Being new in a city

Feeling lonely after a move is normal and usually temporary. Build a weekly routine of familiar places and faces, and say yes to small talk.

• Evidence: Some
• Takes: a few hours a week
• Social

Right now

1. Find one regular group that meets weekly: a class, a sports club, a choir, a volunteering shift, a language exchange. Book the next session.
2. Choose your regulars. One café, one gym, one shop. Going to the same places makes the same faces familiar.
3. Message someone from home. Keeping old friendships going takes some of the pressure off the new ones. See reconnecting with an old friend.

Before

• Know that it takes a while. One study surveyed 355 adults who had moved in the past six months and were looking for friends. The more hours they’d spent with a new acquaintance, the closer they felt [1]. The university’s summary of the work estimated 40 to 60 hours together to become casual friends and more than 200 for a close friend [2]. So three lonely weeks is normal, not a sign it won’t work.
• Pick places where you’ll see the same people. First-year students given random seats at their first meeting were more likely to be friends with their neighbors a year later [5]. Chance contact that repeats is how many friendships start. A weekly class does this. A big one-off event mostly doesn’t.
• Count the small chats. On days when students talked with more classmates than usual, even briefly, they felt happier and more like they belonged. The same pattern showed up for adults’ everyday contact with acquaintances [3].

During

• Turn transactions into short conversations. In one experiment, people asked to smile, make eye contact and have a brief chat with the barista left in a better mood than people told to be as efficient as possible, partly because they felt more connected [4].
• Say hello to neighbors and learn one name a week.
• Tell people you’re new. It’s an easy opener and gives them a reason to offer tips or invitations.
• Ask for local advice. People like being asked, and it gives you a reason to talk again.
• Make the first invitation. People underestimate how much others appreciate being contacted, especially people they don’t know well yet [6].

After

• Keep going to the same group for at least two or three months before deciding it isn’t working. Hours add up slowly [1].
• Move people from “place” to “plan”. Once you’ve chatted a few times, suggest something outside the usual setting. The study’s author noted that time spent hanging out counts for more than time spent working together [2].
• On bad evenings, do something that gets you out of the house, even a walk to your regular café. Movement helps too; see liftgood.now.
• Look after the basics. A new place often upsets sleep and meals. sleepgood.now and eatgood.now have practical help.

Why this works

Three things help newcomers: repeated contact with the same people [5], enough hours together for acquaintances to become friends [1], and the everyday lift from brief chats with people you barely know [3][4]. Knowing that others will probably welcome your first move makes it easier to make it [6].

Rated Some. The barista study and the reaching-out studies are experiments. The weak-ties findings are from diary studies, so they show a link, not cause and effect. The hours research relies on people’s own estimates, mostly online survey takers and US students, and the hour figures come from the university’s news release, not the paper’s abstract [2].

Topics: Social, Moving, Loneliness, Friendship, Weak Ties

Sources checked 4 October 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell us.