I agree with this so much! I've found that going to people and initiating is the only thing you can do. How people respond varies a lot and you have to be resilient to rejection.

There was a post[1] sometime back about just having coffee in the afternoon outisdes and how that brought in more people.

I also write about it here [2].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43473618

[2]: https://blog.papermatch.me/html/Wheres_the_human_touch