You can flip the ordering: live somewhere sufficiently dense and walkable, then make friends there. I’m not sure if this works for especially transient cities (SF, DC), but it’s my story in Denver, and I gather works well in a lot of mid-tier cities (or anywhere you could conceivably buy housing where it’s dense instead of rent forever, always moving).

(Caveat: this is in retrospect and certainly wasn’t my original intention. I thought I’d be here two or three years tops and then leave the states again.)