If we imagine city pages without groups for a moment, could you still accomplish the same thing by just creating an event that shows up on the city page? This is also assuming there would br a discussion board within the event for coordination purposes.
This really was my saving grace when I moved to a new city. I got involved with a CS group (way back in 2007) and it was really one of the reasons I was so active in the community. We would often meet at a cafe and people would bring their guests, or we would have get-together and promote the region. This often brought in people from outlying villages so it was really quite interesting. There were some changes with platform, and the group basically died and they started their own Wiki and such so it was a bit of a shame.
When we knew that we had a lot of guests, we even organised excursions to local places to experience them together sort of like an event. It really was something that made being a foreigner in a city a huge difference and allowed me to create a friend group and integrate with locals.
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Omg. I remember seeing a Funny negative reference once about a poor guy who had a terrible surfing experiance with a man who obviously wanted to hook up. He spoke in details about how horrible it was and you had to laugh at the poor guy who luckily had a plan B and got out in time. Anyhow, YEARS later we were at a friend of mine’s birthday party and she casually presents a friend of hers and says that she didn’t know earlier but he was also into CS. And when we a while later discuss experiances in the sofa it turns out he is the guy. We were like “But you’re almost famous for giving that terrible review!” and we all laughed until we cried. I had no idea that guy lived in our area. 
I really liked the local groups just to be able to see what members were active in case I had any questions about the local area etc. I also loved the Family surfing/hosting group (or something along those lines?) and the Cooking exchange group.
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I found groups really useful too! Especially when moving to a new place and you could go to events but then also chat with the people who were at the event later in the group discussions. It was so special for community building.
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Groups were fine on CS, but maybe growth in city groups should be prioritized at first?
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Local/city groups usually prioritize themselves. Let people start the groups they want pretty much within normal limits. Anything from Organic farmers to Knitting united and let’s see where it goes.
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