Makerspaces? I hope you mean hackerspaces / coworking spaces. If you're not familiar with them, I strongly recommend checking out http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_ALL_Hacker_Spaces . There are hackerspaces almost everywhere. I went to Singapore for study abroad, and because of the hackerspace got intro'd to a bunch of awesome people and other events.

Coworking spaces are an even more recent phenomenon. I get the feeling like they, on average, aren't as social as hackerspaces, but they still provide some sort of community.

There's also co-living places, one of which I'm in right now ( http://www.risesf.com/ ). In San Francisco there are a few of these, basically big collective houses that support 8-15 people. A "community in a box" so to speak.

I've also found that there are a bunch of "we're the cool intellectual-ish people" groups out there. They seem to kind of blend together, but sometimes are international and very good for networking. The Sandbox network comes to mind (http://sandbox.is/). Also the TED and BIL communities, which are both pretty large.

Of course, the single biggest recommendation for any of this is that they are all significantly easier if you are located in or near a city. Seriously, that's about the biggest "improvement hack" I've made so far in my life (coming from suburbia New York to San Francisco).