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We've got to get people out of their cars, out of those drive-thru windows, get them walking, get them in parks and get them more active.

When strangers start acting like neighbors... communities are reinvigorated.

What we've tried to do is have neighbors, colleagues, friends and family talking.

When we change the way we communicate, we change society.

Nowadays we have so many things that take our attention - phones, Internet - and perhaps we need to disconnect from those and focus on the immediate world around us and the people that are actually present.

I'm greedy about cities - I like to form my impressions of them on my own, and on foot as far as possible, looking and listening, having conversations with bridges and streets and riverbanks, conversations I tend not to be aware of until a little later, when I find myself returning to those places to say hello again, even if only in memory.

Whether a plane to Singapore, a subway in Manhattan, or the streets of Cincinnati, I search for meaningful conversation wherever I may travel. Without it, I believe we lose the ability to not only understand others, but more importantly, ourselves.

Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people.

In these dangerous times, where it seems the world is ripping apart at the seams, we can all learn how to survive from those who stare death squarely in the face every day, and we should reach out to each other and bond as a community, rather than hide from the terrors of life at the end of the millennium.