yet that is the thing everyone is craving at their core. A sense of community – a sense of belonging.

Well how the hell is that supposed to happen if people aren't even willing to look up from their frickin' Mac to say hello???

I'd practically pay someone for a game of scrabble and lively conversation at this point. Jeesh.

Sorry for being so long-winded!