More niche communities. For example, I recently posted a story to the Ultralight Subreddit where there were 49 comments all discussing the nuances of two water filters. Reddit has amazing communities where you can find others with specific interests. However, the underlying system is prone to censorship and centralization and lacks incentives.
How do we get more community? I think growing the userbase, and doing so with focus on specific areas. Games like Splinterlands can grow niche communities and Hive can takeover Medium as the de facto place for long-form crypto insights.
In general, we need more people, and to get more people we need to make it easier for those that want accounts to get them. Once we have the people, the communities will form themselves.
That's my take too. I've been trying to sign up all my friends and regularly create accounts for people. But most of the accounts I've created for friends remain unused. Perhaps the recent price activity will catch their attention again.
Also Hive hopefully gives off less of a spammy vibe, which was responsible for some user attrition on Steem.