Happiness and Place: Cities v Nature.

Why Life is Better Outside of the City?

Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn∗
Rutgers - Camden
Contents
Draft: Wednesday 22nd June, 2016
1 Introductory Matter 2
1.1 Naming conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Happiness defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.1 Definition, validity and reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.2 Happiness as an end-goal or the ultimate outcome of interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.3 Happiness is not Quality of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.4 Three major theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Brief summary: key points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2 Urbanization is Here 13
2.1 Why? Why people flock to metros, or are they forced by dark economic forces? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2 Size Fetish. Size is power. Proud cities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 The forgotten optimal size of a place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 City’s bright side: freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5 Glaeser’s latest book: triumph of the city that is not (countering common pro-urbanism) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3 Urban Malaise: Explorations of Problems and Dissatisfaction with City Life 21

3.1 Gemeinschaft (not city) v Gesellschaft (city). Inequality. A critique of capitalism. Back to Marx. . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 City is unnatural. City is contradictory. Success kills affordability and authenticity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.3 Observing city life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.4 Quantitative evidence. Largest and densest cities are least happy. Even “Best” or successful cities are unhappy. . . . . 31

4 Biophilia: Need for Contact With Nature 35

4.1 We are not made for cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.2 The more nature, the less material possessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3 Suburban sprawl as a mistaken solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.3.1 Fake nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.3.2 Mistaken suburban sprawl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5 Summary, Conclusion, Discussion and Future Research 45

5.1 Too many people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
5.2 Too much consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
5.3 Solutions. Policy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
5.3.1 Policy in general: against cities, but still in favor of capitalism if fixed with heavy redistribution . . . . . . . . 50

∗ EMAIL: adam.okulicz.kozaryn@gmail.com

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1 Introductory Matter

Figure 1: A book about place and cities would be incomplete without showing a place where it was created. As you can see, it is a city.
Old-fashioned, red-brick, Rust Belt style built environment with some asphalt covering road and parking lot at the bottom, and power lines at
the top. Now, let’s try to find happiness in this picture. Views like that are arguably one reason for urban malaise.

1.1 Naming conventions

I will abbreviate thousands with “k” and millions with “m”, and unless prefixed with “$” for dollar amounts, all numbers refer to
population size. And I will round numbers, for simplicity; and I will not be saying constantly “approximately” or similar, for simplicity.1
I will often refer to several cities and, for simplicity, I will drop two letter state abbreviation when referring to them: New York
NY, Philadelphia PA, Camden NJ, Washington DC, Boston MA, Chicago IL, Dallas TX and its Northern suburbs Richardson and
Plano, San Francisco CA, Los Angeles CA. Likewise, I will drop country names when referring to several large cities outside of the US:
London England, Warsaw Poland, Shanghai China, Nanjing China, Berlin Germany, Rotterdam Netherlands, Milan Italy. These are
very large cities and it should be obvious where they are located. I will use term “happiness” interchangeably with life satisfaction and
(subjective) wellbeing–there is more discussion in chapter 1.2.
Word “urbanite” simply means urban dweller, someone who lives in a city, while “urbanist” is a person glorifying city living and often
condescending non-city living. Academics in public policy, public administration, urban studies, and related disciplines are typically
urbanists (I am an exception). Yet, we (academics in these disciplines)) are also egalitarian and non- or even anti- elitist, but we do
not realize that city living is quite elitist.2
The title of the book contains “city” and “nature”–alternative terms are “built”/“developed” and “natural”/“undeveloped” envi-
ronments or simply “urban” and “rural.” Instead of scholarly “urban” I prefer simple “city,” although I will still sometimes use a more
scholarly term “urban.” I will also sometimes use term “metropolis” or “metro” not interchangeably with city, but to denote city and
its adjacent areas, so called “suburbs.” Metro covers all area of counties comprising given metro as defined by US Census. City is
dense. Metro is less dense because it also includes suburbs; metro = city + suburbs.3 Most observations and conclusions pertain to
both, cities and suburbs–both are more artificial and less happy than smaller areas.
What is a city ? Can a city be defined better? Definition is difficult and somewhat arbitrary, because this dichotomous term (city
v not a city) depends on a continuous variable, population, and also to some degree on another continuous variable, density, and some

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more or less arbitrary administrative boundaries defining where city ends. Density and size correlate–denser places tend to be larger.
Importantly, by city I mean a large human settlement, larger than say 250k, but this number is rather very approximate. The idea
is that city is distinctively different from smaller town in many ways: there are usually suburbs, there is almost always an airport,
usually an international airport, and so forth. Term “city” as used here denotes an area bigger than census definition of urbanized
area (>50k), and is synonymous with large metropolitan area excluding less dense areas (some of the suburbs, etc). There are about
500 urbanized areas (>50k) in the US, out of which only about 150 are larger than 250k.4 A (core) city exceeding 250k often means
a metro exceeding 1m in metro (there are only about 50 such metros in the US). Metro (or more technically speaking Metropolitan
Statistical Area) is officially defined as an area with at least one urban core area of at least 50k, plus adjacent territory that has a
high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by commuting ties. A concept of metro makes more sense
in many ways than a concept of city which is just defined by administrative boundaries–an inherently artificial construct. Metro, on
the other hand, is more meaningful because it is based on commuting, intermingling, and network ties. What is meant by city here,
however, is relatively high density area, which would not include most suburbs and, again, would equal metro, excluding low density
areas. It would be usually larger than city defined by administrative boundaries, but smaller than metro defined by counties that make
up a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).
Another rationalization for cutoff somewhere around 250k is that places bigger than that appear to be quite different from all other
places in terms of happiness, but also in terms of trust, that is, these outcomes are worse for such cities than everywhere else as shown
in section 3.4.
Furthermore, city is quite different within its boundaries–there is core or central city, there is sometimes also suburb withing the
city limits, and so forth. Most of the discussion will focus on size of place and sometimes density, but it will not dwell on within-city
or across-neighborhood differences–something left for the future research.

1.2 Happiness defined

Happiness is important, sometimes necessary. For instance, in order to become a US citizen, a person must be “well disposed to the
good order and happiness of the United States.”5
A potential limitation of this book is that I am using only one metric, self-reported, subjective assessment of happiness. There are
other ways to approach human flourishing or wellbeing such as good mental health (e.g. lack of depression), quality of life expressed in
terms of objective qualities such as clean air, good roads, low traffic, low crime, etc.6 This book is about scientific or empirical study
of happiness. This research started few decades ago only. Happiness was of course studied for centuries, but these were philosophical
studies (thinking in an armchair), as opposed to empirical (using data). There is nothing wrong with thinking in an armchair, and by no
means it is better or more rigorous to study something empirically. This is simply the focus of this book–empirical study of happiness.
Furthermore, there is now an outpouring of books about happiness that are neither empirical nor theoretical nor philosophical, but are
simply opinions that are inherently unscientific.
A wonderful overview of happiness as studied in human history is provided in a book with a descriptive title “Happiness: A history”
by Darrin M McMahon.7 There were probably few empirical studies of happiness earlier in 20th century but it all really got started
in the second half of 20th century by three academics: psychologist Ed Diener, sociologist Ruut Veenhoven, and economist Richard
Easterlin. The filed is interdisciplinary.
Can happiness be studied scientifically? First reaction that people display when I say that I study happiness is either enthusiasm
about the topic, appreciation of the importance of the inquiry, or eye-rolling and sometimes simply ending a conversation with me
(especially if you happened to try to talk to a financial economist or some other very down to earth person). In any case people usually
express doubt about whether we can really measure happiness and compare it, because it seems a very intangible concept and difficult
to compare across people, and especially cultures–it seems obvious that being happy for a person A means something very different
for a person B. It turns out, however, that happiness can be measured with reasonable validity and reliability. Here, I will only discuss
very briefly, but for an interested reader, please consult references in the endnotes.
What predicts happiness? What makes people happy? It is beyond scope of this book to answer this broad question, but there
are many excellent reviews–for instance Ballas (2013) reviews literature with focus on cities, Dolan et al. (2008) is a recent general
review; and the most complete database of findings is called World Database of Happiness (Veenhoven 1995).

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1.2.1 Definition, validity and reliability

What really is happiness? Happiness is typically measured with a survey item such as ”On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly
satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the life you lead?” and it ranges from say 1 = “not at all satisfied” to 4 = “very
satisfied.” Happiness is often labeled in scholarly literature as SWB (subjective well-being). It consists of 2 dimensions: cognitive
and affective. Cognitive judgments of one’s life satisfaction as compared with affective evaluations of mood and emotions, or in
other words, it is an overall judgment of life based on two sources of information: cognitive (life satisfaction or contentment) and
affective (momentarily happiness or hedonic affect).8 Sometimes scholars make a distinction between life satisfaction and happiness–life
satisfaction refers to cognition and happiness refers to affect. For instance, life satisfaction can be conceptualized as a cognitive aspect
of happiness. In practice, however, it is usually difficult if not impossible to separate the two concepts. Hence, I will use the overall
happiness definition and use terms “happiness,” “life satisfaction” and “(subjective) wellbeing” interchangeably.
Can we trust happiness measure? The happiness measure, even though self-reported and subjective, is reliable (precision varies) and
valid. The survey-based life satisfaction measure is closely correlated with similar objective measures such as brain waves. Unhappiness
strongly correlates with suicide incidence and mental health problems. Happiness not only correlates highly with other non-self reported
measures, but also does not correlate with measures that are not theoretically related to it: happiness has discriminant validity. Finally,
to be clear, I discuss here general/overall happiness, not a domain-specific happiness such as neighborhood or community satisfaction.
The concept of happiness is intuitively understood by almost everyone.9

1.2.2 Happiness as an end-goal or the ultimate outcome of interest

We usually don’t realize it, but we do many things because we think they will make us happy–why else would you do anything? This
is why I buy some specific shoes, car, house, and so forth–I probably don’t think explicitly about “happiness”, but rather about some
intermediate step such as comfort, fashion, or usefulness. But comfort, fashion or usefulness are only worthy if happiness follows,
that is, they are subobjectives in an effort to achieve the ultimate goal of interest: happiness. Same with place: I chose to live in a
city because it is “authentic,” “cool,” “diverse,” or something else, but these are only worthy if they result in happiness. Of course,
sometimes we do things that we know won’t lead to happiness but we still do them because it is a “right thing to do,” maybe a “moral
thing to do,” “sacrifice for someone else,” or “for greater idea,” and so forth, but this does not apply to vast majority of choices
neither it applies to the choice of place. As always, there are some exceptions. For instance, a person may decide to torture herself
in New York or London or in some other metropolis for, say, three years, make enough money and then enjoy the rest of her life in a
pretty and natural place. Yet, often the city sucks her up and she ends up spending her life there.
Fundamentally, happiness can be a touchstone of morality–what makes us happy is morally good–it is utilitarianism (but also
to some degree consequentalism) that originated during the Enlightenment in 18th century in Europe.10 Yet, to be clear, it is not
necessarily the goal of the government to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number (in the Benthamite spirit),11 but
it is definitely the goal of the government to make the pursuit of happiness possible. In other words, equal opportunity (to achieve
happiness) should be or is a human right, protected by government even in America that is relatively not unhappy about inequality.12
Furthermore, it is the government’s role to prevent unhappiness or misery such as that resulting from poverty or unemployment.
There are many more examples of adversities that arguably result in unhappiness and that governments should tackle–for examples
see The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.13 In general, an important role of the government is to take care of mental health
of its citizens–the World Health Organization estimates that in the decades to come depression will become the second most frequent
cause of disability in the world.14 By preventing misery such as poverty, unemployment, and depression governments can increase the
happiness, and importantly happiness can be used to measure the progress.
While happiness arguably is the ultimate outcome of interest and an end-in-itself, we should rather do other things and hope for
happiness as opposed to chase happiness itself. And it is clear what these other things are–good health, good social relations, good
governance, etc.15

1.2.3 Happiness is not Quality of Life

When we speak about happiness and place, what often comes to mind is quality of life (QOL) or so called “livability” of a place.
Internet is overflowing with “best” lists: best places to live, best places to raise children, best places to retire, and so forth. How does
happiness differ from QOL?16

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 Quality of life is usually defined in a narrow sense as quality of transportation or housing or some other domain; often it is a per
capita or per area indicator such as physicians per capita or bike lanes per square mile. Objective quality of life or livability is not the
same as happiness or subjective wellbeing. In fact, the two overlap only moderately.17 Objective indicators, such as one day popular
United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI), and still popular components of the index: education, income, and life expectancy
are not to be replaced by happiness, but supplemented. An advantage of happiness is that it is an overall measure in a sense that it
captures (imperfectly, of course) everything that affects our lives. In other words, happiness is an useful yardstick, an overall measure
of human flourishing. Quality of life is less comprehensive and more problematic in many respects.
There is an inherent problem in calculating quality of life, livability, or recently popular lists of “best places to live” such as Mercer’s
Quality of Living Rankings or the Economist’s Best cities ranking.18 Simply, there are many components of the rankings–political and
social environment, public services and transport, consumer goods, and so forth–and the problem is how to aggregate them to come
up with the overall ranking. It is usually done by some experts who would weight say safety to be twice as important as education
and 1.3 times as important as health care, and so on, and however accurate these may be on average (even perfectly accurate), by no
means this is closely corresponding to each person’s individual weighting that is quite different from another person’s weighting. Even
relatively simple and obvious factors such as income and health are weighted differently, not to mention other factors like bike lanes v
highways, where there is an obvious conflict. This is an amazing advantage of happiness metric, because it takes into account each
person’s own weighting.19
Another problem of using indices of factors affecting wellbeing is that there are too many such factors, in fact, an uncountable
number; and that’s the advantage of happiness yardstick that it takes into account known and unknown factors. Again, happiness
yardstick has its limitations, but these limitations being different from limitations of other measures, happiness provides additional
information–again, the idea is not to replace other indicators, but complement them.
Happiness is not quality of life. But how happiness is different from depression? Both are mental states after all. This book does
not study depression. In principle, however, happiness can be actually studied using depression measures–depression simply meaning
unhappiness or lack of happiness. An obvious question is whether there is also a rural-urban depression gradient. The evidence is
mixed–one reason that cities do not have clearly more depressions (like they are clearly less happy) is that they have sucked up most
able and energetic people, and those left in smaller areas may be more prone to depressions. Lack of jobs and overall decline may
also contribute to depressions in smaller areas–jobs and other resources are also being taken away by cities. Still, despite all of that,
people are clearly less happy in cities than elsewhere. Then, why urbanites are not clearly depressed more as well? By some measures
of depression they are, but by some other measures they aren’t. Rural areas may be depression-conducive in some ways.20

1.2.4 Three major theories

The adaptation theory (Brickman et al. 1978) argues that there is an adjustment to external circumstances and we are on a ’hedonic
treadmill.’ “The more one has the more one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs.”21 We arguably
get used to (adapt to) place, too. It is common that people tend to speak positively about the place in which they currently live–there
is even a saying that one should not spit in her backyard. And then curiously enough, when a person moves to a new place, she then
speaks very well of her new place and often not so well of the old place.22
The multiple discrepancy theory (Michalos 1985) states that happiness is a result of social comparison. I compare my place to that
of others. My place, be it house, neighborhood, town, state, or country is good or bad relative to some other place. Do I keep up with
Joneses? We tend to compare to people in our geographic or social proximity. Karl Marx has observed long time ago that “A house
may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirements for a residence. But let
there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut.”23
Also, per multiple discrepancy theory, we compare to standards. Is my place upto a standard? Is my place upscale, gritty, or
ghetto? Is my place a kind of place that people of my standing are supposed to live in? For instance, I know several physicians and
they tell me that they simply have no choice but have to live in an upscale or luxury neighborhood, because that’s where physicians
are supposed to live. If they lived in a modest place, it would be somehow inadequate or occupationally unacceptable, that is frowned
upon among their colleagues. We compare to standards–what is the right place to live for a person given her occupation, social class,
etc.
Another thing, also based on multiple discrepancies theory, is that we often judge a place in terms of what we observed earlier.
That is, if I have lived in a miserable place, then even a mediocre place will be nice. If I lived in a “paradise,” it will be hard to

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match it. Notably, all these comparisons–against others, standards, and our own past, result in consumption arms race–people want
to outcompete others–we want to demonstrate that we are better than others, and we do it with place, too. One reason we move to a
metropolis such as London, Shanghai, or New York is simply because we want to demonstrate we are better than others, those living
in a smaller place. I elaborate in chapter 2.2.
The needs/livability theory (Veenhoven and Ehrhardt 1995, Veenhoven 2014) posits that happiness results from objective living
conditions and from fulfillment of our needs, and predicts that improved physical or economic conditions will result in greater happiness.
It is not clear, however, if there is any limit to the level of development that should result in greater happiness as it is not clear what is
the limit to human needs. Of course, one could argue that there are needs and wants (desires), and while there are some clearly defined
needs (e.g. biological), most other needs are relative and subjective. Some needs are objective, such as food, water and adequate
shelter and it is arguably due to limitations in objective needs that people in developing countries are happier in cities (e.g., Berry
and Okulicz-Kozaryn 2009). Different places satisfy different needs and different people have different needs and there are usually
tradeoffs. Notably, as this book argues, there is always a tradeoff between nature and city.
Let’s have a closer look at how these theories can explain city unhappiness. Probably the most relevant is livability theory. Are
cities livable? Many are not, because of typical city problems such as poverty and crime; but even successful cities are not livable in
many ways–cities by definition are most congested and (noise and air) polluted areas where humans live.24 There is also lack of nature
in cities by definition; no, parks don’t help much. Finally, most people cannot afford good city housing, especially in largest cities, and
hence, they either live in inadequate housing, cram in tiny spaces, or have more roommates than livable. Others live somewhere on
the fringe and commute long hours. Commute is the worst thing that can happen to human happiness.25 In short, cities are probably
less livable than smaller places; or more precisely, cities are less livable for most people–the rich can afford a good life in a city.
Furthermore, most people arguably move to city or metro to make money–this is what attracts migrants within the US and
immigrants from abroad. But happiness is quadratic in income, that is, there are diminishing marginal returns in happiness from
income. Simply speaking, at some point, when basic needs are satisfied, more money does not buy much happiness. Likewise,
pecuniary consumption is a poor way to buy happiness–things do not buy lasting happiness. So how can lasting happiness be achieved?
We should buy experience (e.g., vacation, bowling), not things (e.g., Lexuses, mansions).26
Per hedonic treadmill or adaptation theory27 –it is difficult to say, but probably there is more hedonic treadmill in the city–there are
more goals to chase, taller ladders to climb, and so forth–but satisfaction received only stimulates more needs–the more one has the
more one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs28 –in other words, it is better for your happiness to
be a big fish in a small pond.29 City is an ocean full of big fish.
Along the same lines, there is that interesting perspective that happiness is simply a signal that task at hand is accomplished
and a person can move on to a new task30 –but there are many more tasks in the city and one cannot ever accomplish all of them,
because there are always more and more.31 Furthermore, ever increasing complexity and abundance of choices, exemplified in cities,
may lead to paralysis as opposed to liberation. For instance, it has been shown that people offered many choices became overloaded
and confused as opposed to thrilled.32 On the other hand, it is not so that people in smaller areas are disengaged or withdrawn, rather
they appear to be more “at peace” as can be observed on a trip to a smaller area. Compare life there with urban way of life (again
cities are not just buildings, it is a way of life).33 People in big cities indeed do appear cognitively overloaded. They are not at peace,
they are always chasing something, their gaze is disconnected from present and focused on some future task or goal, or they appear
distracted, sometimes disoriented.
Let’s do an experiment–I suggest a reader goes to big and dense city, such as New York or Philadelphia and then immediately goes
to a small village or a town in a remote area and observe people there–say Beeville, TX. I have done several such comparisons, and
they are still vivid in my memory. One was a contrast of Dallas suburbs and center of New York (Manhattan)–I spent a month or so
in suburban Dallas, and then flew into New York, and I was overwhelmed. When I came back to Dallas, I was underwhelmed. I also
remember my first visits to Warsaw, London, and New York–I was always overwhelmed. But perhaps the clearest such experience is
one from Seattle WA–actually quite peaceful and human-friendly American city (at least as compared to places like Philadelphia)–but
then I took a ferry to Bainbridge Island, WA–and it was totally different there–already on the ferry people were visibly happier. Not in
a fake manner, as when you see a proud city dweller announcing that she is from Chicago or Boston, etc, but actually really happy.34
And, indeed, recent neurological evidence confirms that city life puts a considerable stress on human brain.35

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1.3 Brief summary: key points
Time is scarce and often it is impossible to read a book these days. Below are some key points and observations.

• community or social relationships do not belong to city; economic relations and rational profit maximizing aggressive behavior
belong there

• neither happiness nor enjoyment nor pleasure belongs in a city; what belongs is conspicuous drive to excellence or perfection (to
paraphrase Lexus commercial), that is, a want to be better than others belongs to city36

• city is like Walmart (or Amazon)–it is only about economic efficiency and productivity–it is inconsistent to complain about ugly
capitalistic side of Walmart and treat city as something human or humane–if you love cities you have to love Walmart; we did
not built cities to enjoy life; they’re there for profit only37

• traditional neighborhoods or urban villages or low-rise buildings do not belong to city; they belong to smaller areas

• towers (high density living) belong to (and define) city; humans or other animals for that matter, belong to city as much as fish
belong to aquarium38

• humans have an innate need to connect with nature, and by definition there is no nature in cities39

So the overall conclusion is:

• cities are definitely good for economy, at least in the short run–size and density help with productivity, labor specialization, scale
and agglomeration economies

• cities are probably good for environment–they appear to be the most environmentally friendly way to house 7 billion of people

• cities are bad for humans–urbanites are less happy. Why? Well, cities are fundamentally artificial malignant social form, superficial,
transitory, crowded, polluted, dirty, noisy, unhealthy for brain, conducive for vice, conspicuous or wasteful consumption, as
elaborated in this book.

• environment can be still protected if we live in smaller areas but consume less, and less consumption won’t hurt much our
happiness40

The bottom line is that modern happiness research confirms old wisdom of city misery. The following slightly elaborates the point
of old wisdom of city misery. Note that many ideas apply not only to cities, but whole metropolitan areas, that is, suburbs as well.
As explained later, this book argues as much against suburbs as it argues against cities. Also, keep in mind, that this book focuses on
the dark side of city life, but there is a bright side, too.41

• city v rural non-city dichotomy is like: live community v mechanical society or Gemeinschaft v Gesellschaft (Tönnies) or family
society v civil society (Hegel)

• a person in city, as compared to a person in rural area, is arguably more free (from and to) and enjoys more opportunities, but
freedom comes with a hefty price (Freud, Fromm)42

• city overstimulates (Simmel, Park)

• city intensifies vice, crime, and also intensifies conspicuous consumption: urban etiquette, sophistication, manners and finish
(Park, Veblen)

• labor specialization and industrialization that accompany urbanization kill spontaneity and joy (Park)

• city is full of pollution, dirt, noise, crowding, poverty, beggary, monotony of the buildings (senseless chunks) and monotony of
industrial jobs (Wirth)

• city is artificial in its form and nature (Jefferson)

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1.4 Foreword
I do not like cities, I never liked them. I do not like suburbs either, especially those city-like.43 Already as a kid, as far as I can
remember, I always preferred to stay at my grandma’s place in a village as opposed to my suburban home. It was not only the built
environment and lack of nature, but people–seemed to me that people are nicer in smaller areas and more corrupt in cities.44 But I
got stuck with the city or suburb for pretty much all my life. Not that I wanted to–I had to–I had to go to school there, and then I
had to work there. Sure, as most people, when I was in a big city like Warsaw or London, I felt the energy and some kind of greatness
bestowed on me (by the invisible hand of market?) by just being in a big city, and then when going to a smaller place, I felt the
opposite–insignificance and smallness (see chapter 2.2).
Ever since my undergraduate years, I have been in public policy/public administration/urban studies departments45 that largely
study social problems in cities (I was even an intern at a county office). And ever since early years of my PhD, which is almost 10
years now, I have mostly study happiness, and so I thought that I will write this book about happiness and cities. It is an academic
book for common people–there will be much theory and analysis, but at the same time, I try to keep it story-like and use leisurely
prose as opposed to scientific tone of rigorous inquiry. Rather than conducting another scientific study,46 I simply wish to document
some of more interesting theory and evidence and point to several overlooked things and provoke further discussion. I also encourage
the reader to read the endnotes–they not only contain references to scholarly and popular literatures, but also they often elaborate on
points made in the main text and sometimes they make additional related points. I decided to put many paragraphs into endnotes so
that the discussion in the main text is simple and straightforward, but there is much more for an interested reader in the endnotes.
Unlike in most other disciplines (I hope), many if not most happiness books are unfortunately non-scientific opinions. This book
is (mostly) not an opinion. So what is it? It is uneven–parts of it are probably rather dense discussion and interpretation of classic
theory; and parts are leisurely written stories and observations, but again this is rather an academic book–there are data and empirical
findings underlying most of it as cited in footnotes. Only occasionally, I will venture out and present an opinion–but then I would
explicitly say so by using word “speculate,” “seem,” “appear,” or similar. In general, I try to keep the scientific rigor, but also throw in
some jokes and try be funny. In addition, this book is full of observations and impressions–these are usually descriptions of places that
I have visited or where I have lived. They are inherently subjective and possibly biased, so in a sense, there are opinions, but again,
they are clearly marked, and the key argument does rest on great deal of data and theory.
Many statements or conclusions may appear strong or even overstated. Indeed, I am probably overemphasizing the dark side of
city life, and not spending an equal amount of time on the bright side. One reason for that is simply to counter other publications
that are even more, I think, biased towards the bright side. An excellent example is Glaeser’s “Triumph of the city,” which actually
provided much energy and enthusiasm for this book–I thank Glaeser for this inspiration and devote chapter 2.5 to critique his book.
This book is for scholars and non-scholars. As always in such case, there are obvious limitations–I was trying to keep the prose as
simple as possible, yet the discussion may be complex at times for a non-scholarly reader. On the other hand, by keeping prose simpler
and more explanatory, it becomes lengthier and perhaps overly simplistic for a scholarly reader. I have tried to keep the style and tone
very much leisurely, plain and straightforward so that it is easy to read and it appeals to a wider audience. Use of plain and lively
language, however, may appear too simplistic or unscholarly for scholars, but plainly speaking, I do not care if scholars find my prose
too plain and lively. I hope this book will be read by non-scholarly audience, because I have already written on this topic in scholarly
journals, and these journals are not read by a wider audience.47 The topic of this book is of interest to everyone. After all, we all
choose a place to live. Well, all of us have some limitations–notably job and family, and some of us are forced into a location–e.g. all
inhabitants of ghettos–they would arguably like to move out, but cannot afford it.
The publisher picked the cover for the book, and for some reason, it is rather unaesthetic, to use mild language. To compensate
for this visual drawback, and also to make the book more lively, I have chosen to use pictures. These are, I think, especially helpful
for a book about a place–often the best way to describe a place is to show a picture. Pictures convey well subtle ideas of nature, city,
and happiness.
This book is very interdisciplinary–it covers a wide variety of topics and approaches and as corollary breadth is accompanied by
some shallowness. Thus, the goal of this book is thought provoking,48 rather than documenting facts. Where does this book belong in
terms of academic discipline? An obvious, broad, and unhelpful answer is social science. Happiness, is fundamentally interdisciplinary
and it spans across all social science.49 Its focus, as title indicates, is on geography, specifically urban or city, and its polar opposite,
nature or wilderness, and a combination of thereof: town and village, and a peculiar mutation of thereof: American suburb. The
focus is on local geography such as towns and cities, i.e. level of aggregation is larger than neighborhood, but smaller than country.50

8
Happiness is fundamentally a psychological concept, yet geographies, notably cities, are collections of persons and hence it is about
networks and social interaction, hence, this book belongs in sociology. Early sociologists, Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies, Louis
Wirth and Robert E Park did point to unhappiness in city, as this book does. Perhaps the most accurate disciplinary placement of this
book is somewhere between social psychology and urban sociology or urban studies (with some discussion of rural areas and nature).
Yet, contemporary sociologists do not study happiness. This is interesting and requires a separate paragraph for speculation.
There seems to be a professional/ideological bias among sociologists (and public policy and administration scholars). Sociologists
are interested in social problems, human misery, not happiness. They prefer to study topics like anomie, alienation, deprivation,
discrimination, segregation, and so forth. One solution could be simply to invert scale, and hence study “unhappiness” or “misery”–it
could fit better within profession. Indeed, one way to study happiness is to study suicide, that is, extreme unhappiness, and incidentally,
Durkheim, the founder of the discipline, was very fond of this topic. A similar preoccupation with the dark side of human experience
exists in psychology, but it was recently countered by Martin Seligman’s “positive psychology” movement. Perhaps, something similar
will happen in sociology. This is another goal of this book–to spread interest in scientific study of happiness.
In terms of geographical scope, this book is about cities and nature in developed Western countries, and mostly about the US.
This is important to note, because actually in developing countries, there is an opposite relationship–people are happier in smaller
areas–one explanation is that in a developing or poor country you want to live in a city, otherwise it is hard to satisfy necessities such
as shelter, sanitation, healthcare, etc. In a developed country, necessities are satisfied in rural areas well, but living in a big city one
pays a price of congestion, stress, etc. Nevertheless, as developing countries become more developed, people will probably become less
happy in big cities there as well. Furthermore, while I focus on developed world here, and especially on the US, sometimes I will make
an attempt to make global generalizations, again, on the assumption, that developing countries will also face urban malaise once they
become more developed.51
Why this book? It is somewhat novel and timely, I think. Amidst the common pro-urbanism (among academics) or pro-sub-
urbanism (most Americans prefer suburbs), it is largely overlooked that people are happiest in smaller areas. In fact, the larger and
denser the place, the less happy are people there–the least happy place in the US is New York , and in England it is London. Toronto,
largest metropolitan area in Canada is second least happy in Canada, only Vancouver (third city in Canada) is less happy. Likewise in
other developed countries people are least happy in largest cities. Perhaps, Singapore is one of the most striking examples of urban
failure to deliver human wellbeing. Singapore has very high life expectancy, income, and material standard of living. It consistenly
rankes as the very best place to do business in the world and it has extreme “economic freedom.” In terms of economic indicators,
Singapore easily makes it to the top 10% or even top 5%. Yet, it doesn’t make it to the top 25% on happiness or even ranks below
Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Syria. Of Course, what differentiates Singapore from other countries is that it is mostly urban, it is a
city-country. 52 And, as a place gets smaller, people get happier–towns are happier than cities and villages or open country are the
happiest. That is, there is an urban-rural or city-nature happiness gradient. Much of the book is a literature review of classic urban
theories. It seems that amidst the excitement about city growth or efforts of city revitalization, we have forgotten what a city is, why
we have it, and it what it does to us. This book takes a step back to classic scholarship that actually tried to to answer these questions,
and then I engage with contemporary issues such as suburbanization, inequality, gentrification, and others. As with any other topic,
there are many other writings on at least closely related themes; still, this book is unique in at least two ways. First, its approach is not
siloed in any single discipline, on the contrary, it is truly interdisciplinary drawing on scholars as diverse as philosophers and theoretical
physicists53 –because cities, nature, and happiness are quite universal topics and have been of interest to many disciplines. Second, I
will reiterate many points already made elsewhere and refute some, but I will use most recent data available. Indeed, much of what
has been said before should be retested using recent data, because we are witnessing data revolution–the amount of data available in
few years of still young 21st century dwarfs anything possible before.54 Fundamentally, I think, it is a good time to counteract some
pro-urbanism that became too fashionable recently.
This book somehow got broader than intended first. It was supposed to be about city unhappiness only, mostly showing data and
using statistics, but then it became more about cities in general and mostly using theory, description and discussion. It also became
more sociological than intended (thanks Joanie!)–but that’s where theoretical or intellectual wisdom about cities is located. Economists
don’t have much to say about cities,55 and geographers, planners, and architects are more technical than this book intends to be. Last
but not least, this book became more Marxist-leaning than I ever expected, not necessarily a bad thing,56 but definitely surprising.
Perhaps, that’s what must happen to a person when he reads a lot of sociology. Still, I try to keep it pragmatic and not ideological.
Another surprising to me outcome is that this book became vastly less quantitative and more qualitative–initially, I planned to

9
blanket the whole book with graphs and tables so that it would essentially be Stata (statistical software) output with some annotations.
It is truly striking that now only one small section (3.4) discusses quantitative evidence, and the rest is either theory, discussion and
interpretation of literature, and qualitative evidence such as my personal observations.57 One reason is that I do not wish to replicate
my quantitative papers on the subject, and a related reason is that I am somewhat tired of doing quantitative research all the time,
and it is a nice opportunity to try a different approach.

1.5 Introduction
“To look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of a fibrous tumor.” (Frank Lloyd Wright)58

It appears as if inevitability of city living is an axiom, a self-evident truth59 –that this is the only way for our economy or civilization.
Along these lines, it is often enthusiastically noted that now more that 50% of the world population is urban. While 80% of US is
urban, only 60% live in cities (again, city is defined here as an area > 250k)–many people still live in smaller towns, and as argued in
this book a town of say 50k is very different from a city of 500k.
Furthermore, while we had to move to cities for industrialization to take place, it does not follow that we have to stay there for
further growth to take place. Indeed, as industrialization forced people into cities, deindustrialization is actually pushing people out
of cities. And social scientists try to counteract it and keep people in cities–but why? What is the reason to try to force people into
cities? To be sure, density still matters and still has many advantages as discussed later, but in many ways the world is flatter and
we can “plug in” from smaller places, that is, more and more work can be done from wherever there is internet, and there is less
need to be in the city.60 The thesis of this book is that while cities have some advantages (everything has some advantages!), the
disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
There are myths about place and happiness. The myth is that happiness has its home in the city as Ed Glaeser would like to see
it,61 and the truth is that happiness has its home in the country. More recently, there seems to be an accelerating enthusiasm about
city renewal, and as a corollary, there are prophecies of decline of suburbia. Many academics see the future of the human settlement
in a city–maybe so, but an unhappy one.62
So how place can result in happiness? Let’s start romantically. I speculate that the Zeitgeist of the 21st century will be romantic,
as opposed to economic. There is a so called pastoral idyll, often expressed in lyrics, novels and paintings during Romanticism.63 This
theme is probably best understood with a picture, and two such portraits are shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: Natural happiness.

(a) Jan Thomas van Ieperen: Pastoral Idyll (b) Georges Philibert Charles Maroniez: Rural Landscape

This idyllic picture probably does appear quite unreal at first sight, and even out of the place–it could fit better in some fairly
tale. Yet, there is nothing unreal about it–nothing prevents us in 21st century from spending some time in a natural setting enjoying
some natural food in a company of animals. Right? Such activity was thought to result in happiness as can be inferred from figure
2–two humans appear to be happy, and other animals are happy, too. It is just we do not do that anymore in civilized world. We

10
rather enjoy food at some restaurant, not necessarily McDonald’s, it can be little fancier,64 it may even be a local and family run
“old-fashioned restaurant.” Never mind that no matter where you go, your food probably was delivered by US Foods or Sysco from
the same factory–there are just couple factories producing most of food for the entire US. For more elaboration about this topic see a
truly fascinating and eye-opening documentary, “Food, Inc” (http://www.takepart.com/foodinc). I bring this up not just because
this is grossly overlooked,65 but also very relevant to cities. Food was a key limitation to city growth–for ages most people had to work
in agriculture in order to survive, and it was possible to support only very few people in cities. Only with industrialization and then
industrialization of food production, cities became possible.66 But we pay the price–almost all food is produced in industrial, inhumane,
and just plain disgusting way–again see “Food, Inc.” movie to learn about what you eat. An important point about industrialization
is that before it took place, we were not very different from other animals; but afterwords we have changed a lot, and so did our
settlements and our way of life.67
Another point to keep in mind is that for almost all of the history of human species we did live like in figure 2. Then, we started
building cities couple thousands years ago, but only a tiny fraction of population lived there until industrialization, when, to quote the
latest book by Ed Glaeser, we came up with “our greatest invention”:68 a modern industrial city that is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3: Cleveland, 1960.

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 Figure 4: Rowhouses in Camden, New Jersey.

At least one good thing about metropolis from figure 3 is that it is bustling with (industrial) life. But then, our greatest invention lost
its steam with deindustrialization and it began to rust (figure 4), and indeed all US dense cities either keep on rusting like Philadelphia,69
or they gentrify like New York,70 but neither rusting nor gentrification is really good, and accordingly people are unhappy there. Hence,
the thesis of this book–cities are just bad places. Most Americans seem to realize that and hence an American sprawling suburb was
born (figure 5). In some ways, this is an improvement, but in many ways it does not solve problems and creates some new problems.
There are several things that always strike me about American suburbs. First, they appear at first as progress–they look good and
they are cheap. But when you look closer, you discover the problems (as with most cheap and good looking produce). The discovery
of suburb problem is easiest from an airplane–American suburb really looks as if it was mass-produced in one piece, possibly by aliens
(or economists–so called homo-oeconomicus species),71 and then dumped on Earth. The spirit of suburban housing is that of Le
Corbusier:72

We must create the mass-production spirit.

The spirit of constructing mass-production houses.
The spirit of living in mass-production houses.
The spirit of conceiving mass-production houses. (Le Corbusier 1985, p.228)

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 Figure 5: Urban sprawl, Las Vegas, Clark County NV.

You probably wonder, which is worse, city or suburb. Perhaps a suburb, and that’s the latest trend among Americans–Millenials73
are rediscovering cities. Cities are clearly fashionable now. Cities in some ways are becoming like suburbs–the rich are moving into
cities, buying big houses on big lots, but also suburbs are getting more like cities–they are getting denser and many businesses locate
there as opposed to locating in cities–a good example is northern suburbs of Dallas, say Plano, where many businesses locate.74 The
goal of this book is to counter popular enthusiasm about both, cities, and suburbs, or in other words, metros. Metros are not good
places for humans. Then you may wonder, what is left. There are towns and villages, and still, surprisingly, many Americans live
there, but if the trends continue, soon cities will suck up life from all smaller places. Literally. People are being sucked by metros that
are ballooning bigger and bigger. In that sense, another analogy that could be made in addition to tumor, is vampire–cities are like
faceless and formless vampires. They allure people with a promise of success or maybe even glory, but then they will wear you out or
suck up your life with long work hours, long commute, stress, and a thousand of other bad things as documented in this book.

2 Urbanization is Here
“The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo” (John Kenneth Galbraith)75

It became fashionable to point to the fact that more than half of the mankind now lives in cities.76 Urbanization of the world is
actually a new phenomenon–in 1950 only 30% of our species lived in urban areas, but in 2050 it will be 80%. The US was only 5 %
urban in 1790, but in 2010 it is 80 % urban. And American urbanization continues–US urban land will more than double by 2050 from
3 percent in 2000 to 8 percent in 2050.77 A very interesting graph showing growth of top 20 US metropolitan areas by population
over 1790-2010 is shown at http://www.peakbagger.com/pbgeog/histmetropop.aspx.
Yet again, there is a somewhat false impression or even an axiom that city is the only way of life. Vast majority of the US population
is urban, but also many people still live in small towns that are very different from large cities, and they are happier, too. Despite US
being 80% urban, about half of people still live in places smaller than 25k. Many of those smaller places are in a proximity of a large
city, many of them are suburbs–indeed most Americans prefer to live in suburbs–close to big city but outside of it–arguably they want
to have the best of both worlds–easy access to labor market in a city and city amenities such as universities and airport, but yet, they
also want to enjoy the country. As argued in chapter 4.3, suburbs are not a great solution to urban malaise.78

13
 Nonmetropolitan America measured by area of nonmerto counties covers 72% of US land and houses about 15% of population.
Furthermore, America is still in large part, perhaps even half of it population, small-town. But many small towns lie in metropolitan
areas and are being swallowed by metros–the trend towards metropolization (urbanization+suburbanization) is clear. Over past 10
years large metropolitan areas grew at about 1% per year, while nonmetropolitan counties grew at about .2 %, and in past three years,
they actually shrank a little.79 In short, and literally, metros are sucking life (people) from elsewhere, or as economists like Ed Glaeser
would put it, people flock in doves to cities because cities are our greatest invention. Again, many people do not move to city per se,
inner or core or anywhere city, but to suburbs. Yet as more and more people move to suburbs, they become more dense, and more
city-like, and at some point as far as eye can see–there is a city everywhere–it striking indeed–for instance the metropolitan area of
Dallas Forth Worth is larger than country of Israel ! And it is growing larger still.

2.1 Why? Why people flock to metros, or are they forced by dark economic forces?
As with anything else, nothing is completely without any advantages whatsoever. And so there are some advantages to cities, too.
First, cities must have had some advantages, since they developed and persisted. Fundamentally, civilization was made possible by
very early towns and cities. Note “was”–it appears that cities may be less important than they used to for further development–work
form home, Google car, telecommuting, information economy, etc, but there’s some disagreement.80
Economists remind us that cities exist because we are not self sufficient. That is, we need labor specialization to develop economically
and it works best at high densities where economies of scale and agglomeration economies are at work. Fair enough, but places with
few tens of thousands of people would already satisfy these requirements to large degree. Is there any need for cities that house
populations counted in millions? We will come back to this in chapter 2.3.
People flock to cites arguably mostly in search of (job) opportunities and excitement–all the amenities like opera, museums and
so forth are in cities because they can be provided for many people only. Consequently, rural areas have few well-paid jobs and few
amenities. Specialized jobs, like specialized amenities must be in a large center as per central place theory. Yet again, as discussed
elsewhere, more and more jobs can be now done online.81
Americans vote with their feet by metropolizing America, and immigrants also usually settle in metros arguably because the
perceived opportunity is located there, and opportunity is key in capitalism to achieve monetary (capitalistic) success. In other words,
people think that American Dream is made in American city.82 Capitalism and urbanism are closely linked as elaborated in this book.
It may explain suburbanization–people are forced to be close to cities (jobs and amenities), yet they want to stay away from cities and
cannot be too far in rural areas, hence, American suburb was born. Likewise, arguably many immigrants also prefer lower density, and
they often escape overcrowding such as that in many areas in East Asia or even that in Europe.83
Who moves? First, in order to move, you need resources. Poor people are largely stuck where they live, but they may be also
attracted and often actually move to large cities in search of opportunity. Also, smart people are more likely to move to cities arguably
to get education, jobs or perhaps in search for lifestyle. City is cool, and nonurban areas or suburbs are dull. Also, smart people are
more likely to move out of cities arguably to raise family.84

2.2 Size Fetish. Size is power. Proud cities.

Cities attract people, because people strive for power and status.85 Big cities have long been centers of power–economic, political, any
kind of power. Hence, going there in search of power seems to make sense. For instance, I hear from people living in Washington DC,
that it is a great place to be, because you can meet powerful people, and hence, you also become kind of more powerful. At a local
level, a similar pattern emerges. County seat, state legislature, and so forth, are always in local urban areas, often in largest city in an
area. Not only public policy or politics power center is in the city. Indeed, all power centers or industry clusters are city based. Fashion
center is in New York or in Milan (second largest city in Italy). Entertainment is located in Los Angeles or in Las Vegas (both largest
cities in respective states). And so forth.
Fundamentally, I speculate, perhaps people embrace large cities in a similar way they love SUVs, McMansions86 or anything
else big or powerful or status-conferring or status-signaling–big size often confers or signifies or suggests potential power, prestige,
strength, success, prosperity. No wonder New Yorkers are proud to be New Yorkers. Similar pride is found in other countries’ largest
cities–Shanghai, Warsaw, and so forth.87
Even with this book, big city mattered. I did hear before about Palgrave, nevertheless, what reassured me in an email from the

14
editor was “175 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10010”–I though to myself–well, if it is 5th Avenue, it must be great. I wouldn’t think
that way if they were located in Beeville TX. I even recall myself talking to my family that I have a book contract with a New York
based publisher–some people may not know what Palgrave is, but everyone knows what New York is. On the other hand, if you are a
really famous company, and you are not in creative or fashion industry, then you may even be located in Bentonville AR.
In addition to size, price matters, too. A want to live in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, is like a want to have Iphone 6 (or
whatever is the latest one)–it is a drive to show that you are successful by associating yourself with success badges like expensive city
or an overpriced phone. That is, big city living is a kind of luxury fashion (fever?)–it attracts because it is expensive.
Size competitions are everywhere. Even fire departments compete with each other to have bigger fire trucks. In housing, too–many
want a big house, ideally a mansion. Countries compete to have the biggest (tallest) building in the world. Then people compete to
have an office there or to live there–for instance I just spoke to someone who said that she has a friend...who has an office in Empire
State Building. Wow! Snazzy! We spend couple minutes in amazement and wonder and arguably much envy. Even the name of the
building implies amazement, wonder and envy: “Empire.” It is probably easier to sense it in a picture–currently the tallest tower is
shown in figure 6. Same with cities–isn’t it a status symbol to live in Manhattan or in San Francisco?88

Figure 6: Burj Khalifa–the tallest building in the world as of 2014.

Why not build towers down, that is underground. It will preserve more natural landscape–towers about as unnatural as it gets.
One problem with that, some may argue is that you will not have a nice view. But if you are in a tower, there is a good chance that

15
what you see from your window is another tower, which is as good view as no window.
Since we are talking about towers, let me quote few words of wisdom from Thoreau about pyramids, an ancient version of towers:89

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded
enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to
have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but
I have no time for it. As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the
building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring is vanity[...]

When you first meet a person from a big city, you’ll hear pride in her voice announcing she’s from Chicago, Shanghai, London,
or some other great city. I am sure you have seen it–her eyes wide open and face glowing–being from a big city is a powerful and
important attribute. Meet a person from a little town, and you’ll often notice an apologizing tone in her voice. Likewise, urbanites
are sometimes or even often condescending toward suburbanites.90 Figure 7 is an attempt to show several such emotions with facial
expressions. This points to another key observation: city dwellers appear happy and small area dwellers appear miserable–yet as this
book documents, city happiness is fake–it is just a smile, pride, etc, slapped to a face, but a person is often miserable. The problem
is that, the poor rural person may think it is real, and then she migrates to a city, and often ends up miserable, too.
Cities, like capitalism which they embody, lure us by exploiting our passions. Cities promise or even provide momentary enjoyment
and pleasure (just like shopping), but not life satisfaction or happiness.91
This explains why people live in cities despite many being miserable there–humans do not want to be happy, they just want to be
better than other humans (which, they think, will make them happy, but it usually doesn’t). When asked, whether a person would
prefer to live in a world A where she makes $100k and others make $50k or in world B, where she makes $150k and others make $200k,
most people chose world A, that is, they would prefer to make less as long as they make more than others. There is a saying that a
rich man is one who makes more than his wife’s sister’s husband. We compare all the time and we want to be better than others.92

Figure 7: Imagine a person from a city, say, Chicago or London, meets a person from a town, say, Beeville TX or Vineland, NJ. Some likely
face expressions (exaggerated; people hide emotions) of a city dweller are on the left, and of person from a town are on the right.

(a) city: snazzy, awesome, cool, amazing, sexy, fantastic,

spiffy, hot, great, pretty, sharp, stylish, jazzy, nifty, hip, (b) town: boring, ugly, ordinary, dull, average, normal, lame, plain,
snappy bland, stupid, common, dumb, unattractive

(c) ecstatic (d) adored (e) adoring (f) embarrassed

There are many stories–novels or movies or just real personal stories, when a person is born and raised in a small place, but

16
sometime in her teens or twenties, she wants to be better than that, she wants to prove herself, she wants to advance up the social
ladder, so she moves to New York.
There is a similar pattern in cross-country migration–when a person moves from smaller and poorer country to bigger and richer
country, say from Guatemala to the US.93 I have also observed that just like citizens of large cities, so citizens of large countries have
certain pride. Again, it does not have to be largest globally, it is enough if it is largest regionally. Citizens of the following countries
seem to be proud of their countries: Brazil, Turkey, Russia, China, France–each being quite large as compared to its neighbors. Of
course, there are many outliers and relationship between pride and size is not very strong, but there does appear to be some positive
relationship.
And then, in addition to size pride, there is also looking down on people from smaller (or poorer) area. Americans look down
on Mexicans, Russians look down on Ukrainians, New Yorkers look down on Kentuckians, Shanghainese look down on Nanjingers,
Varsovians look down on people from Lublin (city in Poland), and so forth.
In addition to looking down on people from smaller places, big city inhabitants may tell you that the country is really just that
city. For instance, a person who lived in Amsterdam (largest city in the Netherlands) told me that people living there think that “the
Netherlands is Amsterdam.”
Not only city-centered states were prominent in antiquity (Rome, Sparta, etc), but are also prominet today, for instace, people
tend to think of the US as one country or perhaps 50 states, while it actually makes more sense economically, socially, and culturally,
to talk about its largest metros (Khanna 2016). Likewise, there is a divide: there are two Americas–one rural and one urban–and it is
the urban one that is gaining broadly understood power fast (Hanson 2015).
Often people are quite explicit that they simply value or even love large size of their city. No, they won’t say “I love big size of my
city,” but rather that they love variety, diversity or abundance in something, say food, art, or things to do, which is very closely related
to size. Almost always, the more variety, diversity, or abundance, the bigger the place. People also seem to think that they need a
large city to somehow realize their (large of course as well) potential.
The pride or power of big city is easily seen when you change size of a place. When you live in a smaller area and go to a big city
you feel overpowered, e.g., you feel small, insignificant, lost. If you live in a big city and go to a smaller area, you feel overpowering,
e.g., dominating, stronger, and more important.
Interestingly, rural areas have their own size fetish, too. One of my students remarked that he has mat people from Montana,
who equate the amount of land they have with power. Two great movies come to mind. Power was clearly equated with land in
“Braveheart”–Robert the Bruce was clearly upset with his father’s, a nobleman Robert the Elder, obsession with land or for that matter
all nobleman obsession with land. In “Gladiator,” city of Rome is equated with power–it is the seat of the Roman Empire–Rome is large
in size, its Colosseum is large, population of Rome is large–the size of things is what makes one feel power in Rome. Incidentally, the
idea of Rome’s Colosseum is in many ways like towers of today, especially these tallest ones like Empire State Building or World Trade
Center Twin Towers. Rome was able to be great and have big-sized Colosseum, because it was a seat of an empire that controlled a
lot of land. In any case, whether city or land–it is about size–the bigger the more power, and hence, size fetish.94

2.3 The forgotten optimal size of a place

Possibly the key advantage of city is that various specialized institutions and amenities such as hospitals, universities and airports are
more efficiently provided there. We know it as per central place theory.95 Yet, there can be a university, airport, and hospital serving
several mid-size towns, say 50-thousand each; no need for metropolis to build them. And there could be a light, fast train to connect
these places...like in the Netherlands–they have a terrific net of train connections. Chinese have great trains, too. Well, it is difficult
to have worse public transportation than in America.
Discussion about size of a place begs a question, what is the optimal size of a place? Urban malaise sets it when population size
reaches large number of about several hundred thousand. In terms of production of goods and services one older estimate (1951) puts
the optimal size at 50 thousand. 96
Sometime ago there was some discussion of an optimal size for a place–the idea being that it is efficient to have many people
living together, but beyond some point, further concentration does not make sense. The idea is that as place grows so grow benefits
and they grow faster than costs but at some point costs start to grow faster, and there is a point when costs outweigh benefits. This
line of research, like classical sociological line of research about urban malaise seem to have been abandoned. In a similar fashion, we
do not seem to pay attention to overpopulation as much as we used to (I discuss overpopulation in conclusion).97 Further, it seems,

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that now the consensus is that the bigger the city, the better. Are we going to stop growing cities at all? We already have a handful
of cites>20m, what is the limit? 100m? 500m? The answer is that there is probably no limit– we’ll keep on growing as long as
technically possible. Same with economy. It is reasonable to consider stop growing it or even degrow it,98 but we will probably keep on
growing until something bad happens, like environmental disaster. Yet, there is some old wisdom that cities should not grow beyond
some limit:99

It is interesting to note that some of the earliest observers of city life were convinced that failure to control city size would
result in a reduced quality of life and would thus limit human potential. Over 4,000 years ago Aristotle observed: [...]
When the population is very large, they are manifestly settled haphazardly, which clearly ought not to be...The best limit
of the population of a city, then, is the largest number which suffices for the purposes of life.

And there is more recent wisdom, yet old enough to be forgotten. It seems that this debate about desirable size of a place ended
somewhere in 1970s,100 when many works of Fischer were published,101 and there was one policy-oriented study in 70s that is relevant
to this book, “City Size and the Quality of Life; An analysis of the policy implication of continued population concentration,”102 which
concluded:

The research summarized in this report indicates that, for a substantial portion of the American population–perhaps
as much as absolute majority–the trend to ever lager cities is considered undesirable as measured across a number of
noneconomic dimensions (social, environmental, political, and systemic). As such, for a substantial number of people, the
quality of urban life–as measured across noneconomic dimensions–is inversely correlated with size of urban place.

And the report continues saying, what I have repeated often here–people are rather forced into cities, as opposed to voting with
their feet as Glaeser claims:

People have difficulty in “voting with their feet” and moving to smaller urban environments–they are allowed to do so but,
given economic forces which impel further agglomeration, they are seldom able to do so.

The problem with optimal city size is that it is difficult, if not impossible to come up with a number–how exactly is it supposed to
be calculated? What is the formula? Another perspective is that it is not so that at some point costs outweigh advantages as optimal
size approach would require it, but simply that both advantages and disadvantages grow faster than city size grows, which probably
makes most sense. In that view, size of place is the key determinant of characteristics of a place, possibly even more important than
history, geography, and design.103 Hence, science is not helpful in determining the optimal city size. There is some popular wisdom
about the right size that seem to make sense, for instance, one person writes:104

My dad had hypothesized that there was considerable benefit to the earliest stages of growth (when a town got big
enough to move from a volunteer fire department to a professional one, big enough to move from wells and septic tanks
to a municipal water and sewer system), but that further growth beyond that stage came with costs that outweighed the
benefits.

Perhaps then we can use happiness yardstick to try to approximate the optimal city size. For the US, size at which people become
less happy is somewhere between 200 and 700–again, every city is different (importantly in density), but when place reaches size of
several hundred thousand, it becomes too big (in terms of decreased happiness).105
Also, I do not believe in limiting city size through some policy or administrative action. Such policy probably would not work well
for number of reasons. Chinese try to do it (so called “hukou”), but even in their authoritarian regime it does not work very well.
Furthermore, even if it worked, it would result in high housing prices. Let’s start by simply discussing city disadvantages and try to
discourage people from moving there. This is what this book tries to accomplish. You have been warned–avoid cities–they aren’t
happy places.

2.4 City’s bright side: freedom

“City air makes men free (Stadt Luft macht frei)” Park et al. ([1925] 1984, p. 12)106

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 City gives us some of our freedom that we have lost when we started civilization. In classic “Civilization and Its Discontents,”
Freud beautifully described the downsides of human civilization–essentially we had to give up our freedoms to build civilization and
become more Gesellschaft-like.107 Another classic book followed the thought–Erich Fromm in his “Escape From Freedom” discussed
at length the concept of freedom and why it may be more comfortable not too have it. Yet, freedom is a great quality in most respects
and there is more freedom in many respects in cities. There are many different people in the city, many different cultures, and hence,
you can find one that you like, more easily than elsewhere, and thrive in that group.108
The advantage of city is that it is more progressive, modern, liberal, tolerant, accommodating, and on the other hand, smaller areas
are often more traditional, backwards, and prejudiced. Hence, non-conventional or non-traditional or non-conformist people, such as
LGBTQ people (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) are arguably more free in city than elsewhere. Indeed, everyone’s more free.
The point of freeing character of city was beautifully made by Simmel:109

Just as in feudal times the “free” man was he who stood under the law of the land, that is, under the law of the largest
social unit, but he was unfree who derived his legal rights only from the narrow circle of feudal community–so today in
an intellectualized and refined sense the citizen of the metropolis is “free” in contrast with the trivialities and prejudices
which bind the small town person.

Also, in some ways, maybe we are more individualistic than we think, and maybe superficiality and transitory character of cities is
not that far from our nature, and it is the cage of traditional Gemeinschaft-type society, outside of the city that we need to get freed
from.110
On the other hand, it seems, that a person matters less in the city–she is insignificant among masses of other people, while in the
town or village, she was more prominent and noticed. In other words, in the city, a person is somewhat depersonalized or reduced
to an insignificant, unnoticeable part among a large mass. Urbanite is but a tiny cog in a large machine called city. Indeed, the
industrialization that started a modern city, has been also labeled a “machine age”.111 In the city, a person is more in periphery, but
while in smaller area, she is more primary or predominant.
Freedom brings us to creativity. Arguably in order to be creative, you need to be free in the fist place. Creativity, of course, is very
important. In addition to providing freedom, cities seem to foster creativity because there needs to be high enough density of people
for connections to form and ideas to develop. Richard Florida, an inventor of “creative class” echoing typical urban economic mantra
writes112

Cities and metro areas are in fact the key economic and social organizing units of the Creative Age, even more so than
industrial corporations. Cities, as the great urbanist Jane Jacobs told us long ago, are where new ideas, new innovations,
new companies, and new work come from. They are the social and economic platforms that enable talented people to
combine and recombine their talents and ideas in ways that generate new technologies and new companies, which in turn
create new jobs, generating wealth and prosperity.

And there is some truth to it, but is it necessarily that city itself–large size, high density, and heterogeneity, to use sociological
definition113 –that generates high creativity? Or simply, cities suck up creative people from elsewhere as they arguably suck up productive
and ambitious people. And again, I do not argue against all urban areas, I only argue against largest cities. Interestingly, none of three
largest US cities even makes it to the top 20 of Florida’s creativity list: New York (31st), Los Angeles (22nd), Chicago (45th), while
there are smaller places in the top 10: Boulder CO (1st), Ann Arbor MI (6th), Corvallis OR (7th), Durham NC (8th). Do we really
believe that in order to have a creative idea one has to by squeezed on New York subway or in Philadelphia’s PATCO train ? Isn’t
a town enough to have a critical mass of creative people for knowledge spillovers to take place? Say Ann Arbor MI or Bloomington
IN both house fine universities, are very creative, and yet are not huge neither dense metropolises. Do we really believe that people
are more creative in New York or in Hong Kong just because they are all squeezed in towers? If anything, it seems the other way
round–congestion is not conducive for thinking.114

2.5 Glaeser’s latest book: triumph of the city that is not (countering common pro-urbanism)
It is remarkable that a key or possibly the top scholar115 in the field of urban studies or urban economics, Ed Glaeser, writes a book,
that becomes a New York Times Bestseller, and is already plain wrong in the title: “Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention

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Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier”–cities do not make us happier. A bad book may happen to anybody,
academics are not Oracles, nevertheless, this is quite spectacular and worth mentioning.116
So why is it a triumph? Cities make some of us richer. Smarter and greener are debatable.117 Probably they don’t make us
healthier, and definitely not happier. It seems that a main cause for triumph is that they grow, and indeed many balloon or skyrocket
to use more descriptive language. As in many typical “we love cities” hand waving type of books, Glaeser starts his book by saying
that the world is urbanizing and that most humans now live in urban areas. As if that itself indicates the triumph and somehow
implicitly also confirms that cities are great.118 So what? Many other things are growing–Walmart and Amazon are growing, Ebola
is spreading.119 Cancer is a terrific comparison–what cities and cancer have in common is that they both grow without limits–again,
some claim that city and cancer are visually similar as well.120
Cities are where capitalist (money) economy takes place.121 And urbanization is correlated with economic growth. Yet, we should
not fall into a trap of equalizing economic growth with economic development. And this is precisely what Glaeser does:

There is a myth that even if cities enhance prosperity, they will make people miserable. But people report being happier
in those countries that are more urban. In those countries where more than half of the population is urban, 30 percent of
people say they are very happy and 17 percent say they are not very or not at all happy. [...] Across countries, reported
life satisfaction rises with the share of the population that lives in cities, even when controlling for the countries’ income
and education.

This is a classic example of ecological fallacy: that people are happier in more urbanized countries than in less urbanized countries,
does not mean that people are happier in cities than in smaller areas. More urbanized countries are simply richer than less urbanized
countries. And this is one of the most agreed upon findings in happiness literature that in a cross-section of countries, people are
happier in more developed areas.122 That urbanization leads to economic development is another issue. Another misleading part from
Glaeser (2011) follows:

Cities and urbanization are not only associated with greater material prosperity. In poorer countries, people in cities also
say that they are happier. Throughout a sample of twenty-five poorer countries, where per capita GDP levels are below
$10,000, where I had access to self-reported happiness surveys for urban and non-urban populations, I found that the share
of urban people saying that they were very happy was higher in eighteen countries and lower in seven. The share of people
saying that they were not at all happy was higher in the non-urban areas in sixteen countries and lower in nine.

This is either unhappy sampling or cherry picking.123 Indeed, people are happier in cities in developing countries,124 but in the rich
countries, it is the other way round–the bigger the area, the more dissatisfaction. The reason that people are happy in big areas in
poor countries is not necessarily that the cities are great; it may be simply that life outside of the city in a poor country is unbearable
and lacking the necessities, such as food, shelter, sanitation, and transportation.
Glaeser’s defense would likely be that urbanization helps with economic development and economic development makes people
happy, healthy, and so forth. Right, but that was industrialization and it does not follow that further development will always require
cities. And, sure some urbanization may be fine–this book does not argue against any urbanization, not at all, I just argue against
cities (again, city is defined here as an area >250k). Another problem with Glaeser argument is that over time there does not seem
to be much happiness gained from economic development as per Easterlin paradox.125 And if the story is that urbanization is great
because it contributes to economic growth, then there is a problem because the link between economic growth and happiness is weak
at best.
How about productivity? Is it city magic that makes you more productive? Perhaps. But maybe not. Maybe cities simply suck
productive types out of other areas. Most energetic and productive people may simply get attracted to competitive cities. Maybe
people have to work harder to pay higher rent or afford more expensive city housing. There is much to complain about capitalistic rat
race, and this rat race is exemplified in largest cities. Cities are there to extract more profit from people. US wages have been flat
over past 40 years despite GDP and productivity growth.
To be fair, as opposed to Glaeser’s biased book, let me finish by saying, that there are actually some good writings in favor of
urbanism–a really good one with geography-planning flavor is Meyer (2013). And I do agree with most points made there, especially
that cities are environmentally friendly and good for economy; I just disagree about human flourishing in cities. There is a series
of great writings, not necessarily consistently in favor of cities, but showing some advantages of city living by sociologist Claude S
Fischer (Fischer and Boer 2011, Fischer 2010, Fischer and Mattson 2009, Fischer 1999, 1991, 1982, Fischer and Merton 1976, Fischer

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1975, 1973, 1972). And there is a paper by happiness research pioneer Veenhoven (1994) arguing some advantages of urban life.
One common point to them all (Fischer, Meyer, and Veenhoven) is that they point to unrealistic idealized images of rural life often
supported by cultural stereotypes. Incidentally, this is often what I hear when I complain about cities to everybody and claim that as
soon as possible I will live in the middle of nowhere (I will–I really mean my research!). People then first think that I just say so but
won’t do it. When they see that I am serious about it, they confidently claim something like “Wait few months or a year or two, and
you’ll get so bored that you’ll be back to the city”. I think, I won’t be back, but nevertheless, there may be something to idealized
image of village or open country. We will see, when I move there. And another point–living in pure nature or in wilderness is not
romantic or idyllic, but rather horrific. Yet, I do not advocate that. Not at all. I would even upgrade little Thoreau’s cabin (which
already had some civilization in it and wasn’t pure wilderness); and I would even like to live in a small town. Let me repeat again,
some urbanization is fine. It is just cities that are larger than few hundred thousand people that are bad for us. And this is precisely
what is wrong with Glaeser’s argument that he fervently argues in favor of mass urbanization and those largest cities.126

3 Urban Malaise: Explorations of Problems and Dissatisfaction with City Life

“City life and Gesellschaft down the common people to decay and death.” (Tönnies [1887] 2002, p. 231)

“[...] here is the great city! Here thou hast nothing to seek and everything to lose.” Nietzsche (1896, p. 254)

Interestingly Americans, or at least American intellectuals, have strongly and consistently distrusted the city for as long as city
existed, that is, since 19th century–in 18th century there wasn’t much of a city. In 1800, the three largest American cities were not
really cities in today’s meaning of this term–Philadelphia 70k, New York 60k and Boston 25k. Many common Americans also preferred
smaller locations.127 And there was a good reason to distrust the city. But then in late 20th century, cities became fashionable.
Somehow, it seems, we have forgotten, what a city is and what it does to us. There is excitement abut city productivity and city
renewal, but there is not much exploration of what a city really is and what it does to us. City is not just built environment, it is
state of mind, it is Gesellschaft as opposed to Gemeinschaft, and even more deeply–there are two different wills at play–rational will
in the city–people calculate benefits and costs of their actions and behavior and behave accordingly to maximize benefits–relations
are economic; outside of the city, there is more natural will, that is, people are more natural (as they were before urbanization and
industrialization and capitalism).128

3.1 Gemeinschaft (not city) v Gesellschaft (city). Inequality. A critique of capitalism. Back to Marx.
“Whenever urban culture blossoms and bears fruits, Gesellschaft appears as its indispensable organ” Tönnies ([1887] 2002, p. 35)129

“In the city and therefore, where general conditions characteristic of the Gesellschaft prevail, only the upper strata, the rich and the
cultured, are really active and alive.” (Tönnies [1887] 2002, p. 227).130

“Money [exemplified in cities] is concerned only with what is common to all: it asks for the exchange value, it reduces all quality and
individuality to the question: How much? All intimate emotional relations between persons are founded in their individuality, whereas
in rational relations man is reckoned with like a number, like an element which is in itself indifferent. Only the objective measurable
achievement is of interest. Thus metropolitan man reckons with his merchants and customers, his domestic servants and often even
with persons with whom he is obliged to have social intercourse. These features of intellectuality contrast with the nature of the small
circle in which the inevitable knowledge of individuality as inevitably produces a warmer tone of behavior, a behavior which is beyond
a mere objective balancing of service and return.” Simmel and Wolff ([1903] 1950, p. 411)

Critique of cities is very much like critique of capitalism and consumerism–this is a theme in classic “Walden” and “Gemeinschaft
und Gesellschaft,” and so it is a theme in this book.131 Much that is wrong with capitalism is also wrong with cities. If you work

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hard, capitalism promises advancement up the social ladder and wealth (American Dream), and Americans or immigrants to America
believe it. Americans and immigrants move to metropolises to enter the rat race to make it. But American Dream is not made in
the American metropolis anymore, it is made in China–that is, big income and big wealth are typically an outcome of capital (say
investment in China or any investment), not labor.132 Perhaps, one reason that American cities are worse than cities in other countries
is because US is a very capitalistic nation to begin with and then cities just exemplify and magnify problems of capitalism in a very
capitalistic nation and the result is an American city. Furthermore, America magnifies just like cities do, bringing out the best and
worst in us–for instance, there are the greatest scholars in America, but also the worst criminals.
City v smaller area is like Gemeinschaft v Gesellschaft or natural v rational will–urban dwellers have more rational will–they calculate.
As Marx remarked, in capitalism social relationships are economic as opposed to non-capitalistic or non-urban natural will, which is more
social. What has capitalism to do with cities? It would be only a little overstatement to say everything. Urbanization, industrialization,
commercialization are closely related. Division of labor, perhaps, the single most important driving force behind capitalism, is the key
force that built cities. Agglomeration economies further advancing capitalism are made in cities (and among city networks).
In the traditional society and outside of a city, however, there is less freedom, more rigidness, less tolerance, and more “amoral
familism.”133 City freed a person from bonds of family, kin, tradition, religion, and so forth–now a person is an individual (as opposed
to be a part of collective), she stands by herself. But it’s not all a win-win situation–first, she is now alone. Second, she is a commodity
in market, that is, she needs to be able to sell her labor in order to survive. And that’s what she will spend most of her life doing.
People are like physical commodities on the market–their worth is defined by price paid for them, that is, their wage rate.134 We did
away with slavery and forced labor, but still people are forced to work, not physically, but economically–they are commodities on the
market hoping to sell their labor.135 Like in Engels’ Manchester, where a capitalist crammed factory workers in filthy huts surrounding
a factory, now the poor still cram in similar old dilapidated often red brick row houses, just the factory is not there anymore. White
collar workers crowd, too, but in sanitized towers. Indeed everyone crowds in the city, because city is by definition crowded, except
the capitalist (super rich). Capitalist can afford multimillion house or huge apartment in the center of the city. Such housing would be
couple thousand percent cheaper outside of the city, but that’s the point of much of city housing or any luxury consumption–to waste
money to show that you can waste it.136
A key problem with large city is its superficial, transitory character. You are among many people, yet you are alone–as observed by
Robert E Park, city is a “mosaic of little worlds that touch but do not interpenetrate”–you see and sometime literally bump into people
from other worlds on streets or in public transportation, but you never talk to them or understand them. You meet many people but
you really don’t get to know them well–nobody has time for anything, people are on the move all the time, and they often move to
another city before you get to know them.137 A key point is that the difference between a big city and all other areas is very deep
and very significant one. One good way to describe is to use Tönnies concepts of Gemeinschaft (not city) and Gesellschaft (city).138
Gemeinschaft is a natural state, where person’s will follows her natural urges. Gesellschaft is a state typical to money economy where
social relations are economic (no wonder economists love cities). Indeed the difference between metropolis and the rest of the country
is so big that it is often portrayed in terms of two distinct countries or cultures. Indeed, there is also this popular-political debate
about what is real America? It is often portrayed as a division between main street (Gemeinschaft) and Wall Street (Gesellschaft). Is
it large metros like New York or Chicago, or small towns like Wasilla, AK that define the nation?139

Wasilla, Alaska, is currently the most famous small town in America, thanks to its former mayor Sarah Palin. A healthy
part of her appeal is that she seems to embody small-town values, nurtured in Wasilla and America’s other hamlets and
burgs. As she said in her firecracker acceptance speech, small-town people live lives of ”honesty, sincerity, and dignity.”

Incidentally, this is where a capitalist lives. She lives in New York, or London, or Moscow or some other great metropolis, and most
certainly this is where her company is located.140 Common people enter the rat race and work hard to come to the top, or perhaps even
become a capitalist one day. Many fail–American Dream is less real than most people think–it is easier to make in Scandinavia than
in America–people should be migrating there and chase Scandinavian dream.141 Intellectuals have always avoided the metropolis.142
The reason, arguably is, that an intellectual has nothing to find there–cities are great for doing business, not for thinking–they rather
distract, and instead of stimulating, rather overwhelm and make you indifferent.
Also, recently, there is much criticism of income inequality, because it is growing. Rightly so it is considered a problem if inequality
is too high, because most of it is not due to effort or work but due to skills and luck that are random.143 So far this criticism has
culminated in Piketty’s book “Capital in 21st century,” which explicitly, already in the title alludes to Marx. Inequality is, of course, a
key topic for a social scientist these days. Now, cities have something to do with inequality, too.

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 Inequality is made in cities.144 Economists are raving about labor productivity of cities, that is, the denser the area, the more
output is generated per hour. So far so good, but this output goes to a pocket of capitalist (owner of means of production)–it is now
widely discussed and often repeated that most income and wealth growth happens at the top 1 percent and even more at top 0.1
percent of income distribution. Now, this is not necessarily the fault of cities per se, that workers get robbed that way, but it does not
change the fact that inequality is made in cities. Ed Glaeser even says that the poor are better off in cities than elsewhere–productivity
being the yardstick, everyone is better off in cities because everyone is more productive there. Yet, the poor stay poor in cities–the
rising tide does not raise all the boats. The more rat race, the better for economy (at least in the short run). Not only people are
more productive in cities, they also work longer hours there, especially professionals and the young.145
Inequality is also displayed in cities. The most splendid wealth is in cities and the most horrible poverty is also in cities.146 For
instance, it is easy to see looking at median income of neighborhoods at different subway stations of greatest American city, New
York–in most cases there are neighborhoods on the same line above $150k and below $50k; in some cases there are neighborhoods at
about $200k and at $20k–ten fold difference. See http://projects.newyorker.com/story/subway/.
And the community is not there anymore to protect a person, because relations are economic. The bigger the city, the more
capitalism and the less community. Indeed, one could say, the more capitalism or money economy, the less community. As Marx
observed long time ago, in capitalism social relations are economic–simply speaking, it is inefficient to just have a social relation for the
sake of relation, if it does not result in economic gain. Despite grave disadvantages of communism, it had much better community.147
Urbanists are trying to “build” or “engage” community in big cities, because it is not there anymore. But perhaps it just does
not belong there–Gemeinschaft does not go well with Gesellschaft. Community is a buzzword today, just like “leadership”, “global”,
“challenge”, and it is a great advertisement. As argued earlier, we don’t have it anymore, especially in the cities, and so they advertise
it that you will have it if you do business with them. “Them” meaning urbanists or just regular businesses. And so Cooper hospital has
billboards with “community advantage”; Whole Foods has “community calendar”, and so forth. So businesses (Gesellschaft) advertise
they will provide Gemeinschaft if you pay them money (buy their stuff)–as pretty much any other commercial this is misinformation–that
is, it is worse than information.148

3.2 City is unnatural. City is contradictory. Success kills affordability and authenticity.
“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man” Thomas Jefferson149

“With urbanization comes disharmony” (The Dalai Lama)150

As anything else, some cities are successful, some aren’t.151 But here’s what’s interesting–city’s success kills much of what made
it successful in the first place! Economic success, however, is maintained by concentrating and draining capital and human resources
from elsewhere so that once successful, it stays that way for long time. First, successful places attract, because they are great places.
Then they grow and become cities or even larger cities. In the second stage, these places became expensive, but they still attract
because they have concentrated a great deal of resources. If a place is successful for a long time, it is usually expensive especially if
you cannot build because of natural water or mountain boundaries like in San Francisco or in New York, and unlike in Dallas.
Then there are cities that are unsuccessful and there is much effort and ink spilled trying to turn them around, while much less
effort is devoted to improving smaller areas, which is understandable to some degree, because more people live in cities in developed
countries, and even more will live there in the future. Yet, as argued throughout this book, it seems that attention given to cities and
effort at improving them is disproportionate, even accounting for their large populations. One example is close to my occupation. In
academia, we have urban studies programs devoted to improving cities. I do not think these programs focus enough on suburbs or
smaller urban areas–and there are problems there, too. Villages and open country seems to be completely left out. At the same time,
we do not really study cities anymore, something done by early sociologists and then largely abandoned. Instead, we usually describe
social problems like segregation, crime and poverty and sometimes try to come up with policies to fix them–so the word “urban” simply
means location–that we study social problems in big cities, as if social problems only existed there, and again, we do not study cities
per se, something that this books tries to do following classic sociological tradition.
Much of the city improvement effort seems to imply city happiness, and sometimes it is even very explicit like in “Happy City:
Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design.”152 This is not necessarily a mistaken idea, to try to make a city happy–again keep in
mind that cities actually do have many advantages–notably economic and probably environmental. Yet, we somehow forgot what we

23
are really doing here–making city a happy habitat for a human is kind of like making an aquarium a happy habitat for fish.153 Neither
aquarium for a fish, nor cage for a chicken, nor tower for a human is a natural habitat–it would either take genetic engineering or
otherwise thousands of years for evolution to make us at home in the city. These rather obvious points are missing from the hand
waving about city improvement and city happiness.
Even successful cities are still less happy than an average of nonmetropolitan counties–see chapter 3.4. One problem of successful
cities is prohibitively high cost of living that arguably contributes to city misery amidst city success. It is especially bad if high-rise
construction is prohibited as Jane Jacobs would like it–real estate prices will be really high. But this is the crux of the problem–to
have a nice, cozy, and human-friendly neighborhood in big city, it needs to look like a small town, like Greenwich Village in Jacobs
times, but soon it will turn into Greenwich Village of today where 99% of people cannot afford to live. No wonder Manhattan lost 1
million people over last century–very few can afford to live there.154 Otherwise, we are left with more affordable towers, as Glaeser
advocates, but solving affordability that way, we end up with hugely artificial environment that reminds cages for birds. The only other
big city alternative is affordable housing in an unsuccessful city like Detroit in 2010, but nobody wants to live there for good reasons,
and hence, unless you are super-rich or feel really good in towers or in failed cities, you should not live in cities, neither commute
there–because commuting is worst thing you can do for your happiness. Easily said, but most people are forced into metros, because
they need a job that is there, and they end up being unhappy. When I say this to someone, a usual response is–you pay more in big
cities, but you also make more. But higher pay does not compensate the prices, and we already spend a third of our paycheck on
housing, up 13 percent from two decades ago. Let’s quickly compare the key expenditure, housing prices, and salaries for large cities
and smaller areas. Table 1 shows median housing prices and salaries for several areas. New York median household income is about
10 times smaller than median price of a housing unit. The same is true in San Francisco. In Manhattan, ratio of income to housing
prices is even smaller. Again, no wonder Manhattan lost a million people over last century. In short, people who move to cities are not
only worse off in terms of happiness but also worse off financially. Yet, they keep on moving–one explanation is a phenomenon called
“expected v experienced utility” as discussed later.155

Table 1: Median housing prices and salaries, 2008-2012. Source: US Census quick facts http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html
Note: Selection of these areas is based on recent travels of the author.

Place Median HH income Median value of

(thousands) owner-occupied
housing units (thou-
sands)
New York city, NY 52 501
New York county, NY (Manhattan) 68 827
San Francisco city, CA 74 751
Bee County, TX 41 72
Frisco city, TX 108 249

There is some anecdotal evidence, too. One person writes:156

I often wonder about the sustainability of my urban life. The cost of living continues to rise, and moving beyond the
lifestyle college dragging clothes to the laundromat, living with roommates, and being broke chronically grows ever more
elusive. Give me a few years, and the keys to an affordable single-family home, and I might just be ready to boomerang
back to the ’burbs.

How about a smaller area? Bee County, TX located in “the middle of nowhere” offers much better salary-to-housing price ratio:
about 1:2, same in a suburb of Dallas, Frisco is about 1:2. Hence, living outside of a big city will get you a house about 5 times
faster. Critics would say that New York county has much more to offer than Bee County TX, and while this is obviously true, and
while arguably most people would strive or dream to live in a city like New York, Chicago or Boston, a surprising result is that people
are not happier there than in an average non-urban county as elaborated in chapter 3.4.157
The funny thing about urbanists like Jane Jacobs or Sharon Zukin is that they are actually in some important ways anti-urban, and
I actually do agree with most points they make! I especially agree that what’s best in a city is small town community feel in a low-rise
neighborhood. I just go one step further by questioning the very feasibility of lasting community or small-town feel in a city and lean
towards a conclusion that it’s just better to live outside of cites (and outside of suburbs, too).158 Jacobs did not like high density
and tall buildings–the very defining features of city. What is more common among urbanists is their dislike of highways–Jacobs was

24
famous for fighting Moses who wanted to put a highway through some neighborhoods, but some highways are also necessary for large
cities. What Jacobs like most about big city is actually its small-town feel, tight neighborhood, where everybody knows everybody,
local grocery store, and no high-rise buildings–an urban village. Urbanists really do seem to like small towns–they just have to be
“neighborhoods” of cities. The problem is that this can hardly be sustained as Zukin points out–it either becomes too expensive
and forces the very people who give the neighborhood its character out or simply the area is high crime and high poverty like much
of Philadelphia or Camden, and yes, it is affordable and it has a very local character, just nobody wants to live there. If it were to
redevelop, it would lose that authenticity in favor or H&M, Starbucks, and sooner or later towers.159
We are taking about dollar values. How about quality? Quality of housing in largest and densest160 American cities, in addition
to being more expensive, is worse than in suburbs and worse than in many non-metropolitan areas. It is safe to say that the largest
cities have not only most expensive housing but also worst quality housing, so in terms of value for the money you really get the worst.
Of course, the big advantage of city and what you pay for is location–it is close to everywhere and your commute to major amenities
is much shorter. Yet with the advent of Google car and information economy, where much of the work can be done from home–you
don’t have to live in Manhattan, but can live in Cranbury NJ or even in Beeville TX to get the job done. In addition, if you have kids
in segregated America, it is important to stay away from cities for another two reasons–high crime and worst schools. Most families
do that, and in a vicious cycle it exacerbates problems of bad schools and high crime in cities.161
The bottom line is that success of a city kills affordability. Sometimes to lesser degree, though–for instance, Dallas and Houston
are successful (say judging by their growth) yet affordable. The key factor is density–they have very low density as for large cities,
and hence, are affordable; in that sense even though they are large cities given their population, they are not large cities considering
their density.162 Indeed, any city, even unsuccessful one like Philadelphia (say judging by poverty or crime or population flight) is quite
expensive as compared to less dense areas–the higher the density, the less affordable a place is. Success of a city only exacerbates
problem of affordability.
To summarize, an interesting problem of a successful city is that it is in a way a self-defeating success. Vibrant and authentic cities
like New York few decades ago when Jane Jacobs described it, now became prohibitively expensive thus forcing the very people that
made it great out, and it became commercialized and over-priced. The same fate may await Berlin, which is still arguably vibrant
and authentic, as other cities which have not yet been successful for long enough to gentrify. For more discussion of this process
(gentrification) and quite different (city-friendly) perspective see “Naked City” by Sharon Zukin.163
A similar process happens in smaller areas that are tourist destinations. The difference is that it is commercialization with hotels,
vacation houses, and restaurants, as opposed to gentrification of cities. But in both cases, the original residents that gave place
its character are displaced, and place becomes more expensive and standardized with usual commercial brands. Take Port Aransas
TX–locals would tell you that they miss the place before it became a popular tourist destination. They appreciate economic growth
and jobs but they feel that it used to be better. As a side note, commercialization is unambiguously a win-win situation for a capitalist,
though–people who own hotels and restaurant chains benefit as discussed in chapter 3.1. In short, popularity of a place often kills
what made it popular. Yet, this is problem of cities, not small areas, unless they are close to big cities and they become their suburbs,
or they are tourist destinations. And then there is “hipsturbia” as New York Times article puts it, even hipsters cannot afford the city
anymore:164

While this colonization is still in its early stages, it is different from the suburban flight of decades earlier, when young
parents fled a city consumed by crime and drugs. These days, young creatives are fleeing a city that has become too
affluent.

That’s the point–city has to be in an early (re)development stage–at some point it will become “standardized” with Starbucks,
H&M, IKEA, etc. This is a natural development in capitalism–chain stores and chain restaurants are just more efficient economically,
and even if you still find a local grocery store or local family owned restaurant–don’t be fooled–their produce probably comes from the
same place as that of Walmart’s. There are some exceptions, like organic food, which is great and city gardens, which is strange. It
is strange, because gardens, or any nature for that matter does not belong to city–land is too expensive there, and towers make most
sense, unless it is a failed city and no one wants to live there and land is cheap. What is strange about this recent fashion of urban
gardens is that for centuries food was grown locally, around the town–and now people try to do something similar, yet very different–to
grow food in the middle of the city on tiny lots–it does not make any sense, because again, the best use of land is to build towers,
and second, these tiny gardens can at best provide only few percent of food demand, and they are rather a strange decoration than
solution. But the important point is that fashions like city gardens or keeping cats or dogs in your tiny apartment in the middle of the

25
city–all these urban caricatures of nature, arguably indicate human need for contact with real nature. I find urban puppies fascinating,
especially if they are dressed in clothes or are peering out of SUVs on highways enchanted with car traffic165 –we have even managed to
urbanize animals! I wonder how we managed to do that in such a short period of time–perhaps, they are GMOs (genetically modified
organisms).
This nostalgia for uncommercialized Port Aransas TX, or ungentrified New York, reminds me of nostalgia for communism in Eastern
Europe. They all, people in Port Aransas, New Yorkers, and East Europeans do appreciate all the benefits of commercialization and
capitalism, but they also do realize it has changed the place to the point, where they do not like it anymore. Often they would tell
you that they liked it better before. The question is whether they really mean it and whether they understand what they say, but
nevertheless, it is an interesting parallel, I think. Furthermore, there is not only evidence that people are happier in smaller areas as
this book argues, but there is also some evidence that East Europeans were happier under the communism! I will not pursue this topic
further here–it will be another book. Let’s return to cities. 166
Fundamentally, I have this impression that urban experience is idealized and overrated not only by community leaders like Jane
Jacobs and academics like Ed Glaeser, but in general. There is some deeply ingrained notion that urban experience is somehow
“authentic” as opposed to less authentic living elsewhere, especially suburbs. Sure, American suburbs are dull, fake and alienating–no
doubt about that, but what this urban “authenticity” really mean? Is it only lack of suburban fakeness?167 Authenticity can be defined
as:168

If authenticity is a state of mind, it’s historic, local, and cool. But if authenticity is a social right, it’s also poor, ethnic
and democratic.

According to my observations and understanding, it seems, however strange it sounds, that cities are “authentic” because of
poor or blue collar or immigrant people and because of old buildings. Sometimes, I even have an impression that some people
think that cities are “authentic” because of urban crime, or at least deviant or non-standard behavior. Perhaps, authenticity comes
from excitement of danger. Incidentally, urbanists almost universally oppose tough and active policing strategies such as “stop-and-
frisk” or “zero-tolerance” policing of petty crime.169 Defenders of urban authenticity would use these positive words to describe
authenticity: Bohemian, Artistic, Grit, Cool, Creative, etc. But in plain words, it simply means poor physical capital–old and falling
apart infrastructure: houses, roads, bridges. Then there is diversity or heterogeneity, an outcome of large population and high density,
which is in many respects a good outcome, but also in many respects it is a bad outcome, and again, as with active or tough policing
strategies, urbanists usually highlight only one side. Here, the positive one. And again, it seems that an integral part of “authenticity”
is deviant or non-standard behavior or even crime.170 Indeed, as strange as it sounds, but it seems as if urbanists actually prefer poverty
and crime to gentrification and commercialization. Another way to definite authenticity is to look at it as a combination of failure
(vice, crumbling infrastructure) and history or tradition (that makes contemporary failure somewhat more “distinguished”).171
In the US there is rust belt and sun belt shown in figure 8. And the cities differ remarkably in the two belts. Author was lucky to live
in the two belts, namely in Philadelphia and Boston metros (Rust) and in Dallas metro (Sun), and here are some impressions. Sunbelt
is not “authentic”, maybe with exception of places like New Orleans–this is another requirement for urban authenticity badge–place
need to be old or somewhat historic. But urbanists do not like most other sun cities like Atlanta or Dallas. They seem to like rust
cities like Baltimore or Philadelphia because these cities are more “authentic.”172
There seems to be a sense that things are going in the wrong direction in America.173 Much of that impression may be due to
rising inequality, partisan politics, and other factors, but there is something going wrong in cities, too. There seems to be sense that
cities are going in a wrong direction as aptly summarized by Sharon Zukin: “common feelings of loss, quest, and anxiety about the
city.” 174 This observation feels spot-on. There is indeed something wrong there in the city...the city itself! But it becomes more and
more obvious as cities grow bigger and bigger. And one important problem is that there is no clear limit to size or density–cities, it
seems, will continue to balloon forever.175
Another key problem is that economic efficiency and economic relations that have displaced social relations. This is the root of a
problem.176 How this efficiency affects us is easily seen in an efficient urban housing, the tower, in figure 9. That’s economic efficiency
at its best. I put next to the human tower, a chicken tower, because I think we both (humans and chickens) are equally adapted
for towers. Furthermore, a comparison makes sense, because in order to be able to keep vast majority of people in cities, we need
to produce food efficiently. There are better pictures of chickens with plastic tubes up their throats that supply food in an efficient
manner, but I could not find such picture in public domain so that I could include it here for free.

26
Figure 8: American Rust Belt (North East and Midwest) and Sun Belt (South). Note: this is a rough approximation without within-state
differentiation.

Figure 9: Happiness in High Density? Towers as economically efficient housing for mammals (humans) and birds (chickens). Human tower:
new construction in Sha Tin, Hong Kong SAR, February 2010.

(a) Human tower. (b) Chicken tower.

My key point is that possibly the very best thing in cities, the authenticity/community that we try to preserve but cannot, is found
in smaller areas, naturally. There is much effort directed at improving cities. Why not improve towns and villages? Why squeeze more
and more population into more and more expensive cities as opposed to let people live in less dense areas.177 There are so called urban
villages–why fight to preserve them? They don’t belong in the city anymore. Towers do. If you preserve them, they will be extremely
expensive and only select few like corporate lawyers, bankers, and of course, capitalists would be able to afford to live there, and hence,
they will lose their “authenticity” anyway. And we already have authentic urban villages outside of the city–these are small towns
that are authentic and affordable. This urban/community/civic development/engagement is a popular area in public policy or public
administration fields. It basically tries to restore city neighborhoods to a state before the town ballooned into a metropolis, to have an
urban village, idealized image of which is found in Jacobs description of Greenwich Village. It is idealized because urban village simply
disappears when city becomes more urban. If it is reasonably successful as New York has been, its urban villages will gentrify at some
point as Greenwich Village did.
Critics would say, we cannot contain urbanization in small towns–we need big, dense cities. More importantly, environmentalists
would point that dense cities are most environmentally friendly form of settlement, and they’re probably right. We cannot just abandon
cities, I wish we could, but we simply have to live with them for at least several decades, perhaps longer, but it is difficult to predict
beyond few decades. I am just trying to point out problems inherent in city life. We pay the price–people are less happy there as
chickens are less happy in cages (this is speculation–we do not know much about chicken happiness yet).178 Furthermore, I claim that
small-neighborhood feel does not belong to a big city–to have the environmental and economic advantage (economies of scale and

27
agglomeration economies), it has to be dense. If it is not dense, like Jane Jacobs wanted the Greenwich Village to stay, then it is not
a city–city by definition must be dense. Cities must have towers–the taller and the more, the better. Wanting cities without towers
(or many tall buildings at least) doesn’t make sense.

gritty/authentic cool/hip/authentic expensive, H&M, Starbucks

(poverty, possibly decline and crime) (artists,bohemians, revival) (uncool, mass/pop-culture)

Figure 10: City is unnatural. City is contradictory. Success kills affordability and authenticity. Gritty is most authentic, but at first it is
accompanied by poverty, possibly decline and crime. Then people flock in to this authenticity, and it becomes more cool and hip and less poor
and as opposed to declining, it is now growing and revitalizing. But then it grows so much, there is so much demand, that it attracts H&M and
Starbucks and luxury apartments and these in turn drive out the original authenticity so that place starts to become uncool and unauthentic.

Flow chart in figure 10 summarizes the contradictory and unstable urban success or revival. There is an inherent conflict and
inherent instability or lack of equilibrium as per figure 10–it only seemingly approaches the ideal in the middle, but then its success is
self-defeating. Urbanites strive for authentic small town feel, which is but a transitory state. It is transitory because it is unnatural in
the city–again small town authentic feel does not belong to the metropolis. Small town feel belongs to, well, to a small town. Same,
as elaborated at greater length in chapter 4–nature does not belong to city, towers do. Marketing and advertising belong there too, or
ideally a tower with advertisements slapped on it–like in Times Square–this is the city–and we should see more of it–this will be the
future as we try to squeeze in more and more people and densities approach that of Manhattan elsewhere. Go to Time Square and
what happens is you have a headache from all that; well, unless you are a New Yorker and are indifferent and blasé enough that you
don’t notice it anymore.

3.3 Observing city life

Many have observed city life and wrote down what they have seen. I have been taking notes, too. Let’s start with Simmel.179 Simmel
observed that cities are full of contrasts that are stimuli to us. Contrasts of the city and great variety or heterogeneity stimulates human
senses. And we surely develop resistance or immunity from city stimulation–arguably we have to–otherwise it would defeat us. I clearly
experience this process whenever I spend even only couple days in a natural setting, say by the seaside, and then I come back to the
city–my senses are overstimulated. I experience the same when I go from a less dense place to a more dense place–say from suburbs
of Dallas to center of New York. Smaller places arguably feel dull, uninteresting, boring, tedious, monotonous, unrelieved, unvaried,
unimaginative, uneventful; characterless, featureless, colorless, lifeless, insipid, unexciting, uninspiring, unstimulating, uninvolving, or
stale. Cities, on the other hand, are thrilling, exhilarating, stirring, rousing, stimulating, intoxicating, electrifying, invigorating; and
powerful. Perhaps the key observation is that cities stimulate (i.e. increase), but also drain our psychic energy. Clearly, energy is
drained in many cases–Simmel observed urban dwellers to be indifferent and display blasé attitude, that is, they became indifferent
to distinctions between things, and more than that. There is not only indifference, but also slight aversion, mutual strangeness or
even repulsion. These can be easily seen today–try for instance observing people on commuter train in a big city, such as PATCO in
Philadelphia metro–there is definitely indifference and blasé attitude, same can be observed in public spaces in central Philadelphia.180
Simmel defined blasé as: “Indifference toward the distinctions between things:” 181

There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as has the blasé
attitude. The blasé attitude results first from the rapidly changing and closely compressed contrasting stimulations of the
nerves. From this, the enhancement of metropolitan intellectuality, also, seems originally to stem. Therefore, stupid people
who are not intellectually alive in the first place usually are not exactly blasé. A life in boundless pursuit of pleasure makes
one blasé because it agitates the nerves to their strongest reactivity for such a long time that they finally cease to react
at all. In the same way, through the rapidity and contradictoriness of their changes, more harmless impressions force such
violent responses, tearing the nerves so brutally hither and thither that their last reserves of strength are spent; and if
one remains in the same milieu they have no time to ; gather new strength. An incapacity thus emerges to react to new
sensations with the appropriate energy. This constitutes that blasé attitude which, in fact, every metropolitan child shows
when compared with children of quieter and less changeable milieus.

Indeed, there is recent neurological evidence corroborating Simmel observations–cities are unhealthy to our brains.182 City can be
observed from economic standpoint–that of industrial production and working class. Let’s turn to classic description of industrial

28
Manchester by Engels:183

In a rather deep hole, in a curve of the Medlock and surrounded on all four sides by tall factories and high embankments,
covered with buildings, stand two groups of about two hundred cottages, built chiefly back to back, in which live about
four thousand human beings, most of them Irish. The cottages are old, dirty, and of the smallest sort, the streets uneven,
fallen into ruts and in part without drains or pavement; masses of refuse, offal and sickening filth lie among standing pools
in all directions; the atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and darkened by the smoke of a dozen
tall factory chimneys. A horde of ragged women and children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon
the garbage heaps and in the puddles. In short, the whole rookery furnishes such a hateful and repulsive spectacle as can
hardly be equaled in the worst court on the Irk. The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows,
mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten door-posts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench, in this
atmosphere penned in as if with a purpose, this race must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity.

When Engels wrote it, industrialization was doing just fine, even in this rather negative description of city, there is energy–it is
a vibrant place, the wheel of commerce, or rather of industry, is working well. The only problem is that living conditions are rather
inhospitable. It may be easier to understand if we try to visualize what Engels could have seen. Figure 11 is one depiction of early
industrialization in a city–looks somewhat depressing and inhumane but at least vibrant and productive. Later industrialization of mid
20th century was shown earlier in figure 3 on page 11.

Figure 11: Coalbrookdale by Night; Madeley Wood (or Bedlam) Furnaces, which belonged to the Coalbrookdale Company.

Then deindustrialization came, also resulting in urban misery as did industrialization earlier. Again, it may be easier to see it in the
picture (figure 12; also see earlier 4 on page 12), but also a descriptive quote follows:184

[...] Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Paterson, New Jersey. At their peak these cities were known by their achievements in
manufacturing; they were the Iron City, the Silk City, the Steel City, and the Brass City, where neighborhoods have the
tough, proud look of the breadwinners [...] By the end of the 1970s, though, gritty cities were remarkable mainly for visual
images of decay: long blocks of small red-brick homes, abandoned factory chimneys, and vacant storefronts.

29
Figure 12: Camden, NJ is one of the poorest cities in the US. Camden suffers from high unemployment, poverty, and many other issues. Much
of the city looks like what you see in the above picture. Although, it appears, there is little improvement recently.

And I have witnessed fist hand a rust-belt city myself–I live currently in Philadelphia metropolitan area (yes, I do not like cities and
hence i do not live in city of Philadelphia, but I have to live close enough to commute to Camden). Nevertheless, I am in the city of
Philadelphia at least every 2 weeks. And it is gritty indeed (to use modern urbanist language). Camden is very much gritty, too. I do
not venture out too much to experience the city, in fact, I avoid it as much as possible. Still, I have seen strange and horrible things.
There are people stumbling and lying on the streets, you have to be careful when you drive. There are many disabled people and
many beggars. People push shopping carts on the sidewalks. I have seen in those carts collected cans and bottles, groceries, babies,
and pets–sometimes all of them in the same cart.185 Often, when I go to work (Rutgers in Camden), and I only drive about half a
mile through Camden, I see a beggar, often the same one, sitting on the ground, whether it rains or snows. Sometimes, I see several
beggars, some on wheelchairs. City of Camden motto is an irony: “I saw a city invincible.”186
I go to the airport relatively often (say once every 2 or 3 weeks) and then I am forced to enter the city on foot–I have to go through
some of Camden and center of Philadelphia and to get to the airport–what a nightmare! First, a 5-minute trip on foot from university’s
parking lot to PATCO train station, where I usually see many poor people, which of course makes me sad–that’s perhaps another
factor in addition to reading a lot of sociology, that that turns me Marxist.187 PATCO station and train itself makes me sad further
because it is old, dirty and somewhat repulsive. I get off on 8th and Market St in Philadelphia and then take about 15 minute walk
to Market East Station188 where I switch to SEPTA train that goes to the airport–SEPTA is surprisingly more upscale than PATCO.
I often compare PATCO with a train in the Netherlands that go to Schiphol airport in Amsterdam or a bus in Berlin that goes to
Tegel Airport. Or in fact any other public transportation that I have seen in my life and nothing is nearly as bad as PATCO experience
in Philadelphia (with possible exception of Ukraine that I have once visited, but even in developing Poland where I come from, you
wouldn’t find such sad experience with public transportation as on PATCO train).189
Then I see this disgusting underground market connecting PATCO with SEPTA–fish and souvenirs and all sorts of stinky fastfoods,
and obese and poor and overreaching sense of decay, helplessness and misery everywhere,190 then finally I get to the airport, this is
better–after this trip I am so happy to see a typical American airport! Airport, as any airport, rather unexciting, yet so much better
than authentic urban gritty experience of Camden area. I really wonder, what is wrong with those people who say that they enjoy

30
urban experience of American Rust Belt? Yuk!191 Then, I get to Dallas–much better there. Or so you’d think so–there is actually
more poverty in Texas than in New Jersey (17% v 9%), it just seems more hidden or segregated away from mainstream society, so
that Texans don’t have to worry about it.192
Glaeser’s idea193 that the poor in the city are actually better off than elsewhere may be actually sound to some degree. In some
ways, it is easier to provide for them (as for anybody in the city–people are crowded there) and importantly they can use public
transportation and they are more visible to others (again, in a city people are less isolated, at least visually and superficially)194 –and
what is not visible is not upsetting us–when I lived in Texas I did not care much about poverty because I have not seen it. In New
Jersey, I see it and I care:

That isolated poverty is a kind of hopeless poverty. [...] We won’t run into it on the subway or in the park [...] We’ll drive
past it on the highway.195

Human interaction, or so called social capital, is key for happiness.196 Cities seem perfect for human interaction–first, due to their
size, they offer ability to meet your own kind–cities provide space for unconventionality and subcultures.197 And due to their density–it
is easier to bump into other humans–it can be seen when one is in very dense place such as New York–you literally bump into others!
Yet, by no means, a meaningful human interaction has to happen in a city. Indeed, you may have a more meaningful interaction in a
village. The denser the area, the more transitory and shallower the interaction–it is like quantity v quality of interaction. One indication
of that is low trust in cities.198
Again, the World is urbanizing, but perhaps surprisingly people are less happy in cities. This is a clear paradox–people “flock” to
cities, and yet are unhappy there. There are several explanations. One is that people do not flock to cities willingly, rather they are
forced to go there to find jobs. Another explanation is that many people go to cities hoping to find happiness there or at least giving
up happiness today in order to enjoy it tomorrow, but they end up being stuck there working long hours chasing American Dream and
many never make it.

3.4 Quantitative evidence. Largest and densest cities are least happy. Even “Best” or successful cities are unhappy.
This section summarizes some quantitative evidence in support of my points made throughout this book.199 It has been my major area
of study over past few years, unhappiness in cities, and I will briefly summarize these findings here. It has been a very robust finding,
no matter whether using World Values Survey (WVS), American General Social Survey (GSS), Behavioral Risk Surveillance System
(BRFSS), or Add Health data in OLS models, multilevel models, or fixed effects models–all of them with multiple controls have always
found that the larger the area, the less happy are the people. People were least happy in largest cities (again, here simply defined
as >250k). Here, I will just sketch overall patterns with few examples, and especially show newest data showing some interesting
trends.200
Figure 13 shows happiness over time in the US. Respondents were asked “Taken all together, how would you say things are these
days–would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” on scale 1=”not too happy” to 3=”very happy.” As
argued throughout this book, largest cities are least happy. In recent years, however, since 2000, other areas have become less happy,
and largest cities remained at about the same level, or even became little happier. Now, there is no difference between largest cities
and smaller cities, suburbs are only slightly happier. While small towns and country are becoming less happy, still, and this is a key
point, small towns and country remain significantly happier than cities. So Glaeser is wrong–there is no triumph of the big city, at least
not in terms of happiness. Big cities may appear triumphant in other ways–notably economic, commercial, etc–but a key point is that
any such “triumph” is not benign or desirable. The city, this malignant cancer, is killing smaller areas. Cities are sucking up humans
and capital from elsewhere and simply most people are forced into big cities because jobs are disappearing elsewhere–recall that it is
metros that are growing several times faster than non-metro counties in their population–no wonder non-metros are becoming less
happy–they are loosing their resources to big cities! Toennies argued in a similar vein–as urban areas become centers of power, village
and country are doomed. These are only bivariate relationships and averages, but the conclusions hold in multivariate regressions–for
statistically inclined reader, see my papers.201
There are also other variables in General Social Survey, such as “In the past 30 days, about how often did you feel: So sad nothing
could cheer you up.” on scale from 1=”all of the time” to 5=”none of the time”, that is the higher the value the less sadness and

31
respondents in small towns and country scored 4.26, while people in biggest cities (>250k) scored at 3.97. This question, however, like
many other similar questions is not available for many years (this one was only asked in 1998). Using World Values Survey data, there
are similar results, in fact not only in the US, but also in other developed countries people are less happy in large cities. In developing
countries, it is the other way round–people are happier in large cities but this is arguably due to fact that in poor countries such as
Tanzania outside of the largest cities people do not have access to necessities such as adequate nutrition and shelter.202
Let me emphasize the key point one more time–there was, and still is, a significant happiness gap between cities and smaller areas.
And again, this happiness gap does hold up in a multivariate analysis, when controlling for relevant predictors of happiness.203

2.3
small towns, country

2.1 2.15 2.2 2.25

general happiness

cities 50-250k suburbs

cities>250K
2.05

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

gss year for this respondent
w(4 1 4)

Figure 13: Happiness over time in the US. Data from American General Social Survey smoothened with 10-yr moving average.

A similar, yet different, pattern is observed with respect to trust in figure 14: like happiness, trust is declining, but unlike with
happiness, the gap between cities and other areas has closed204 –and it is not entirely unexpected. Again, human resources and capital
are being sucked up by cities–among villagers and small town dwellers, there is a good reason to lose trust! And again, despite all of
that, in many ways, it is actually surprising that people are still happier in smaller areas–cities, like faceless and formless vampires, are
sucking up all life and resources from smaller areas, and still are less happy! The only explanation is that cities must be truly pernicious
and malignant for humans.
.5

suburbs
.45

small towns, country

trust
.4 .35

cities>250K cities 50-250k

.3

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

gss year for this respondent
w(4 1 4)

Figure 14: Trust over time in the US. Data from American General Social Survey smoothened with 10-yr moving average.

Finally, there is evidence from BRFSS. An advantage of this dataset is that it allows to differentiate between specific cities, because
these data are representative of counties. We would expect the best American cities, as defined in the rankings of the “best cities”
described below, are happier than the average non-city county–common wisdom would indicate that this should be the case, because
people flock to those cities in droves.205 If these cities are not happier than the average for a non-city county, it would be a strong
support for the urban malaise hypothesis–if our best cities are no happier, then it would be difficult for cities in general to be happier.
In other words, the best cities should be happier and more problem-free than an average city. A major challenge is to define what
makes cities the best cities. I make an effort to pinpoint several best cities, but note that future research may improve on this attempt.

32
First, I consider only cities, that is, large and dense places,206 hence, smaller arguably successful cities or large towns, like Portland
OR, do not qualify. Second, I only consider typical cities in order to retain external validity, hence, I excluded Honolulu HI, because
it is a unique tourist destination. Third, I wanted to rely on objective data to select a set of “best cities” and hence I use the two
arguably most rigorous rankings of “best cities,” Mercer’s Quality of Living rankings and the Economist’s Best cities ranking–there
are many components of the rankings–political and social environment, public services and transport, consumer goods and so forth.207
The winners based on both sources are Boston, Chicago, and New York.208
These cities also fit the 4c criterion of a “great city” by Savitch (2010, p. 42):

Currency conveys the unique attributes of a city’s fundamental values and its ability to form, lead or dictate the temper of
the times. Cosmopolitanism entails an ability to embrace international, multicultural or polyethnic features. Concentration
is defined by demographic density and productive mass. Charisma is based on a magical appeal that generates mass
enthusiasm, admiration or reverence.

Suffolk County MA, which houses Boston, has a happiness score of 3.29; New York County NY, home to Manhattan, is similar at
3.31; Cook County IL, home of Chicago, is happier at 3.39, but even this happiest city in my sample is not happier than the average for
counties that are nonmetropolitan areas (3.41). It is remarkable that the “best” American cities are slightly less happy than the average
for non-urban counties. Every single one of the ”best” cities score lower on this ranking than the average for all nonmetropolitan areas.
I would have found results worth reporting even if there was no difference; given that these “best” cities are ranked as having the
highest quality of life, it is striking that people are less happy there than in the average non-metro county.209 This greatly increases
confidence in claim that urban malaise is not a matter of urban problems, but a matter of core urban characteristics (size and density).
It may be difficult to attain greater happiness in a city than the level of happiness present in the best American cities–each of those
cities, Boston, New York, and Chicago, has so much to offer that most other cities simply cannot provide.
So which are the happiest and most miserable places in the US? Among the places that BRFSS data is available for, the 10 least
happy counties are: St. Louis (city) MO, Bronx NY, Kings NY, Hudson NJ, Wayne MI, Philadelphia PA, Queens NY, Wyandotte KS,
Hinds, Passaic NJ. All of these counties are center cities (except Hudson NJ and Passaic NJ, which both are in New York metro).
Most of these counties have population density above 5k per square mile. The 10 happiest counties are Douglas CO, Shelby TN,
Johnson KS, Greenville SC, Pinal AZ, Franklin WA, Newport RI, Sarpy NE, Merrimack NH, Montgomery MD. Here, it is the other
way round–only 2 are center cities (Franklin WA and Montgomery MD) and they all have population density lower than 2k per square
mile.
Then the obvious question is: why? Why people move to big cities if cities are unhappy places? Arguably people are forced–that’s
where the jobs are–yet, as mentioned elsewhere in this book people prefer to be in suburbs–they want to be close enough to city, yet as
close as possible to nature as well. But another interesting answer is that people do not strive for happiness–that is, simply speaking,
people do not want to be happy. Or more precisely, people want to be happy, of course, but they are often wrong about what will
make them happy, and perhaps, there is something that they want even more than happiness. What could that be? People want to
be better than others–one badge of success is your home address–if you live in Manhattan or in any other overpriced premiere area of
some metropolis, then you are successful. No matter you are miserable, what matters is success, especially in America.210
Finally, there is a question whether it is a city itself, or the essence of city (size, density and heterogeneity) that makes us less
happy or is it city problems, notably crime and poverty that are to blame. Of course, poverty crime and other city problems do make
people unhappy, but there is also evidence that it is city itself, that is, its size and density and possibly heterogeneity, that make us
unhappy. 211
There may be also other factors behind urban malaise. People in big cities may have higher expectations than people elsewhere–they
may be the so-called “over-achievers” who never get completely satisfied.212 City living may elevate expectations–our achievements
increase happiness, but expectations decrease happiness–the more you expect the less satisfied you will be, holding everything else
constant. It may be that city dwellers are engaged in a “rat race,” which may elevate expectations. People engage in this race in the
hopes of reaching a big payoff. The higher the expectations, the less likely they are to be satisfied, find fulfillment and happiness. BRFSS
data, however, does not allow us to control for expectations or being an “over-achiever” or “maximizer”–it remains for future research
to determine how much of the urban-rural happiness gradient can be explained by these factors. It is reasonable to assume, however,
that over-achieving or elevated/unrealistic expectations are exacerbated by the very essence of cities: high density, heterogeneity,
specialization and competition. A specific case of overstimulation or cognitive overload in cities is too much choice–when humans are

33
faced with too many choices, they are unhappy. Relative deprivation matters, too–as mentioned elsewhere, inequality and conspicuous
or wasteful consumption is depressing for people who cannot afford it.213
Expectations can be also approached with Kahneman’s idea of expected v experienced utility.214 in figure 15. One may decide to
move form a small place to a city based on expected or decision happiness–and we are often predictably wrong–we think that cities will
make us happier than they actually do. So the experienced or true happiness, as documented in this book, is actually lower in cities as
compared to smaller areas. A related explanation can be advanced in terms of aspirations shift in figure 16. Maybe, as urbanists would
think, happiness should indeed increase when a person moves from a smaller area to a city. Yet, what happens is that aspirations shift,
too. And the end result is lower happiness in cities as compared to smaller areas. A related point is that of a basic happiness formula:

happiness=achievement or experience − aspirations or expectations

But isn’t in many ways having elevated aspirations or expectation a part of the city essence? Wasn’t always a city full of aspirations
and expectations? That’s a big part of what a city offers. Opportunity and freedom215 elevate aspirations or expectations.
Happiness

Expected/Decision

small big Size of Place

Figure 15: Expected vs. experienced happiness. We make decision about moving to a city based on expected or decision happiness–but the
experienced or true happiness is lower among urbanites.
Happiness

Aspirations (A1)

Hs

H
b

small big Size of Place

Figure 16: Happiness given aspirations. Maybe cities should increase happiness given some aspirations, but as we increase size of a place,
aspirations curve shifts from A1 to A2 , that is aspirations increase as well (note: aspirations level is higher for lower curve as indicated by
reversed scale). Hence, the resulting happiness is lower than expected because the aspirations shifted (increased).

It may be possible that “difficult” and “deviant” people choose to live in cities–and they may be less happy than are others and so

34
that may depress overall city happiness.216 And people we might classify as “difficult” may be those who would be unhappy regardless
of where they live. There is also a possibility that unhappy people are lured to cities, for instance people who feel they don’t belong in
smaller areas and people who are unhappy where they live may migrate to cities. LGBTQ people217 and immigrants prefer cities. But
it is equally possible, that happy and energetic extroverts move to cities to realize their full potential!
There may also be an age-effect: children and elderly are likely to live in smaller areas than in cities, while the working-age population
may be more concentrated in metropolitan areas. Happiness is U-shaped in age: the young and old are happier and middle-aged people
are less happy218 . People in their 40s still have to work, their health is not improving, they have mid-life crises, and so forth; indeed,
people have bemoaned the difficulties of those in mid-life, sandwiched between obligations to care for their minor children and for their
aging parents. This issue is taken care of by controlling for age.
There may be other self-selection issues about people who end up living in cities.219 I speculate, however, that results are not due
to self-selection, but if anything, due to the s ability to bring about in people their hidden traits, magnify their vices, or even change
people in such a way that they become less happy. For instance, cities may intensify the pecuniary and consumerist orientation in
people, and make them more stressed and overworked. That is, many urban dwellers would not be that way outside of the city.220
The interpretation of results and conclusion is that it is urbanism itself, in its essence, that is responsible for lower happiness in cities
than elsewhere.

4 Biophilia: Need for Contact With Nature

“Nature is not a place to visit, it is home” (Gary Snyder)

Affirmation of nature usually means, or indeed should mean, negation of cities–because by definition, there is no nature in cities221 –
this is a line of argument in the classic “Walden” and also in this book. E.O. Wilson’s ”biophilia” hypothesis says that humans have
innate/instinctive attraction to nature/other living organisms.222
Animals, plants, landscapes, and wilderness benefit our wellbeing. Nature helps us recover faster from illness. Nature removes
pollution and pollution makes us less happy. Nature buffers children against stress. Exposure to nature has good effect on health. In
short, there is plenty of evidence that nature is widely beneficial.223
Nature does not belong to city, towers do. Surely, there is nature in cities–there are green spaces and parks–but they are as natural
as animals in a zoo. Trimmed, landscaped, fake nature224 is but a caricature of real nature or wilderness. There is a clear dilemma
here: planners have long realized that humans do need nature as well as cities. This dilemma has been “solved” with the idea of
green city, which of course does not work, because it has materialized as a contemporary suburban sprawl. The bottom line is that
you cannot have a high density of people and nature, it’s either/or: more of one and less of the other. Green spaces are economically
wasteful in cities where land price is highest, and where most efficient land use is to build up–hence, naturally, towers belong to cities.
Nature belongs to open country, villages, and to some extent, to smaller towns.
We know that human capital and social contact are good for humans in many ways,225 but what is often missed is that we benefit
from contact with all living organisms, not only humans. Pigeons, rats, and bugs excluded, there aren’t many living organisms in
cities.226 Smaller or less dense areas also appear more peaceful and calm, for instance, people walk slower, their minds do not appear
distracted. Small places are less conspicuous and more “real,”that is, people value less visual recognition, there is less showing off.227
People want to be close to nature: being close to nature is not only aesthetic, but also soothing and restorative–it helps to escape city
turmoil. Green spaces increase life expectancy and decrease risk of mental health problems.228 Fundamentally, nature is not an escape
from the city, it is not a place to visit. It is our biological home, where we have lived for tens of thousands years. I am not encouraging
the reader to abandon the metropolis and settle in a malaria-filled swamp. I simply point out that we have lost something important
when we have urbanized.
There is also an emerging field of ecopsychology that makes a similar point: while the hustle and bustle of a typical city taxes
our attention, natural environments restore it.229 Finally, the preference for nature may be ingrained in American ideology due to its
history of moving Westward into pristine land.230
I speculate that 21st century may be more Romantic, and hence more nature-oriented, than 20th. Clearly, there are periodic shifts
between rationalism and Romanticism: 17th century was Age of Faith, 18th was Age of Reason, 19th was Romantic Era, 20th was

35
Age of Science and Technology.231 Perhaps it’s time now for some romanticism, quality of life, postmaterialism, maybe spirituality,
and nature; as opposed to rationality, materialism, capitalism, and cities.
Perhaps the most compelling description of lost happiness due to urbanization is delivered by people who wrote about it while
living in a setting untouched by urbanization. Tesson (2013) lived in the Russian taiga,232 and that is precisely his message: by living
in an urbanized world, we have lost happiness.

4.1 We are not made for cities

For over 90% of our history we have lived outside of the cities as hunter-gatherers usually in small bands of 50-80 people. It only
started to slowly change in about 10,000 BC with domestication of animals and agriculture. The first large cities (again,>250k) only
started to emerge after 500 BC and there were just handful of them in the world. It wasn’t really until after industrialization that large
cities started to house noticeable proportion of the population, and only 20th century saw urbanization explosion–in 1800 a mere 1.7%
of the world population lived in cities larger than 100k, it slowly increased to 2.3% in 1850, by another 50 years doubled to 5.5% in
1900, and then it doubled again to 13% in 1950. 233
Now, this is not to say that we are made for suburban or even village life, which is also largely sedentary and “un-natural,” but life
outside of city is closer to our natural habitat than city life. It is safe to say that the bigger and the denser the place, the more unnatural
it is–crowding is one thing, but fundamentally built environment is very different from wilderness–very dense areas, like downtown of a
large city must always by definition have tall towers, otherwise it cannot be dense. Living and working in a tower is less “natural” than
a home in the country, that is, it resembles our natural habitat less.234 When I talk to people, it seems that it is somewhat difficult
to convey this point that cities are less natural for humans than towns. In this case, I feel compelled to take my argument to the next
level and use Whole Foods animal welfare rating system.235 Of course, we humans, are very close to animals, for instance, most of our
DNA is just like that of rats, not to mention our closer cousins, chimpanzees. But coming back to Whole Foods animal welfare rating
system–it is shown in table 2. Note Step 5: “Animal centered; all physical alterations prohibited: the well-being of the animals is the
primary focus; efficiency and economy are secondary”(underlining is mine)–it is about the tradeoff between wellbeing and efficiency
and economy–exactly! This is what this book argues, there is a tradeoff between wellbeing and efficiency/economy. This is one reason
I find it extremely curious that economists try to study happiness–it’s self defeating to the discipline!
Is it a stretch to compare humans living in city towers to animals, say chickens, living in cages? As of now, yes, to some degree.
But soon, I speculate, it will be a more accurate comparison–imagine cities of tomorrow in 50 years or in 100 years. Especially, the
greatest cities like New York or London may house its residents in cage-size apartments. If the idea of living in cage-like spaces still
seem inconceivable, think of a person living in the Middle Ages, only few hundred years ago. If she were to imagine a typical city living
of today, it would have been as much inconceivable to her, as cage-size living is to us. Cities of today, unfortunately, appear quite
“normal” to many of us. How is it possible? We simply don’t realize nearly as much as we should the utter unnaturalness of today’s
cities only due to an outstanding human ability to adjust.236
Strikingly, cage-size living is already happening. Already, New York offers some 250 sq feet apartments–given that a couple lives
there with one child–it is less than 100 sq feet per person. Even more stunningly, some New Yorkers already live in 100 sq feet
apartments.237 Now let’s compare it to chickens–say a chicken weights 5 lbs, and imagine that chicken in a cage of 2.5 sq feet.238
This is the same weight-space ratio as for our New Yorker if she weights 200 lbs, and her apartment is 100 sq feet, or 3 people (each
200 lbs) in a 300 sq feet apartment.

36
Table 2: Whole Foods animal welfare rating system applied to human forms of settlement by author. Of course, I do not mean these things
literally, for instance, humans do not live in cages in largest cities. I only mean that there are some similarities, striking actually, between
animals living conditions as rated by Whole Foods and human forms of settlements. While there are no crates neither cages in largest cities,
there is crowding, and tiny living spaces in Manhattan actually do resemble cages. Source: http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2011/02/
whole-foods-adopts-animal-welfare-rating-system/

ranking
Failing Animal Welfare Standard
Step 1: No crates, no cages, no crowding
Step 2: Enriched environment
Step 3: Enhanced outdoor access
Step 4: Pasture centered
Step 5: Animal centered; all physical al-
terations prohibited
animals other than humans humans’ form of settlement (author’s in-
novation)
crates, cages, crowding huge city > 1m
Animals live their lives with space to move around and stretch city 250k − 1k
their legs.
Animals are provided with enrichments that encourage behav- town 50k − 250k
ior that’s natural to them–like a bale of straw for chickens to
peck at, a bowling ball for pigs to shove around, or a sturdy
object for cattle to rub against.
Pigs, chickens and turkeys might live in buildings but they small town 10k − 50k
all–yes, each and every one of them–have access to outdoor
areas.
When living outdoors, chickens and turkeys get to forage, pigs village < 10k
get to wallow and cattle get to roam.
the well-being of the animals is the primary focus; efficiency open country, wilderness, Thoreau’s ideal
and economy are secondary.

Hence, given our evolutionary history, a human is a social creature, but social for a band of other humans (a few, several, or few
dozen), not hundreds of thousands as in a city. And neither does living outside of a city implies lack of social capital nor seclusion. While
seclusion can certainly bring happiness, this book by no means recommends it for everybody, not even for most people. Furthermore,
as argued thought this book, the bigger and denser the place, the thinner (shallower and more transitory) the social fabric–social
relations in cities are weak–indeed, living in a city is being lonesome among many people.
Yet another related point to this discussion, and also something unexplored yet is that a place where a person was born and grew
up may define to some, albeit limited degree, what is natural and what is unnatural to her. It is worth mentioning, that author of this
book was born and grew up in a suburb/town of 10k people, hence his aversion to large cities may to some degree stem from this.
Because more and more people are being born in largest cities, it may become more “normal” to live there in the future. Perhaps, this
explains recent uptick in city happiness and trust. Yet, any genetic changes that would make us more adapted to cities would take
thousands of years, but customs and habits that we acquire during bringing up matter, too.

4.2 The more nature, the less material possessions

“But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.” Thoreau (1995 [1854], p. 24)

Thoreau’s Walden, widely regraded as possibly the single strongest affirmation of life in nature (as opposed in city), is in large
part, which is less acknowledged, a critique of consumerism, greed, and money economy or capitalism in general.239 And that’s also
a message of this book–that capitalism, or rather its biggest problems (there are many advantages to capitalism) are exemplified in
cities. In a way, cities are fundamentally corrupt–they bring out the worst in us.240
The problem with material possessions is that they need to be tended to and looked after, and maintained, which taxes our psychic
energy and requires money, just like the fake or landscaped nature needs to be trimmed, fertilized, etc. Real nature is self maintained,
sustainable, and does not require any labor; it’s just there to be enjoyed. Man-made stuff in cities, on the other hand, (including fake
nature, like urban parks) costs money, labor and attention. The point is that whole cities are like that. And just like Thoreau was
terrified to maintain his limestones, why aren’t we, the society, terrified to maintain our cities, shouldn’t we also like Thoreau did, get
rid of them?

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the
furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished
house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.

Thoreau (1995 [1854], p. 23)

37
 In short, a person becomes a slave–physical capital that we have created and that we strive for, instead of liberating us, is enslaving
us! In a way we become tools of our tools, as Thoreau observed long time ago. Someone told me: “You don’t live in New York, New
York lives you”–or something like that–the point is that in a big city, you don’t get to enjoy your life. You are just a little cog in a big
machine, so little that it does not really matter to the whole operation whether you drop out.241
While it is beneficial in many ways to break bond with traditional Gemeinschaft–notably we gain freedom,242 there is no benefit
from breaking bond with nature. There are only disadvantages and many of them–for an overview see an excellent “The Earth only
endures: On reconnecting with nature and our place in it” or indeed anything that Jules Pretty wrote.243 Again, this is explicitly and
unavoidably the price we pay for living in a city–because by definition, there is no nature in the city.
As explained in chapter 2.4, economy needs cities, maybe economists (homo oeconomicus species) need cities too, but people do
not need them, as persuasively argued by Thoreau. We, humans, need necessities that are in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Yes,
some urbanization did help with those needs. But it does not follow, that the more urbanization, the better our needs are satisfied. To
the contrary, I speculate, we actually need to start deurbanizing for our needs to be better satisfied. We may also consider degrowing
economy.244
Furthermore, as aptly pointed out by Thoreau, we end up laboring in the city for the things that we do not need, for instance,
luxury apartments or houses. Many people are laboring in city offices in sanitized towers doing quite meaningless work: “pushing
paper”. Information flipping such as writing emails, memos, etc, is a contemporary equivalent of assembly line work or earlier manual
work in industrial factories–all these jobs are quite uncreative, boring, meaningless, etc.
We could live much simpler outside of the city and still have our necessary needs satisfied. Essentially, the root of the problem is
that of greed, power seeking or conspicuous consumption245 –we seek and want more than we need–we seek and want to show that we
are better than others. And we usually do that in the city so that others can admire us–you wouldn’t show off your designer shoes,
Lexus, or Iphone 6 to ducks in the forest, would you?

4.3 Suburban sprawl as a mistaken solution

4.3.1 Fake nature

Before proceeding, let’s first define term “fake nature” that is important to the argument that follows. It denotes what I believe is
most wrong with American suburbia (as well as many cities), especially sprawling Sun Belt cities like Dallas and Houston.246 I do not
like inventing terms, and I am quite critical of people who invent them just for the purpose of having their own term. However, I am
forced to do so in this case as there is no such term.
My “fake nature” is close to “pedigreed landscaping,” but it is a little broader, that is, pedigreed landscaping is always fake nature,
but fake nature is not always pedigreed landscaping. Pedigreed landscaping is probably the most popular and most pernicious type of
fake nature. My “fake nature” is also close to the Marxist notion of nature production247 The way I would define fake nature is simply:

Human-planted and human maintained nature. If it is human-planted but not regularly maintained, especially if what
we plant typically grows there anyway, then it is not fake nature, because fake nature naturally deteriorates into natural
nature. On the other hand, even if it was not planted by humans, but is regularly and meticulously maintained, then it
is fake nature. Maintenance usually involves trimming, cutting, etc, and an especially pernicious form of maintenance is
spraying it with chemicals, especially persistent ones. Occasional maintenance or interference does not make nature fake
immediately. For instance, making a path in a forest does not make forest fake. But bulldozing forest, putting there a
road, and then planting some shrubs and regularly maintaining them does create fake nature. Fundamentally, fake nature
is about overcoming natural nature, as opposed to embracing it or living with it in harmony.

I found term “pedigreed landscaping” in Hough (2004). It is important to get a good feel for this term because it is similar to
mine and Hough (2004) has described it well (underlining is mine):

The urban obsession with formal aesthetic doctrines has replaced naturally regenerating sites with horticultural deserts.
(very first page)

The widespread grip of the ’pedigreed’ tradition in landscape design; an aesthetic doctrine wrapped in the rigid forms of
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European civic designs. (foreword)

38
 the nurtured ’pedigreed’ landscape of mown turf, flowerbeds, trees, fountains and planned places everywhere [...]Its survival
is dependent on high energy inputs, engineering, and horticultural technology. (p. 6)

Hough (2004) notes that he borrowed word ’pedigreed’ from Rudofsky’s “Architecture Without Architects,” and that Rudofsky used
’pedigreed’ to describe “the formal architecture of cities that expresses power and wealth”–which is important for three reasons–first,
it relates back to my earlier point of city size fetishism. Second, it hints at why we do this to natural nature (turn it into fake nature):
we simply want to show our mastery of nature and our domination of it–as Veblen would put it–we do it because we can, and we
want to conspicuously show it. Indeed, it is highly, or even perfectly or purely, conspicuous and wasteful. Third, power and wealth are
closely related to capitalism that I mentioned earlier as a force similar to urbanization.
Is there any other reason why do we do this (produce fake nature)? I suppose one reason is because it meant to be pleasing to an
eye. But is it? It looks fake, plastic-fantastic, as if dumped by aliens! And it costs money, time, and energy to do it and maintain it–it
is an extreme example of conspicuous waste. And I am really struck that we do not discuss it widely. Why not spend all the money we
waste on this on something useful. There is no benefit from this anyway. A huge problem is that this fake nature is not self-sustainable.
We have to tend to it continuously. Natural nature, on the other hand, and by definition, does not need any maintenance.
Fake nature is easy to spot–usually most nature in a city is fake, some less fake, some more fake. Some of the fakest nature can
be easily spotted because there is pond with a fountain–just look around suburbs–fountains in fake ponds and fake trees around them.
It defeats the purpose. Sprawl takes up the space that was covered by natural nature. Again, natural nature simply means nature that
was not altered by humans. A fundamental problem with suburbanization is waste–we destroy nature and replace it with fake nature,
and we also often leave the infrastructure unused in the city, let it deteriorate, and build the new infrastructure from scratch outside
of the city.248
The rule should be to leave the nature untouched as much as possible, to keep the nature natural, instead of building fake ponds
with fake fountains and plant fake trees around it. Given that people are still little happier in these fake, ugly and unnatural suburbs
than in cities, arguably we would even have even more happiness, if we had natural suburbs. In theory, at least; but it may also be so
that people simply want fake nature for some reason–otherwise why would it sell so well?249 One explanation is that some maintenance
and landscaping was necessary and fine, but then, not realizing it, we simply overdid it, especially in places like Texas. In the same
way we overdid with cities–some urbanization would have been fine, but we overdid it.
Also, note that cities are like fake nature in a sense that they both, cities and fake nature, require maintenance. Otherwise they
decay–but cities are worse than fake nature–they decay into urban decay such as that seen in Camden, fake nature on the other hand,
when unmaintained, decays into natural nature. The only problem then is that fake nature usually decays in cities together with urban
decay, like in Camden, and hence, fake nature decay actually looks ugly when decaying into natural nature, but only because it is
accompanied by urban decay. Remove the city, and it will be fine. If fake nature decays in natural environment, it is actually an
improvement. It is precisely like in Thoreau limestone parallel cited earlier:

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the
furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished
house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.

Thoreau (1995 [1854], p. 23)

Not only cites decay into urban ugliness unless maintained, all man-made things do. The only exception is nature–it is self-
sustained–it does not require any maintenance, because it maintains itself.250 And, again, just like Thoreau was terrified to maintain
his limestones, why aren’t we, the society, terrified to maintain our cities, shouldn’t we also like Thoreau did, get rid of them?
Finally, it is puzzling that Americans seem to have embraced fake nature. After all, they are rather practical kind and seem to
prefer usefulness. De Tocqueville, for instance, has observed that Americans:251

habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and will require that the beautiful should be useful

While reworking this chapter, I just happened to visit Philadelphia airport and have spotted some fake nature there, which wasn’t
difficult, because much of city nature is fake. Still, I find it useful reporting here–let’s examine figure 17–can anybody tell me how is it

39
either useful or beautiful. And, no, it doesn’t look gorgeous earlier in the day or in different month. Then, if we don’t derive happiness
from this (do you feel happy looking at this?), why do we do this? It cost money to implement and maintain.252

Figure 17: Fake nature: Some small flowers in large concrete round flowerpots in the middle. Philadelphia airport, Terminal A, SEPTA train
platform.

To be fair, even city nature and even for a short period of time does have a positive effect on wellbeing–even a few minute exposure
does have considerable benefits.253 However, man made stuff is taking over more and more green spaces; and whatever green is left
over, at least in the US and perhaps especially in Texas, is being heavily interfered with—cut, trim, redone in various ways, sprayed with
chemicals, etc. Such landscaping is done very often, on continuous basis–this taking care of nature pollutes, too: use of leaf blowers
every week, etc. Americans seem to want to change nature in a strange conspicuous or ’pedigreed’ way and the effect is that it ceases
to resemble the actual nature that you can see outside of the metropolis: fake v real nature. Last but not least, these positive effects
from short exposure to urban nature are short term effects on mood and self-esteem; again, the overall long-term life satisfaction or
wellbeing is greatest in smallest areas (open country and villages) and lowest in greatest cities (NYC, Philadelphia, etc) as argued in
this book.

4.3.2 Mistaken suburban sprawl

Deepest American dream is not the hunger for money or fame; it is the dream of settling down, in peace and freedom and cooperation,
in the promised land (Scott Russel Sanders)254

Interestingly, Americans, or at least American intellectuals, have strongly and consistently distrusted the city for as long as cities
have existed. Common people, so called yeomen, also preferred less dense settlement. This traditional distrust towards the city appear
so deep and universal that it might have been a driving force behind peculiar American suburbanization–no other country has such
(sprawling) suburbanization as America.255
Wright’s Broadacre City, a vision of today’s suburbia, like many other green city ideas was not exactly quite right. It is easily seen
in materialization of those ideas–the contemporary sprawling American suburbia.256 But not all of the initial ideas were wrong in the
same way, as not all Marx’s ideas were wrong, but their materializations did not came out quite right. I have actually been criticized
myself for proposing a green city yet again,257 while I am not. Let me explain then, what I propose. In general we have to become

40
more sustainable because of the global warming which endangers the future of our species. Let’s start with idea of organic architecture,
which is about harmony of human habitation and nature–nothing wrong there. And can extend it with some simple rules, say:

• less concrete, asphalt and man-made things, including landscaping/fake nature

• smaller houses, say 1k square feet (which was a standard in the 1950s)

• as much nature left as possible–narrower roads, fewer parking spaces, etc, in short, the opposite of Texas

American suburbs are full of fake nature. Again, as opposed to natural nature or wilderness, fake nature is human-made. Its key
conspicuous or wasteful feature is that it requires human attention (e.g. trimming shrubs) to sustain its fake character. Otherwise,
it deteriorates into natural nature. It always strikes me how in places like Dallas, there are always legions of people deployed (usually
Mexicans) to keep the nature from deteriorating into natural nature. There must be more people attending to fake nature in Dallas
than there are poor people in Camden–why not give that money to poor or homeless people instead of spending it on trimming shrubs
and polluting at the same time.258
It’s probably easier to see what I mean in pictures. Figure 18 shows a typical suburban view–forget about the building itself, let’s
focus on what’s in front of it and how it was made and is maintained. First, they leveled or bulldozed whatever nature was there and
then put the building and also “nature” in front of it. It is fake nature in a sense that it is “human-made”: planted by humans and
maintained by humans–every few weeks they trim it and keep it in “plastic-fantastic,” eye-pleasing condition. Oh, and don’t forget
about pool around it and fountains–a savvy idea to use water in drought-stricken Texas.

Figure 18: UT Dallas Student Service Building.

41
 Figure 19: Colorado Springs, Colorado. Suburbia by David Shankbone.

Now, let’s have a look at suburbs from air in figure 19. It just looks plain fake and disgusting–and this is precisely what you
would see from an airplane that approaches an American city, especially newer cities–there’s suburban fakeness as far as eye can see.
Then we will zoom out further. Figure 20 show residential areas–these are Google Maps satellite images at the same resolution and
same scale. Both are suburbs/exurbs of Houston and Philadelphia respectively.259 The difference is that Medford is more natural
and Woodlands is more manufactured, or suburban, or “Texan.” I always have this impression that when I observe residential areas
from an airplane, it seems that in Texas they just like to pour concrete everywhere, just blanket everything with concrete, even play
areas for children, and then put a tree here and there, maybe some shrub for a decoration, and don’t forget fountains. I really wonder
where this concrete-loving approach comes from–do they subsidize concrete production in Texas? Well, anyway–that’s what these two
images show–there is more concrete and less nature in Texas. And Texan residential areas do look like cancer! I wanted to put an
image of cancer, too, but they look quite scary and I want to keep this book positive; it is about happiness after all. The point of this
comparison is that it would be nicer to live in a more natural area with less concrete.
The bottom line is that a building should be nested within nature, as much as possible, as opposed to nature being added as a
decoration to the building. Say, put a little hut in a forest, along the lines of Thoreau’s hut by Walden (can be a little bigger, but
a point is not to disturb the ecosystem). As opposed to first bulldozing everything then blanketing it with concrete, then putting in
there a fabulous McMansions and only then adding a tree here and there for decoration. Houses should be among trees or within any
other natural habitat as opposed to putting fake nature around houses. This idea is shown in figure 21.
To make a point better, let me show two more images in figure 22 that show purely fake nature in cities. Cities are full of fake
nature. Indeed, cities almost always have more fake (in terms of degree of fakeness) nature than suburbs–suburbs would have more
fake nature in terms of quantity. Pieces of landscaping squeezed in between of towers for whatever reason–arguably to make a city
look more natural. Again, if you think about it, the effect is similar to that of putting fish into aquarium and putting aquarium at
your office to feel like you are at the seaside. Coming back to Glaeser’s “Triumph of The City”–that’s exactly what appears in the
redesigned cover of his book (figure 22): towers in the background and some trees on the on perfectly trimmed lawn, and indeed
that’s what successful American cities look like. It’s no wonder that these are most miserable places in the US. Upon first look, fake
nature may seem cheaper and easier, but you have to first destroy natural nature, then plant fake nature and then maintain it. This
landscaping is such a waste of resources!
Last, but not least, this series of pictures of places in terms of nature would be incomplete without Thoreau’s housing next to

42
 Figure 20: Concrete-blanketed Woodlands with added nature v Natural Medford Lakes with added houses. Google satellite images.

(a) Woodlands TX (b) Medford Lakes NJ

Walden pond, where he seemed happier than millionaires living in McMansions.260 Thoreau’s house is in figure 23–now, let me be
clear–this appears a little too dramatic even as for my environmentalist taste, and I am not saying that everyone should live in a house
like that. But the median size of a new US home in 2010 was 2,169 square feet, and that is way too wasteful–wouldn’t 1,000 square
feet (the average in 1950) suffice? We could possibly reduce it even further, but a 1,000 square feet house would be a good start.

43
 Figure 21: Living in a natural setting as opposed to living in a suburb imitating a natural setting.

(b) less fake nature (pathway made of low shrubs and what appears to be
(a) more fake nature (everything looks fake!): Purcell and Elmslie a hardscaped pond on the right), but background trees look natural: house
Purcell-Cutts house amongst redwood trees, Cascade Canyon

(d) natural nature 2: nested in natural nature, literally (even covered with nature):
(c) natural nature 1: Morningside Nature Center LHF cabin Museum of Skogar, Iceland

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 Figure 22: Typical urban plastic-fantastic ugliness–sprinkling a city with fake nature.

(b) Glaeser’s “Triumph of The

City” book cover. Why is there
a word “triumph”? Who wants
(a) The skyline of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma to live there?

However, it would be difficult to change the current situation. It is not just that planners and architects have silly ideas about fake
nature–they wouldn’t create something that doesn’t sell. I believe the problem is with the people–again, masses aren’t very bright–they
prefer McMansions over real houses. They would probably also pick fake nature over real nature, because it looks better and by looks
better I mean it shows conspicuous waste–that is, it signifies that residents are wealthy enough to afford fake nature. Alternatively,
some fault, or perhaps most of it, is on capitalists, who may artificially increase demand for fake nature through advertising and other
means.

5 Summary, Conclusion, Discussion and Future Research

The claim of this book is that urbanization is nasty in many ways, in fact, it is so nasty that calling a city cancer or tumor, as some
did before, seems justified. Or, as I creatively invented here, city is like a faceless and formless vampire–because cities allure and suck
up life like vampires do. To keep with a tradition in this book, it may be useful to visualize the concept–a vampire is shown in figure
24. Another reason to show a vampire is that it is a somewhat more positive and lively replacement for tumor–again, I wanted to show
a picture of tumor earlier, because “to look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of a
fibrous tumor” (Frank Lloyd Wright). I find tumor pictures too sad for a book about happiness. Also, note that a vampire shown here
is not as alluring as a typical vampire should be, but it is difficult to find a good picture of a vampire.

45
 (a) city (b) vampire

Figure 24: City as a faceless and formless vampire.

Given tumor-like or vampire-like nature of the city, then logically, we should make efforts to deurbanize, get rid of cities–but there
is one key problem–there are simply too many people. If not that, urbanization could be seen as a conspiracy of dark economic forces
against human life. But if we continue with population growth or even keep the population at current level, it is not clear where to put
over 7 billion people–if not cities, we would have environmental disaster, unless some major changes occur–much cleaner transportation,
most people work from home, smaller homes, etc–then small density living for vast majority of people may be finally possible. The key
reason for cities is that there are too many people for other and better forms of human settlement such as village or town–these forms
are better because, as argued here, they are more natural, that is, closer to natural human habitat and people are happier there.
As a place gets smaller, people get happier–towns are happier than cities and villages or open country are clearly the happiest. That
is, there is an urban-rural or city-nature happiness gradient, and no, this book does not claim that everyone should live in a cabin–but
more people could try, and definitely more people should try to avoid cities. Some urbanization is fine, and people are relatively happy
in towns, it is just cities that are unhappy. Town is a natural alternative to city–it is only few hundred years ago that industrialization
forced unprecedented numbers into cities. And there is this fallacy that because there are more people in cities, there is more social
capital, while in fact, if anything, the opposite is true–“City life is millions of people being lonesome together” (Thoreau). And social
relations that develop in a city are economic, superficial and transitory as argued throughout this book.
In addition to overpopulation, a key point is that it is overconsumption that makes cities attractive. Because people are squeezed
and crowded in cities, they are forced to consume less there in many respects. A New Yorker won’t fit too much stuff in her tiny
apartment as compared a Texan living in her McMansion (yet she may make up the quantity loss with “quality” buying overpriced items
such as Iphone or LV bags).261 Americans consume many-fold more than Indians or Chinese do, but also within America, consumption
varies greatly–Texas energy use per capita is twice of that of New Jersey. This consumption could be cut–no tragedy would happen if
Texans consumed half less–they would be just like New Jerseyans.262
When I somewhat simplify the argument and say plainly that people are miserable in big cities, criticism is that I should not use
such a strong word “miserable” because it is just .1 difference on 1-4 happiness scale in BRFSS data or also about .1 on 1-3 scale in
GSS data. Statistical significance is one thing but size effect, or the practical magnitude is another thing and such differences appear
minuscule. There are at lest several reasons why we should care about these differences.
First, even finding no difference would be worth writing this book given common wisdom in social science about cities–again, it
seems as an axiom or self evident truth that cites are best places (among academics) or suburbs are best places (among common
people), while it turns out that it is smaller areas. Second, and related, is that given all the opportunity and growth happening in cities
(at least those successful ones), care, time, attention, and tax money pumped into them, they are still less happy! Everyone flocks to

46
them, give them one’s energy and enthusiasm, live their dream in them, and they are still less happy.
Third, this difference is not that small given that about half of happiness is genetic263 –so everything else including key life events
such as unemployment or marriage explains only a fraction of variance. Which brings us to fourth point–most of happiness is determined
by personal experience–private, professional life and health–so even less is left for ecological or environmental influences. Fifth, in terms
of environmental or ecological small differences–they can be quite large when applied to persons living in that environment. There
are about 50m Americans in cities (again, >250k) or almost 200m Americans in urban areas that are larger than 250k. Say, only one
person in one hundred decides that she wants to live in smaller area (perhaps after reading this book)–this would result in 2m people
more in smaller areas and each of them would be happier by .1 on 1-3 scale. In terms of overall happiness it would be equivalent to
making 200k “pretty happy” from “not too happy” (using GSS survey wording)–this is a big difference ! Of course, the usual caveat
is that we need more research in this area to really find out what happens to person’s happiness when she moves to a smaller place.
Current research simply compares people living in different areas and doesn’t trace person’s happiness when she moves.
So where does it all leave us–we are unhappy in big cities–so what do we do? We cannot live without cities (yet). But this is not
due to productivity or scale or agglomeration economies as economists claim–no, we could live in smaller areas and economy wouldn’t
collapse. We cannot live without cities, because there are simply too many people to fit elsewhere. There will be still more people at
least for another few decades.264 Given that, everyone living in a village or in open country is simply utopian or impossible. But we
can live in smaller towns or more of us can live in villages or open country (yet not too many and not too close, otherwise it would
become a suburb!). But importantly, people should realize that moving to a big city is not often ending in reaching the American
Dream and happiness. Rather, it may result in exhaustion, stress, urban malaise, and American Nightmare.
On that note, there are even many movies telling a story of a usually young, energetic and ambitious person, who was born and
raised “in the middle of nowhere” in a village or small town, or perhaps in a larger town but in a “rural state” such as Wyoming or
Nebraska, and then that person wants to be better than others and do something with her life, achieve the American Dream, and
make it, and what she does? She moves to a big city, typically New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or one of the handful of others, and
then she faces some hardship, usually makes it, but then she realizes she’s unhappy there and moves back to the middle of nowhere
where she came from and leads a happy life there. This books tells a similar story–you won’t find happiness in a large city, well, on
average to be precise. There are of course people who will find happiness in the big city, there are people who find happiness in war,
everybody is different, but on average cities are not happy places. Which brings us to another point–some people are more likely to
find happiness in large cities than others. This is untested speculation for future research, but perhaps people who may be happy in big
cities are: young, single, career-oriented, economists, seeking new experience, unconventional and non-conformist types, and so forth.
Interestingly, cities serve as a magnifying glass–they increase goods and bads with a multiplier of about 1.15–good things (income,
patents) and bad things (traffic, crime) grow super-linearly with population growth. This was found by two theoretical physicists who
decided to study cites.265 Perhaps, and arguably in at least some ways, a person living in New York has a fuller and more satisfying
life than a person in Beeville TX, it is just her life is more stressful and she does not have time to enjoy it. Or the good things such
as fabulous career, opportunity and thrill are more than offset by bad things such as exhaustion, stress and crime, so that one ends up
less happy in the city despite some alluring advantages of it. Hence, again, think of a city as a vampire–it is alluring, yet beware–it
will suck up life from you and make you miserable. Another explanation is that our New Yorker indeed achieved higher satisfaction,
but through process of hedonic adaptation, so called “hedonic treadmill”266 , she just always wants more and end up unhappy.
Perhaps, this is the very underlying logic of cities: Cities must promise happiness so that people come to cities and stay there, but
cities cannot deliver real or lasting happiness, so that people keep on working hard in the city and make it grow beyond imagination.267

5.1 Too many people

Cities are a problem, as this book argues. But we cannot solve it–get rid of some cities, especially the big ones–because there are too
many people. Hence, the root of the problem is overpopulation. This is what really forces us to live in this incredibly social malignant
form, cities.
I am not a demographer, but I will try to ponder here several ideas about population size. There are 7 billion of us, and there will
be about 50% more in 100 years. Many have written about overpopulation problems, famously Malthus among them. There are many
more important problems with overpopulation, but this book is about happiness and cities, and accordingly a relevant problem is that
there will be more people in cities, and hence, more unhappiness. We already have too many people to get rid of cities. We have to
house all these people somewhere, and because cities are bad places for humans as argued here, it would be better to have a world

47
without cities. The key obstacle is that there are too many people. Perhaps, cities are lesser evil than trying to curb population size,
but I will try to ponder several ideas here. Also, keep in mind, that probably the key problem of overpopulation is its environmental
impact, and this impact is probably larger if people live outside of cities, especially if they live in US-type sprawling suburbs. Most of
the increase in population over next few decades will come from developing countries. Perhaps we should discourage fertility in some
way–say by promoting contraception. Another solution, which is probably controversial and may not be the best idea is to tax families
having many children on assumption that they increase their ecological footprint and they simply need to pay for that.268
Everyone should pay tax for using and destroying natural resources, and it should go to organizations that care about planet like
United Nations or US Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental degradation is critical and it dwarfs all other problems like
poverty, inequality, or even human rights–it is about species survival. Probably the best way to take care of environment is to limit
consumption, but limiting population size is another way. We really have no choice but to implement somewhat drastic measures,
otherwise we will simply destroy environment to the point of our species endangerment. It is not too late yet. But it may be too late
soon, perhaps as soon as in few decades. As aptly pointed out by Paul Krugman, when dealing with environmental degradation, there
are points of no return. And we have just crossed one: the West Antarctic ice sheet will slide into ocean. It is irreversible. 269 Worse
than that. If we do nothing, we will face multiple “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts.” In short, it is an emergency. For more
information see Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at www.ipcc.ch.270

5.2 Too much consumption

Median house size has increased over 1973-2013 from about 1.5k to 2.5k feet, while average number of people living in a household
went down from 3 to 2.5 persons over the same period.271 Houses are most expensive items that most people buy in their lifetime,
and we keep on spending on housing more and more. Many scholars complain about big houses in suburbs and advocate that more
people live in smaller houses or better yet apartments in cities.
The key point is that environmental advantage of cities and environmental threat that we are now facing due to pollution and
overconsumption of natural resources does not mean that we have to live in cities. Another solution is simply to consume less outside
of cities. To large degree it is a fallacy that it is more efficient for humans to live in cities. This is an important point I would like to
make in this book. To see it, let’s invoke the chicken analogy again. To argue that it is more efficient to stuff humans in city is similar
to arguing that chickens are more efficiently stuffed in cages than both humans and chickens living out in nature. The key difference
and problem with humans, of course, is that humans as opposed to chickens overconsume. The apparent advantage of cities is that
we consume less there, because we are forced to consume less in cities due to space limitations. But what prevents a person to have
same square footage of housing in Beeville TX as in New York, except human vanity? In other words, we can consume less because
we decide so, not because we are forced to do so. Yet, we don’t do it, and if anything, we do the opposite.272
Indeed, new houses are getting not only bigger but also pricier: 43 percent of new homes sold for more than $300k, while just 8
percent sold for less than $150k, a big decline from 2002 when 30 percent of houses sold for less than $150k.273 And it can be helped
to consume less, if we tax consumption or income more. This is why I am criticizing overconsumption and conspicuous consumption,
especially as seen in American suburbia. It makes us think that the only way to be frugal and efficient is in cities, which is a nonsense.
It is only that cities force person to consume less of housing and car and things that one can stuff into housing because space is more
scarce in cities.274
Furthermore, in smaller places, there can be, and often are, mixed uses of land, walkability, and other good things as advocated
by smart growth, naturally. Again, smart growth is a fashionable movement to revitalize cities, much of it according to Jane Jacobs
points. And again, instead of trying to force cities to look like smaller areas, one should simply live in a smaller area.

5.3 Solutions. Policy?

That government is best which governs least (Thoreau 1993).

Why is there in chapter title a business word “solutions,” and why is “policy” with a question mark? Because policy usually does
not lead to solutions but simply more policy.
As opposed to most social science writings, I want to be constructive and suggest solutions. In subsection 5.3.1, I will be broader
than just discussing happiness in cities, and will also discuss happiness and policy making in general to some degree. We almost

48
never offer any lasting or self-sustaining solutions–most of the time we describe, sometimes suggest policy, but forget that the end
goal is to have it self sustained without policies! Since, as mentioned earlier, I have become Marxist-leaning, then in an effort to
balance it, let me quote Ronald Reagan: “Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own exis-
tence.”275 I am not joking–I do think that ideally we should rather try to have fewer policies and smaller government than bigger
government. And we should always keep in mind that any rule, policy and law, by definition is a cost from very beginning–someone
needs to write it, enforce it, and people need to comply and need to spend resources to do so; and unless it can be shown that
benefits outweigh costs, such policy should not be implemented. In general, the less bureaucracy, the better. Having said that, I hope
that I do not appear too much Left leaning anymore.276 For policy makers and indeed any bureaucracies, especially public or non-profits:

action = output

That is, the output (or performance) is measured by actions, typically red-tape or paper-pushing. Whether it solves problem or not is
secondary, the key thing is that we’re doing something. We want to make more rules and policies, and even more often, we just want
to describe and discuss for the sake of doing it. Perhaps a reason is that if we solved problems, then there would be nothing to do
for us.277 Furthermore, many Americans, if not most, do not like our policies, rules, and central government control–they think that
we often just act like elites (Gentry) telling common people (Yeomen) what to do, just because we know better. Maybe we do know
better, most likely we do, but we do not listen enough, although we pretend we do, but instead we just try to impose, regulate, and
design too much. 278
Some of sociology, much of public policy/administration and most of urban studies/affairs is about saving, protecting and improving
the cities with at least a strong implicit (often explicit) assumption that cities are better place to live than elsewhere. Much of that
stems from condemnation of sprawl–scholars point to public/social costs of sprawl. Sure, there are problems with sprawl, I do not
debate it. But what is extraordinarily strange is that condemnation of sprawl and glorification of density completely misses the fact
that neither Americans want to live in cities nor they are happy there.279 Hello? I say “Hello?” not just to use a word that would
make my prose lively, but I say it to express my ironic and maybe cynical feelings. Namely, I bet that the urbanists who read it won’t
be convinced at all, and won’t change their mind about glorious and triumphant cities. It’s almost like religion–many people seem to
believe in cities, as opposed to think about them. Fine. See, I wasn’t even trying to convince you. The good news is that even though
I won’t convince the urbanists, I am having at least some fun by teasing them by comparing their beloved city to tumors and vampires.
Strangely, it seems, that nobody280 promotes rural living anymore. I have observed that it is fashionable to care about the city (not
so much suburbs, towns and villages) and to try to fix it with policies, prescriptions, and so forth–and there will be no end to these
efforts, because, fundamentally, it seems that cities cannot be fixed. I was comforted that White and White (1977) observed the same
about 30 years ago–already then the fashion to care and try to revitalize the city was present, and nobody was saying that we should
or could get rid of the cities. Perhaps we should, and probably we cannot (yet). It was difficult to get rid of them earlier because as
economists teach us, cities exist because we are not self sufficient.281 But now, as we enter the second machine age 282 , maybe we
indeed can (very gradually, of course) get rid of cities.
Okay, now let me get more serious and academe-like. A proposal of getting rid of cities is just pondering ideas, thinking aloud.
Obviously, in the foreseeable future, it would be very difficult to get rid of cities, as mentioned earlier, and most likely it won’t be
feasible at all in the near future, unless we can inhabit more planets or cut population size dramatically–and both are rather impossible
over next few decades. So what then? Well, then we still live in the cities, as we did. So then it may seem that this book doesn’t
accomplish anything–we cannot get rid of cities, so what’s the point of complaining about something we have to live with? Well, the
point is simply to document that we pay the price in happiness. And the point is to convince as many people as possible to stay away
from cities–we cannot all avoid them–but whoever can, she should.
A note about diversity–there are few things that we value more in social science than diversity–ethnic, gender, all kinds of diversity.
But only human diversities. How about biological diversity? In cities, there is not much of that.283 And, again, we need contact with
biological organisms, not just humans. We do talk a lot about social capital. How about biological capital ? (I think I just coined a
new term “biological capital,” but the idea is the same as in E. O. Wilson’s biophilia). And the idea is simply that contact with other
biological organisms is a human need (biological capital), just like contact with other human beings is a human need (social capital).
Biodiversity is a close concept. Biodiversity is considered a desirable outcome, and one reason is that we simply need it to feel good
and be happy.

49
 Indeed a proposition that we do not need cities anymore should be seriously considered. First, people would be happier living in
smaller areas. Second, we needed cities to further our economic development, now that the industrial age is over and we are in the
information age, cities are declining, maybe they should, and instead of artificially sustaining them, we should help the process and
retrofit/replace them with nature that was once there. Not fake nature, no. Just remove human made objects–concrete, asphalt and
let the nature take over, without Texas-style landscaping.
It is possible to have more people living in smaller areas, and at the same time keep or even decrease ecological footprint. We
could have smaller houses, fewer cars, narrower roads, more natural nature. We could start with a goal of cutting house size by half.
This could be accomplished by simply rising property taxes. To decrease driving, we could increase gasoline tax, and say, double the
price–would doubling gas price kill the economy? No. Gas cost would be just brought up to European level. And average house in UK
is less than half of that in the US.284 Furthermore, to help the economy we could cut corporate tax, and again, cut as much regulation
as possible–the less government, the better.
Finally, let me reiterate several points made throughout this book and specifically highlight what is missed by urbanists/city-
enthusiast-alike and what we should be discussing and taking into account when thinking about cities and policy-making. City is
incredibly artificial and unnatural environment for humans, and for that matter, for any living organisms. Again, it is like cramming
chickens in cages or putting fish in an aquarium. Scientists did some experiments with crowding rats. Rats became more stressed,
aggressive, and killed each other–that’s what happens when you cram animals together in a confined space. It seems obvious that
crowding is bad for animals, yet somehow, urbanists imply the opposite, that cities are somehow a good place for humans. Yet, humans
like rats are also more aggressive in denser areas–crime rate is higher in cities.285 One explanation that people do not kill each other
consistently when crowded in cities is that our instincts are subdued due to culture, norms, etc, as Freud has observed long time ago286 ,
and of course, there is police and other restraining factors.
Cities destroyed community. Cities embody or exemplify Gesellschaft, and Gemeinschaft or community is a polar opposite. There
is an old book making this point by Toennies.287 But urbanists seem to imply the opposite: that community has its home in cities.
They definitely try to build community in cities. But that is strange–it is like trying to heat something in refrigerator, or try to dry
something in water–in short, I am not sure if it makes any sense and is actually doable.
Urbanists love cities, and there are few things they hate more than Walmart. But both cities and Walmart have a key feature in
common: both are about economic efficiency, and they are both great at it. That’s why we have cities–if not for economic reasons,
why crowd people in an expensive concrete and asphalt covered area?288

5.3.1 Policy in general: against cities, but still in favor of capitalism if fixed with heavy redistribution

“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective–the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by
a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income” (Martin Luther King)289

This chapter is mostly about income inequality and income redistribution because broadly understood income inequality (encom-
passing poverty) is to large extent increasing, or even causing, multiple social problems.290 So what? Why is this in this book about
cities and happiness? Because these social problems affect cities and happiness. Furthermore, and more fundamentally, as mentioned
earlier in chapter 3.1–a critique of cities is in large part a critique of capitalism; and hence, policy recommendations for cities are
related to general policy ideas geared towards improving imperfections of capitalism. Yet, there are key differences in how cities and
capitalism affect humans.
Again, like cities, capitalism does affect community in a negative way, and in both cases one can hardly do anything about it. But,
while in the long run we should try to get rid of cities as much as possible, we should probably stick with capitalism and try to fix it,
rather than abolish it. I speculate that capitalism creates more benefits than problems, while it is opposite with cities, which create
more problems than benefits.291 Capitalism is good at generating economic growth, just like cities–that’s why we have them–they are
there to produce more output. It may be so that it is better to have more economic growth than community. Yet, on the other hand,
a reasonable question to ask is whether we need more economic growth in rich countries.292 If not, then perhaps we do not need
capitalism either. Yet, on the other hand, it may not be a question of whether we need it or not for some purpose, but what is the
best system or organization of society for human species, and it may actually be capitalism after all.
In general, more government or big government, the Keynesian way, or even communism for that matter, does not seem a better
solution just because humans are more egoistic than altruistic and capitalism often293 harnesses that in a productive way. Better have

50
a greedy capitalist than nepotism, corruption, and collusion endemic in communism.294 There will be always greed and egoism in
humans, and under communism or in authoritarian regimes it results in arguably worse outcomes than in capitalism. But so it does
result in some bad outcomes in big government or in public sector. Greedy person in big government wants to grow government further
and seek rent–the bigger the government, the more rent opportunities. Marx was right that capitalist rob people, but perhaps solution
is not common ownership of means of production–because there are pervasive incentives to free ride and elites would oppress and take
advantage of common people as they did in Soviet Union in even worse manner than capitalist do. So let’s not be afraid to fully
embrace free market and capitalism, and keep only tiny government.295 But let’s also make it fair–not only equal opportunity but let’s
also take into account Sen’s capabilities296 and help more people with less skills/talents and those who are disadvantaged otherwise,
so that they can flourish as much as possible.
There is much social injustice as a result of taking advantage of common people by capitalists, but instead of creating new policies
and growing government without any limit like we grow cities or replacing private ownership with common ownership of means of
production, arguably the problem of inequality can be resolved simply by redistribution. Capitalism has a good motivating structure
based on innate human selfishness or egoism and it harnesses these instincts well. The problem is, however, that success (income or
wealth) is not mostly determined by labor or effort as common wisdom has it, but mostly by skills and luck that are purely random.
We reward too much the outcome and not enough the process–we need to reward more working hours and effort, and less the end
result.297 And hence to archive fairness so that people get what they worked for, a heavy redistribution is necessary. Yet it must
have strings attached and ideally there should be no welfare,298 but only government help for those who work as in EITC (Earned
Income Tax Credit), and of course help for those who cannot work due to disability or other conditions outside of their control. But
there should be no welfare (no healthcare either) for people who simply do not want to work–if someone cannot find a job, then the
government should give that person a job. Furthermore, equality of opportunity is not enough because as Amartya Sen pointed out
by famously asking “inequality of what?”299 . We are born unequal to begin with, and hence, equality of opportunity by itself does not
secure equality given that humans are considered equal (by law). This is a very important point: most of us agree that humans are
equal (by law), but we need to recognize that we are born unequal (skills, talents), and luck exacerbates it as environmental factors
do (place, family), hence, some people have to be helped more than others. Equal opportunity is not enough–we have to redistribute
resources from rich to poor. These are human rights–most of us agree that everyone should get equal treatment, but again, we need
to realize that we are not born equal and we need to redistribute to achieve more equal capabilities.
Yet, I do not advocate exactly equal capabilities, neither exactly equal outcomes–there must be some inequalities and random
talents and luck probably should still be rewarded. We should reward talent–labor productivity does differ and by no means everyone
should have the same wage rate.300 Furthermore, wage rate should be determined by market as it is now, and yes, CEOs should be
paid whatever market decides. So all in all, the only thing we need to change is to increase redistribution. Say, tax income>$200k at
80% and redistribute to poor on the condition they have to work if they are able to, say, by vastly expanding EITC. Then we can even
drop all other welfare programs like housing, food stamps, minimum wage, and keep as tiny government as possible.301
Hence, the bottom line is that we should probably embrace capitalism, as opposed to trying to counteract it with numerous policies.
Yet, capitalism needs to be fixed because it violates social justice–people do not get what they deserve, as elaborated above. Arguably,
the best solution to fix it, is simply to redistribute income. Fundamentally and ideally, taxes should penalize harmful behavior, and
especially behavior that destroys environment, because again, we are facing now grave environmental problems. An excellent example
of behavior that is both harmful for people and environment is conspicuous or wasteful consumption of large houses and cars that
define contemporary American suburbia. These should be heavily taxed.302

51
figures’ sources
Figure 1: Author’s own picture.
Figure 2: Pastoral Idyll source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_van_Ypern_Pastoral_idyll.jpg Rural
Landscape source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paysage_rural_(Rural_landscape).jpg
Figure 3: Picture by Robert S. Wyly from http://ibis.geog.ubc.ca/~ewyly/windowseats/cleveland1960/. Used with
permission.
Figure 4: Author: Blake Bolinger; source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trio_of_homes_in_Camden_NJ.jpg
Figure 5: Author: Photo by Lynn Betts, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service; source: http://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/File:NRCSNV00023_-_Nevada_(5529)(NRCS_Photo_Gallery).jpg
Figure 6: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burj_Khalifa.jpg
Figure 7: City: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Perth_city_scape.jpg; Town: http://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/File:Dolni-Okol-from-the-West.jpg; All faces: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Line_drawings_
of_facial_expressions
Figure 8: Author’s own picture.
Figure 9: Human tower: http://ibis.geog.ubc.ca/~ewyly/replication.html used with permission. For more similar pic-
tures see http://photomichaelwolf.com/#architecture-of-density-2/1. Chicken tower: http://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:Birds_in_a_cage1.JPG
Figure 10: Author’s own figure.
Figure 11: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Philipp_Jakob_Loutherbourg_d._J._002.jpg.
Figure 12: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camden_NJ_poverty.jpg.
Figure 13: Author’s own figure.
Figure 15: Author’s own figure.
Figure 16: Author’s own figure.
Figure 14: Author’s own figure.
Figure 17: Author’s own picture.
Figure 18: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UT_Dallas_Student_Service_Building.JPG
Figure 19: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suburbia_by_David_Shankbone.jpg
Figure 20: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=the+woodlands+tx&ll=30.176889,-95.492992&spn=0.022223,0.042272&hnear=
The+Woodlands,+Montgomery+County,+Texas&gl=us&t=k&z=15&output=classic&dg=brw; https://maps.google.com/maps?
q=medford+lakes+nj&ll=39.853884,-74.806552&spn=0.019734,0.042272&hnear=Medford+Lakes,+Burlington+County,+New+
Jersey&gl=us&t=k&z=15&output=classic&dg=brw
Figure 21: Purcell and Elmslie Purcell-Cutts House: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Purcell_and_Elmslie_
Purcell-Cutts_House_MIA_9092.jpg; Cascade Canyon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:House_amongst_redwood_trees,
_Cascade_Canyon.jpg; Morningside Nature Center LHF cabin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morningside_Nature_Center#
mediaviewer/File:Morningside_Nature_Center_LHF_cabin02.jpg; Museum of Skogar, Iceland: http://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/File:SkogarMuseumOutside.jpg
Figure 22: The skyline of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tulsa_Skyline.jpg
Figure 23: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Replica_of_Thoreau%27s_cabin_near_Walden_Pond_and_his_statue.
jpg
Figure 24: vampire: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vampire#mediaviewer/File:Vampyr_ill_artlibre_jnl.png;city:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dubai_Sheikh_Zayed_Road_Night.jpg

52
chapter abstracts and keywords
1. introduces to the book; defines happiness and other terms used in the book; provides a brief overview of 3 major happiness
theories; and summarizes key points made in the book; keywords: none

2. overviews and discusses urbanization and some good sides of it, notably freedom; introduces city fetish–an idea that cities allure
by a promise of power, prestige, greatness, etc; keywords: urbanization, city, freedom

3. the key chapter; discusses city problems building on classical sociological theory; and presents evidence of city unhappiness;
keywords: happiness, life satisfaction, malaise, subjective wellbeing

4. discusses city’s opposite, nature, and an intermediary and mistaken step: suburbs–and discusses why suburbs are not a great
solution; introduces a concept of “fake nature;” keywords: nature, sustainability, sprawl, suburbanization

5. summarizes the main argument and concludes it; also lists some ideas for future research; recommends public policy actions
and includes a broader policy discussion (especially about inequality and redistribution); keywords: public policy, inequality,
redistribution, sustainability

53
Notes
1I always liked this idea of simplicity and I was finally convinced to it when it comes to writing a book by MacKay (2008).
2 Martinson (2000) makes a good point that urbanists are usually Gentry or even Nobles enjoying good life, and they try to “teach” common people
(often suburban Yeomen) how they should live their lives. And there are Nobles indeed–”gentrification” is not the right word for “best places” like Man-
hattan, it should rather be “aristocratization.” One great example has been recently described by CityLab (http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/12/
what-the-world-doesnt-need-are-steampunk-luxury-condos/383352/)–there are some steampunk luxury condos being build in Manhattan–they actually
do look very aristocratic on purpose–and they have aristocratic prices too–$2.4m-$7.1m.
3 I do not differentiate further, as some authors do, say with inner city, exurbs, etc.
4 For definition of urbanized area see https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/gtc/gtc_urbanrural.html. For definition of metropolitan area see

http://www.census.gov/population/metro/data/def.html. For a sociological approach to city definition see Dewey (1960).

5 See http://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/citizenship-through-naturalization/path-us-citizenship. Underlined by Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn.
6 But see chapter 1.2.3 for discussion of quality of life, and there is also a brief discussion of mental health at the end of that chapter.
7 McMahon (2006).
8 For definitions see for instance Diener and Lucas (quoted in Steel et al. 2008, p. 142) and Veenhoven (2008, p. 2).
9 For statements about validity, reliability and precision see Myers (2000), Di Tella and MacCulloch (2006), Layard (2005), Bray and Gunnell (2006),

Sandvik et al. (1993), Clark et al. (2008), Diener (2009). For a recent and very through statement of happiness measure validity and reliability see Diener
(2009), especially ch. 5. Likewise, Diener (2009) provides a good discussion of why potential problems with happiness are not serious enough to make it
unusable for public policy–see especially ch. 6. These potential problems include genetic determination of happiness (Lykken and Tellegen 1996), adaptation
(Brickman et al. 1978), and various comparisons (Michalos 1985).
10 These points come from a presentation by Ruut Veenhoven at 2014 Wellbeing and Public Policy Conference at Hamilton College.
11 Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), a British philosopher, is a founder of moral utilitarianism–an idea that what makes us happy is the right thing to do. It

follows, according to this doctrine, that the role of the public policy should be to maximize the happiness, that is, governments should produce the greatest
happiness for the greatest number.
12 Bartels (2009), Alesina et al. (2004)
13 http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
14 Diener (2009, p. 66).
15 For what makes us happy see, for instance, some of the writings by Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology–a movement with a goal to

do exactly that–to achieve happiness at person (not directly aggregate) level (?Seligman et al. 2005, Diener and Seligman 2004, Seligman 2004, Diener and
Seligman 2002). Happiness should not be an end goal, but rather a product of other objectives–for elaboration see Csikszentmihalyi (1991), Gilbert (2009),
and already Tönnies wrote that “Happiness, which everybody longs for and desires, is first of all simply the favorable and agreeable circumstances which make
life and work easier, ensure the success of circumstances, which like fair weather, can perhaps be foreseen and foretold but cannot possibly be brought about”
(Tönnies [1887] 2002, p. 125).
16 It is not in any way inappropriate to study QOL; I just study happiness here instead. A statement that “internet is overflowing...” is simply an observation

without any judgment.

17 Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011a).
18 For detailed description of the two rankings see Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011a).
19 For more discussion see Diener (2009), Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011a).
20 For instance, Okulicz-Kozaryn (2014b) used “mentally unhealthy days” measure, and found more such days in cities. After adjusting for population

characteristics Probst et al. (2006) did not find any urban-rural difference in depression rates (unadjusted rates indicated urban dwellers to be healthier).
Wang (2004) found higher prevalence of major depressive episodes in urban areas, but did not find any difference in disability and daily life interference due
to depressive symptoms. Weich et al. (2006) found rural residents to be in better mental health. Similarly, Cohen-Cline et al. (2015) argue that green spaces
reduce mental health problems.
21 Durkheim ([1895] 1950)
22 This is rather anecdotal evidence from author’s own observation.
23 Marx and Engels 1849, quoted in Dittmann and Goebel (2010).
24 Yet, they pollute least, a point made by Meyer (2013). On the other hand, Martinson (2000) complains that cities generate most congestion, which is

not true–there is simply less need to go far distances in cities–it is smaller areas that generate most congestion because people travel most there. Still, cities
remain most congested because there are most people there. Per capita, there is least pollution and congestion in cities, but per square mile, there is most.
25 Stutzer and Frey (2003), Kahneman et al. (2004). Areas with longest commute in the US are close to the largest cities–for instance see http:

//documenta_pdf.jmir.dyndns.org/P.Evans_LivableCities_2002.pdf.
26 Income buys happiness up to a point (e.g., Okulicz-Kozaryn 2012). Robert H Frank has studied nonpecuniary v pecuniary consumption (2004, 2005,

2012). Experience buys more happiness than things (e.g., Kumar et al. 2014). Experience consumption (e.g., bowling, fishing, swimming) does not suffer
from “hedonic treadmill” problem, or at least to lesser degree. While luxury consumption does not result in lasting happiness (e.g., Linssen et al. 2011), it
may actually result in short-run happiness, especially if a person is materialistic (Hudders and Pandelaere 2012). Materialism is related to luxury consumption,
but beyond scope of this study–for brief discussion of it and its relationship to happiness see Hudders and Pandelaere (2012).
27 Brickman et al. (1978)
28 Durkheim ([1895] 1950)
29 Davis (1966)
30 For elaboration see Carver and Scheier (1990)–pleasant feelings result from a successful attempt to attain a goal. If all goes well, happiness and cognitive

sense of satisfaction ensue. Thus, these positive emotions could be seen as a signal that little to no further energy is required for the task at hand

54
 31 In smaller areas, too–there are more and more tasks, but arguably to a lesser extent.
32 For more elaboration on this idea see Schwartz (2004).
33 For elaboration, see arguably the most classic critique of urban life under the same title (Wirth 1938).
34 Suburbs are still quite different–they allure with promise of serenity and other good things that promote happiness, but they are fake–they attempt to

provide peace of a small area but do it in a “fake” manner. Two excellent examples are Cherry Hill NJ and Plano TX.
35 Lederbogen et al. (2011)
36 Plano in Texas calls itself “A-City-of-Excellence” (https://www.plano.gov/1923/Plano-Texas---A-City-of-Excellence).
37 There are actually more similarities between cities and Walmart. Both grow without limits. Both are in a way addictive–start shopping at Walmart one

day and you will continue–you gotta love everyday low prices! Same with city–it will draw you in with an alluring promise of a good deal. Yet both are
unhealthy–much of Walmart’s produce is not good for humans, and city living is not good either. It remains for the future research to determine whether people
shopping at Walmart are unhappy as urbanites are, but my hypothesis is that they are–my qualitative ethnographic research observing people at Walmart
reveals not much joy there. It could be counterargued, however, that although unhappy themselves, cities or Walmart make everybody better off, and hence,
increase happiness in the long run–we will come back to that. By the way, I am not against Walmart, at least not as much as many people are–I shop there
sometimes and I love their everyday low prices–”save money live better”!
38 If you want to know how a fish fits in an aquarium, see adventures of Nemo (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/).
39 Fake nature, that is human-planted and maintained/landscaped nature, such as a tree on a street or even an urban park may help a little but that is more

similar to putting a poster of a tree on your wall than observing real nature. Fake nature is defined in section 4.3.1.
40 Especially if we cut on conspicuous or wasteful consumption, our happiness won’t suffer or may even increase–for instance see Okulicz-Kozaryn and

Tursi (2015). Less consumption will hurt economy, and that’s arguably why economists won’t argue in favor of consuming less, but as always there are
exceptions–notably Veblen and Robert Frank, as elaborated later.
41 Many of these ideas come from or were inspired by White and White (1977), but also from Freud et al. (1930), Fromm ([1941] 1994), Park et al. ([1925]

1984), Wirth (1938). In the following list, there is an author or even two authors listed for each bullet point, but there is an overlap and many more people
than just one or two references expressed these ideas–for overall reference see the works cited in the previous sentence.
42 Also, see Okulicz-Kozaryn (2014a).
43 I will argue throughout this book that urban-rural gradient is not only about physical capital but also about culture, social relations, everything indeed–it

is a very deep difference. Indeed, I was really pleased while working on this project to find that most intellectuals have always (throughout short US history)
disliked city (White and White 1977), so I am in a good company!
44 Furthermore, I speculate, just like cities make people corrupt but free (Stadt Luft macht frei), so does capitalism corrupts (personal observation), but also

makes us free (Milton Friedman).

45 Except few semesters when I have experimented with economics and business before starting my PhD.
46 I have conducted many–happiness and cities have been my major area of research–see http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=pz9RYloAAAAJ.
47 Perhaps for a good reason. Even I, hardened by 4 years of PhD, 2 years of postdoc, and couple years of being a professor, have a headache when I read,

or even think about reading, a peer-reviewed article. It is not really about subject matter, but rather about official academic writing style. In short, scholarly
prose is headache conducive, especially that in social science. Hence, I actually enjoy this opportunity to write a book in plain language.
48 In that sense, it is more lateral than logical thinking (De Bono [1970] 2010) that guides the writing of this book.
49 Happiness is studied in sociology (Fernandez and Kulik 1981, Firebaugh and Schroeder 2009, Inglehart and Baker 2000, Lim and Putnam 2010, Ross

et al. 2000, Schnittker 2008, Yang 2008), political science (Helliwell and Huang 2008, Radcliff 2001, Rasmussen 2006), economics (Stevenson and Wolfers
2009, Cattaneo et al. 2009, Rayo and Becker 2007, Dynan and Ravina 2007, Di Tella and MacCulloch 2006, Alesina et al. 2004, Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters
2004, Di Tella et al. 2001, Frey and Stutzer 2000, Oswald 1997), management (Ashkanasy 2011, Blanchflower and Oswald 2011, Judge and Kammeyer-
Mueller 2011), and of course in psychology (e.g. Diener 2012, 2013, Diener and Seligman 2002, 2004, Diener et al. 2003, Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002,
Diener 2000, ?, Diener et al. 1999, Diener and Suh 1997, Diener et al. 1995, 1993). Even the leading general interest journals publish happiness studies:
Oswald and Wu (2009), Kahneman et al. (2004), Hamer (1996), and if PNAS is considered a leading general interest journal, there are more articles:
Rietveld et al. (2013), De Neve and Oswald (2012), Easterlin et al. (2012), Kahneman and Deaton (2010), Easterlin (2003). Finally, there are also at
least two specialized journals publishing happiness research: Journal of Happiness Studies and Social Indicators Research. London School of Economics
and Political Science has a website listing some research on this topic, mostly by its health economist Paul Dolan and labor economist Richard Layard at
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/research/wellbeing/happiness.asp. Dutch EHERO (Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization) also aims at
public policy, yet also without much input from public policy and administration scholars (http://www.eur.nl/english/ehero/). Brookings Institution in
the person of Carol Graham is involved in en effort to produce better happiness indicators and policy.
50 There has been much written about happiness across countries, but we know less about happiness across less aggregated places.
51 See Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2009).
52 Statement about New York is based on BRFSS data as explained later and statement about London is based on http://www.govtoday.co.uk/health/

44-public-health/11410-london-least-happy-in-the-uk; Statement about Toronto and Vancouver come from (Lu et al. 2015). Finally, statement about
most other developed countries is based on Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2009). Furthermore, per New York see Senior (2006)–University of Pennsylvania’s
Positive Psychology Center has nonrepresentative data of zip codes, and per that data also New York appears to be one of the most miserable places and rural
areas appear happiest. For Singapore, see the following: economic freedom (http://www.heritage.org/index/country/singapore); happiness (http://
worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/hap_nat/findingreports/RankReport_AverageHappiness.php and http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/21/world/asia/
singapore-least-happy/); life expectancy and economic indicators (http://www.happyplanetindex.org/countries/singapore/)
53 Philosophers include White and White (1977); and physicists include Bettencourt et al. (2010), Bettencourt and West (2010), Bettencourt et al. (2007).

A good introduction to fascinating scholarship by West and Bettencourt is Lehrer (2014).

54 For a brief discussion see Cukier (2010).

55
 55 In other words, (most) economists are limited or specialized–they only care about income, production, and consumption–if they grow, then there is
progress, and hence, the conclusion is that cites are great. Period.
56 Marx was a brilliant scholar; it was the Soviet Union that was an evil empire. And by no means I have become a fully-blown Marxist–for elaboration see

section 5.3.1.
57 Although, it seems that I am not a genuine qualitative researcher in this project after all–my qualitative colleagues tell me that there is actually some

method when doing qualitative research as opposed to just talking about things.
58 I always like to tease urbanists by comparing their beloved city to cancer. City is so bad for humans that it can be compared to a tumor. Some find

that city visually resembles tumor–perhaps there is something to that point–but because I find looking at images of tumor even more repulsive than looking
at cities, I gave up on explorations of visual similarities between them–try yourself googling cancer pictures! Yuk! There are other similarities than visual, for
instance, both tumors and cities tend to grow without limits, and as they grow, their negative influence increases.
59 Economists use axioms–it appears that economists usually think they are better than other social scientists by trying to study social world like physicists

study physical world, but somehow, they do not realize that their axiomatic elegant thinking has often little relationship with the real world, that is, it is
internally consistent and mathematically beautiful but often useless. I was really happy to find a study confirming my intuition that economists simply think
(wrongly, of course!) that they are superior to other social science: see Economist (2014).
Economists also like suburbs, just because they are a free-market natural–that is they develop be themselves, unless countered by government using various
regulation like green belts. Economists just tend to like everything that is free-market generated (Economist 2013).
60 For instance see Freidman (2005). Again, it is not to say that place does not matter. It matters as described later, and places will continue to matter.

Furthermore, this book is not about a specific place, but rather about largest cities and highest densities. And what matters is a specific place (not whether
it is huge and dense) (e.g. Florida 2008), but such place does not have to be a city. The point is that density probably matters less and is likely matter even
less in the future. Even Florida, a rather staunch proposer of city-living recently admits that “The Internet is enabling creative-class workers to stretch the
boundaries of their commuting sheds and locate on the rural periphery of major metros, far enough to work from countrified and comfortable home offices,
but close enough to come in for meetings” (Florida 2014).
61 See Glaeser (2011).
62 Per enthusiasm about city renewal see Gallagher (2013), Ehrenhalt (2012). And per future of human settlement in a city see Speck (2013), Chakrabarti

(2013).
63 This point comes from Veenhoven (1994). Clearly there are periodic shifts between rationalism and romanticisim: 17th century was Age of Faith, 18th

was Age of Reason, 19th was Romantic Era, 20th was Age of Science and Technology (Martinson 2000). Perhaps it’s time now for some romanticism, quality
of life, postmaterialism, maybe spirituality, and nature; as opposed to rationality, materialism, capitalism, and cities.
64 This is an educated guess, I have no evidence about where McDonald’s get its food from.
65 It is grossly overlooked, I speculate, because we do not see it–we do not see, neither give it much thought, how the food that we eat was produced.
66 For some elaboration see Davis (1955). Of course, there were cities before industrialization, but there were few and relatively small as compared to

metropolises of today, which is relatively new invention. I elaborate later.

67 For instance see Hough (2004)–preindustrial character of cities is quite natural or nature-friendly. But not anymore.
68 Glaeser (2011).
69 But even Philadelphia is at least in some parts gentrifying–for instance see http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Gentrification_in_Philadelphia.

html. But again, here is the crux of the problem–cities are either broken and affordable like Detroit or successful and prohibitively expensive like New York, so
again, city can hardly be fixed. Sometimes cities are successful and affordable like Dallas or Houston, but in such case they must have low density (and hence
are not fully considered cities, say, as per Wirth (1938) definition, and they also rely on car heavily and hence pollute and waste many hours in traffic. In fact,
by one estimate, car emissions kill more people than car accidents do (Jaffe 2014). And even Milton Friedman would tax car pollution (McMahon 2014).
70 Gentrification is a wide-spread phenomeneon and there are signs that it is accelerating http://www.governing.com/gov-data/gentrification-in-cities-gover

html.
71 A perfect or a full version of homo oecononicus does not exist-such person would be very much like a robot or machine, and even most hardcore economists

are still more like animals or even humans.

72 Le Corbusier (1887-1965) was a famous architect who greatly influenced modern design. On a positive side, despite being ugly, suburbs may be in a way

“practical”–for elaboration see Martinson (2000).

73 People born between early 1980s and early 2000s. Also called Generation Y.
74 The idea, that cities look more like suburbs and suburbs look like cities, comes from http://www.citylab.com/politics/2014/10/the-fading-distinction-betw

381096/.
75 Exactly. And yes, I also do not say that we should not urbanize at all–only the biggest cities are bad for us.
76 For instance see Glaeser (2011). Meyer (2013) also contended that it is surprisingly fashionable.
77 For urbanization figures in the World see, for instance, Bettencourt and West (2010). For the US figures see U.S. Census Bureau (2012, 2005). For

interesting visualizations see http://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/005/ and http://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/050/. A

projection that the US urban land will more than double comes from Nowak and Walton (2005).
78 Claim that America is still a small town country comes from http://www.newgeography.com/content/00242-america-more-small-town-we-think.

Residential preferences are shown in Fuguitt and Zuiches (1975), Fuguitt and Brown (1990). More recent data (and also community satisfaction) are at
http://today.yougov.com/news/2012/07/05/suburban-dream-suburbs-are-most-popular-place-live/. Happiness levels are discussed in Berry and
Okulicz-Kozaryn (2009, 2011).
79 See http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/population-migration.aspx#.VCgRJPEpBhE and http://www.brookings.edu/

research/opinions/2014/03/31-population-slowdown-small-town-america-frey.
80 Notably, see Florida (2008).

56
 81 For central place theory see a scholarly Encyclopedia Britannica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/102569/central-place-theory or a
less scholarly and equally accurate but more comprehensive Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_place_theory.
82 As elaborated in section 3.1 and elsewhere in this book, American Dream is not made in the metropolis, it is made in China–that is, big income and big

wealth are outcome of capital (say investment in China), not labor.

83 Residential preferences are shown in Fuguitt and Zuiches (1975), Fuguitt and Brown (1990). More recent data (and also community satisfaction) are

at http://today.yougov.com/news/2012/07/05/suburban-dream-suburbs-are-most-popular-place-live/. Recently, a new trend develops– Millenials

rediscover the city. Immigrants and notably Asians preferring lower density is author’s personal observation–I have observed that many Asians dislike dense
areas such as North-East of the US and prefer less dense areas such as Texas. Again, Americans have similar preferences–dense Rust Belt is moving to spacious
Sun Belt.
84 Glaeser (2011) claims that the poor are better off in cities than elsewhere. Smart people move (Jokela 2014).
85 I am especially proud of this chapter, because it is a result of my own thinking uninspired directly by literature (as far as I can tell–it is difficult to trace

origins of thoughts precisely). After I wrote it, however, I actually found similar ideas in Marx writings–my idea of city size fetish is actually similar to his
commodity fetishism or domination by things. As if big size of a city has any intrinsic value and more than that, as if it bestows its value, or power upon
urbanites living in metropolis. Maybe also, but perhaps to lesser degree, my idea is like Veblen’s conspicuous or wasteful consumption in a sense that many
things in cities are conspicuous or wasteful. For instance, while towers in general are efficient, their design is in many ways conspicuous and wasteful and some
towers in themselves are conspicuous and wasteful–when there is no need to build a very tall tower given land prices and when there is one build.
Furthermore, there seems to be more excitement about towers than there should be–as if towers have any intrinsic value in themselves–e.g., http:
//www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/05/magazine/new-york-life.html
From psychoanalytic perspective, size fetish can be explained as jouissance–for discussion see Kapoor (2014).
From a different angle–as a comparison to suburbs–Martinson (2000) also noted city pride and superiority.
86 SUV stands for Sport Utility Vehicle, which is typically large and flashy; McMansion is a cheap mansion, just like McDonald is cheap food.
87 New Yorkers are proud to be New Yorkers (Balducci and Checchi 2009). And many New Yorkers do not necessarily claim the whole city but its borough

as a source of pride–for instance, one of my students remarked “Being from Brooklyn, New York, I walk with a sense of pride and grit knowing that I was
born and raised there.” Statements about Shanghai and Warsaw are based on author’s personal observations.
88 Per fire departments truck competition see Duany et al. (2001). Per size of house see http://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf
89 Thoreau (1995 [1854], p 37-38). Underlined by Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn. Since Thoreau pointed degrading of pyramid builders, and some of the most spec-

tacular contemporary towers, including the tallest one, are in the Middle East, let me point to a similarity in poor living conditions of builders of pyramids and
builders of towers. Of course, contemporary workers work in much better conditions, nevertheless, some similarities are there. For instance see this NYT article
about laborers at NYU campus in Abu Dhabi: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/nyregion/workers-at-nyus-abu-dhabi-site-face-harsh-conditions.
html. There are some great pictures of both laborers and capitalists in that NYT article.
90 For a good description of urbanites condescending suburbanites see Martinson (2000).
91 A useful psychoanalytic concept that may help to explain this is jouissance–for discussion of jouissance as related to overall development see Kapoor

(2014).
92 For happiness and income see for instance Layard (2005), Scitovsky (1976). For comparisons see Frank (2012). For a theory about comparisons in

happiness see Michalos (1985).

93 Another reason why cities should actually be happier is that immigrants move there to live their American Dream and they arguably feel there successful

and empowered–otherwise they wouldn’t come or they would move back (at least in theory)– and cites are still less happy (most immigrants come to largest
cities and metros). In short, there are many reasons why cities actually should be happy, and given that they are not happy points to the fact that there must
be something pernicious about them, as this book argues.
Immigrants are often escaping oppression, usually looking for a new start or just for a start and better life, hence, at least in theory, they should
make cities into which they immigrate happier places–after all they have arrived in their dream place. Ironically, United States Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) requires an immigrant in order to become a US citizen to be “well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.”
(http://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/citizenship-through-naturalization/path-us-citizenship; underlying is mine). Fischer (1991) is an in
depth historical treatment of folkways that started America.
94 Braveheart: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112573/; Gladiator: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172495/.
95 For central place theory see a scholarly Encyclopedia Britannica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/102569/central-place-theory or a

less scholarly and equally accurate but more comprehensive Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_place_theory.
96 The new estimate of cutoff point at which urban malaise sets in at several hundred thousand comes from Okulicz-Kozaryn (2015b). The old estimate of

50k comes from (Veenhoven 1994).

97 Richardson (1972) points out that debate about optimal city size is alike to debate about optimal population size. We only widely discuss overpopulation

when disaster happens, like 2015 drought in California. Plainly sepaking, California is not supposed to house 40 million people, and especially if a substantial
number is living conspiciously with watered lawns and large pools in the middle of the desert. Such criticism can be criticised by pointing that most water is
used for agriculture, not (sub)urban areas. But isn’t excessive water use in agriculture due to overpopulation? Who eats those grapes and tomatoes?
98 See Van den Bergh (2011), Daly (2013), Kallis (2011), Kallis et al. (2012). Another way to degrow economy and also protect environment better by

polluting less is to limit working hours in developed countries (Knight et al. 2013).
99 See Singell (1974).
100 Although, notably, there is some more recent work on this topic by few Italian scholars (Capello and Camagni 2000, Capello 2011, Camagni et al. 2013).
101 See Fischer (1982), Fischer and Merton (1976), Fischer (1975, 1973, 1972). There were also few classic economic/regional science studies by Alonso

(1960, 1971) and Richardson (1972) around that time.

102 See Elgin (1975). In first quote, words were underlined by Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn; in the second quote underlying was in the original. This statement is

probably wrong about environmental factors–cities seem good for environment as pointed by Meyer (2013), but it seems right about social dimension–cities

57
are just bad for society as a whole.
103 Capello and Camagni (2000) reviews literature on optimal city size: there is lots of criticism of trying to estimate it–the basic problem is that every city

is different. For the idea that size of a place is very important or possibly the most important feature defining the city see Bettencourt and West (2010).
104 http://www.philipbrewer.net/2010/12/22/optimal-city-size/
105 The new estimate of cutoff point at which urban malaise sets comes from Okulicz-Kozaryn (2015b).
106 It originated in the Middle Ages, and it meant freedom from feudalism, non-feudal islands in a sea of feudalism (Harvey 2012)..
107 Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft are defined in 3.1.
108 Indeed, Fischer (1982) specifically calls his “subcultural theory of urbanism” a counterthesis to the thesis of urban malaise as stated by the Chicago school

(Park 1915, Park et al. [1925] 1984, Wirth 1938).

109 Simmel (1903, p. 334)
110 See Freud et al. (1930), Fromm ([1941] 1994), and per cage of traditional society see Maryanski and Turner (1992), and also see Okulicz-Kozaryn (2014a).
111 Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014).
112 Quote comes from Florida (2012a). Typical economic mantra can be found in O’Sullivan (e.g. 2009). For creative class description see Florida (2008).
113 Wirth (1938).
114 See Florida (2012a). For instance many top universities, and hence some of the most creative places, are not located in largest cities, for instance,

Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, and so forth. For rankings see, for instance, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/
2014/reputation-ranking. Even Florida, a rather staunch proposer of city-living recently admits that “The Internet is enabling creative-class workers to
stretch the boundaries of their commuting sheds and locate on the rural periphery of major metros, far enough to work from countrified and comfortable home
offices, but close enough to come in for meetings” (Florida 2014). And Florida argues in a similar vein here as well (Florida 2012b).
And in some important ways cities hamper thinking, for instance, people have to waste time commuting as opposed to doing thinking–thinking while
commuting is arguably not very productive. One specific example is shortage of student housing at MIT, and expensive commercial housing (Boston metro is
successful and hence unaffordable), so students have live far away and instead of being productive on campus and benefiting from knowledge spillovers that
city is supposed to provide, they are scattered far away and spend considerable part of their day commuting (Jonathan Alan King and Salvucci 2014).
115 As measured by citations.
116 It wouldn’t be much of a problem if nobody read that book–after all there are many bad books that nobody reads, but this book became New York Times

Bestseller, and is nicely ornamented on the front cover with “A masterpiece” by Steve Levitt and “Bursting With Insights” by NYT Book Review.
117 See discussion of creative class per smartness. Per greener: at local level it is pretty clear that even though cities are most pollutted, they pollute least

per capita as persuasively argued by Meyer (2013). Yet at macro level, for middle- and high- income countries, urbanization increases both energy use and
pollution (Poumanyvong and Kaneko 2010).
118 One way to resolve this puzzle that the World is urbanizing despite people being unhappy there is simply that masses are stupid–despite what other bad

book would tell you (Surowiecki 2005). Majority of people very often do things that are bad for them–not just wars or other dramatic examples come to mind,
but fast-food eating, TV watching, and so forth. And there are some recent writings discussing irrationality of humans–for instance see Ariely (2009). And
specifically here, one explanation is that people simply want to be better than other people more than they want to be happy, and people also arguably think
that if they are better than others, then they would be happy-see section 2.2. And so to show that they are better than others, they flock to places like New
York or Los Angeles. And there are many people like me, who hate cities, but have to live in a metro because their job is in the city, and they need that job.
And that is probably best explanation–indeed most Americans prefer suburbs because that way they can be close to job and amenities in the city but also
outside of the city and close to nature. The disturbing thing, though, is that actually Millenials seem to really want to live in the city–did they read Glaeser’s
book?–maybe, it’s a bestseller after all. Soon, economists may be able to lure everybody into the city. The strange part is that Glaeser himself does not live
in a city but in suburbs as he admitted somewhere (maybe even in one edition of “Triumph of the city”). Well, to be fair, I do not live in a cabin either. But
at least I want to; and I speculate, that Glaeser doesn’t want to live in a tower, but maybe he wants, he’s an economist after all...
119 I am just giving examples of growth. I do not mean that Amazon or Walmart are as bad as Ebola. Perhaps a better comparison would be that of

McDonald’s, or any other capitalistic business that spreads internationally–as argued throughout this book, urbanization, capitalism and commercialization
are similar phenomena; and so growth of cities is similar to growth of say McDonald’s.
120 For instance, “To look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of a fibrous tumor.” (Frank Lloyd Wright)”
121 For instance, Simmel wrote “The metropolis has always been the seat of money economy” (Simmel 1971, p. 326).
122 Okulicz-Kozaryn (e.g., 2011a)
123 Another unhappy sampling or cherry picking is in Glaeser’s latest paper (Glaeser 2014b), where he studies unhappy cities–but he somehow excluded from

paper counties that are not metros. An accident? And recently (which I found out on Jan 28th 2015, right before shipping the final draft to the publisher) in
Boston Globe he actually does say that people are happier in smaller areas in an article under a telling title “Happiness is overrated” (Glaeser 2014a). So it
seems that because data does not agree with his city triumph thesis, then the best solution is to play down the importance of happiness metric. Well, still, I
must say this is a big improvement over Glaeser’s earlier misleading writing, now at least he acknowledges the truth.
124 Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2009)
125 Easterlin Paradox: Happiness does not increase when country’s income increases. See Easterlin (2013), Easterlin et al. (2012), Easterlin (1974). But also

see Veenhoven and Vergunst (2013) for an opposite view–that income does increase happiness over time–even if so, an increase is rather small.
126 On the other hand, it can be also argued that there are idealized images of city, too! Say: success, career advancement, all sorts of greatness, but then,

there’s rat race and every day misery. And as aptly pointed out by Bell (1992) idealized images or popular beliefs actually by itself make the urban-rural
distinction real–if people believe something to be real, then it has real consequences!
127 There is a wonderful and informative little book, White and White (1977) that elaborates the point very well. Many quotes in this chapter are not by

Americans, of course. For historical preference among common Americans for smaller places see Martinson (2000), Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2009).
128 See Tönnies ([1887] 2002). By “we have forgotten” I mean scholars–a study of city’s effect on human wellbeing was popular among early sociologists

(Toennies, Park, Wirth), but it discontinued in 70s when major works of Fischer were published. There are a few contemporary studies, but they fail to

58
connect with classical sociological scholarship and are a tiny minority among outpouring of studies about greatness of cities or about fixing cities. So, we
scholars fail to answer or even acknowledge early attempts to answer what a city is and what it does to us. By “we” I also mean general public–it is my
personal observation that people do not really give much thought to cities or most other things for that matter–again, masses are not spectacularly bright and
do not make right decisions much of the time. Yet surprisingly, when it comes to cities, somehow possibly intuitively even masses somehow arguably realize
that cities are not good for them because they want to stay away from them (Fuguitt and Brown 1990, Fuguitt and Zuiches 1975) and are happier outside of
them (Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn 2011, 2009).
129 The quote goes further: “On the other hand, all praise of rural life has pointed out that the Gemeinschaft among people is stronger there and more alive;

it is the lasting and genuine form of living together. In contrast to Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft is transitory and superficial. Accordingly, Gemeinschaft should
be understood as a living organism, Gesellschaft as a mechanical aggregate and artifact.”(Tönnies [1887] 2002, p. 35). Further, Tönnies also complained
that city is bad for children: “they [children] thrive naturally in village and town, but that in the city [...] they are exposed to every form of destructive
influence.”(Tönnies [1887] 2002, p. 167)
130 The tricky part about city is that it attracts many people by promising better life, but then once it sucked you in, and you end up laboring long hours to

make it, you won’t live your life but rather city will live you. It is very expensive to enjoy city. It is even expensive to get by there. Martinson (2000) points
out that many city amenities are simply too expensive for common people and hence useless.
131 Much of this section is based on author’s interpretation of classic Tönnies ([1887] 2002), but also Fromm ([1941] 1994) and Maryanski and Turner (1992).
132 Americans believe more than other nationals that hard work results in success (Okulicz-Kozaryn 2011c). Income mobility is only about the average at

best or below the average for developed nations in the US (Corak 2013, 2011, 2004).
133 For amoral familism see Banfield (1967).
134 That people work more in cities than elsewhere see Rosenthal and Strange (2002, 2003). Also see a more recent debate on NYT about why Americans

don’t use their vacation–perhaps part of the answer is that more people move to big cities where they simply don’t have time for vacations: http://www.
nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/09/04/why-dont-americans-take-vacation-7. Per commodification of labor see Esping-Andersen (1990) and also a
recent critique of the original idea by Scruggs and Allan (2006).
135 For the idea of decommodification of labor see Esping-Andersen (1990) and more recent Scruggs and Allan (2006).
136 For elaboration see Veblen (2005a,b).
137 See Park (1915).
138 For this and subsequent paragraphs discussion of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft see Tönnies ([1887] 2002).
139 See http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2008/10/08-smalltowns-katz.
140 Capitalists live in metropolises like New York, or close to them, for instance in Trenton, NJ, but sometimes they live close to nature, for instance in Jack-

son area WY. Again, Americans prefer smaller locations close to cities (Fuguitt and Brown 1990, Fuguitt and Zuiches 1975), but millionaires can certainly afford
smaller locations away from big cities. See for instance http://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/real-estate/T010-S001-where-millionaires-live-in-america-s
index.html,http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/US_county_household_median_income_2009.png,http://www.forbes.com/sites/
danalexander/2014/03/07/california-leads-all-states-and-all-but-2-countries-with-111-billionaires/.
141 See Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011c)–Americans have this idea that if they work hard they will make it. Also, see Corak (2013, 2011, 2004). People work harder

and longer in cities–especially young and professionals (Rosenthal and Strange 2002, 2003).
142 Well, at least till late 20th century. The idea comes from White and White (1977).
143 For elaboration see Frank (2012). But again, interestingly Americans are not upset about income inequality (e.g. Alesina et al. 2004, Bartels 2009).
144 For a statistical look at the thesis that inequality is made in cities see recent Baum-Snow and Pavan (2013), curiously, a paper by economists, who typically

do not complain about inequality and especially not in cities, which they love. This curious paper shows that inequality and city size is strongly related, which
reinforces the point that I make in this book, that urbanization (and capitalism of course) create inequality. Another study by economists linking size of a
place with inequality is (Behrens and Robert-Nicoud 2008).
145 For positive relationship of working hours and population density see Rosenthal and Strange (2002, 2003).
146 In America wealth often escapes to suburbs or exurbs, but still these are usually within metropolitan areas.
147 This observation is based on my personal observations. I was 11 when communism collapsed in Poland, where I grew up and I still remember some of it

and it is not like everything changed right away–it was a process. And still, there was a noticeable difference between more social Eastern and more economic
Western Poland. Many people shared my observations and actually had better time in Eastern Poland, but then most people wanted to be in Western Poland,
where you could make more money. I went a step further and emigrated to the US to make even more money, but I did realize that there is much less social
fabric in the US than in Poland. But again, people do not want social relations or happiness, they want power and money, and they think that money will
make them happy. It will, but to considerably lesser degree than they expect–for instance, see Kahneman et al. (1997). Furthermore, I heard many stories of
people who traveled to (communist) Soviet Union–most did not like the communism, but also most really liked people and social relations (among common
people; relations between people and government were of course terrible).
148 In Fall of 2014, if you go North on 76/676 just before Camden you will see on your left Cooper hospital ad; Whole Foods has community calendar in

Marlton, NJ. Not that I have anything against Cooper hospital or Whole Foods–on the contrary, these are my favorite businesses–I go there to see a doctor
and I buy all my food there–these are just examples. I complain about all businesses in general.
149 There is indeed something corrupt about cities, and more than that, cities seem to corrupt people who were uncorrupted. Capitalism corrupts people,

too–there is more about similarities between capitalism and cities in this book.
150 Cited in Martinson (2000, p. 247).
151 Most of the ideas in this section come from Zukin (2009) and from 2013 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in New York.
152 See Montgomery (2013).
153 Again, if you want to know how a fish fits in an aquarium, see adventures of Nemo http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/.
154 http://www.salon.com/chromeo/article/the_emptying_of_new_york_city.

59
 155 For Jane Jacobs’ point see Jacobs ([1961] 1993), for Ed Glaeser’s point see Glaeser (2011). Manhattan lost 1m of people: http://www.salon.com/
chromeo/article/the_emptying_of_new_york_city. That we spend a third of ou paycheck on housing and that it is 13% more than 2 decades ago see
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/11/the-next-housing-crisis-may-be-sooner-than-you-think/382311/. People are worse off financially in
cities (Korpi et al. 2011).
156 See Kalaidis (2014). Also for a similar story see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/realestate/student-loans-make-it-hard-to-rent-or-buy-a-home.

html
157 Perhaps, a person in New York has a fuller and more satisfying life than a person in Beeville TX, it is just her life is more stressful and she does not have

time to enjoy it. Another explanation is that our New Yorker indeed achieved higher satisfaction, but through process of hedonic adaptation (Brickman et al.
1978), she just wants more.
158 As elaborated elsewhere and especially in chapter 5–the key need for cities is environmental–there are simply too many people to fit into smaller areas.
159 See Zukin (2009).
160 Some large, but not dense cities such as Dallas, Houston, or many other in Sun Belt have nice housing.
161 Statement that big cities have worse quality of housing than other areas is based on author’s observations. Google car is a car that helped by Google

software drives itself. It should be commercially available in couple years, but it may take longer. For more elaboration see http://www.technologyreview.
com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles-for-googles-self-driving-cars/.
162 Louis Wirth in his classic “Urbanism as a way of life” defined city as both large and dense (and heterogeneous).
163 And for a very positive discussion see “Gentrification ’Without the Negative’ in Columbus, Ohio”–a video by the Atlantic at http://vimeo.com/111533309.

It is not the rich moving in and displacing the poor, but poor or middle class artists moving into empty spaces. Much of it makes sense, and indeed, in some
cases gentrification may happen without the negative–if properties are abandoned, then nobody is displaced. But many urbanists won’t like it, because it
“disrupts the community”. Indeed, urbanists, are quite negative, and it seems, they just don’t like most things; they do like, on the other hand, to complain
and point that nothing works. And they are right to large degree! Because couple years down the road, if place continues to be successful, there will be
Starbucks, H&M and IKEA. How can you be positive in a city? I agree here with urbanists–I also do not like most things in a city. And this is the point of
this chapter: City is unnatural. City is contradictory. Success kills affordability and authenticity.
164 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/fashion/creating-hipsturbia-in-the-suburbs-of-new-york.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
165 By the way note, that building more roads is for traffic like loosening belt for obesity–people simply chose to drive more and roads get congested again, a

point made by Duany et al. (2001). It is similar to Jevons paradox–as technology gets more efficient, we simply choose to consume more.
166 East European countries made the transition from communism to democracy in the early 1990s. Never before in the history of modern times have so many

countries conducted such a radical transformation of the political and economic institutions in such a short span of time (World Bank 2000). It is common
wisdom that East Europeans should be thrilled with democracy and a market economy. Yet surprisingly, two decades after the transition, East Europeans
still miss communism. Fewer people approve of the change to a market economy in 2009 than in 1991. The decline is between 3 percent for Slovakia to 34
percent for Hungary, and in most East European countries, the majority of people have an impression that life was better under communism (Pew 2009). For
evidence that East Europeans were happier under communism see Easterlin (2009).
167 A vivid depiction of fakeness and dullness of American suburbia can be found in “American Beauty” movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/).
168 See Zukin (2009, p. 26). It is difficult to define authenticity. Google dictionary lists following synonyms for authenticity: genuineness, bona fides;

legitimacy, legality, validity; reliability, dependability, trustworthiness, credibility; and: accuracy, truth, veracity, fidelity. Merriam-Webster defines it as “ worthy
of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact <paints an authentic picture of our society>”, “conforming to an original so as to reproduce
essential features <an authentic reproduction of a colonial farmhouse>,” “made or done the same way as an original <authentic Mexican fare>,” and in
this book’s context probably this last definition is most accurate: “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” For Google dictionary definition see
https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=authenticity; for Merriam-Webster see http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authentic.
169 Urbanists point to racial profiling and intimidating effects of such measures, but it is interesting that they do not see any positive sides. For instance,

as of late 2014, it appears that the new county police force of Camden county NJ is doing rather well–crime statistics show considerable decline in crime;
even I have noticed a difference–it does look safer; and it does not seem that police is using any controversial or overly aggressive tactics, on the contrary,
if anything it is rather community policing. In short, it looks as good as it gets. For more elaboration see for instance http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/
01/nyregion/camden-turns-around-with-new-police-force.html?_r=0. Yet, urbanists are somewhat unhappy–for instance, they point that decrease in
crime is achieved at high cost to community, which presumably means more police patrols and perhaps more people in jail. I tried to figure out exactly what it
is–one of my students said that what is not liked by residence about the new police force are following: policemen are not local (many are from quite remote
places like North Carolina), police are flashing their police lights all the time disturbing the community, and they stop cars with tinted windows, so in a sense,
there are some elements of stop-and-frisk approach. It seems that urbanists are in general unhappy about any solutions, and they simply like to complain and
point to what does not work, and if something does work, they try to find problems. And they rarely say what they would do or what should be done. More
about this negative approach in chapter 5.3. But again, fundamentally, it seems that urbanists are unhappy about the Gesellschaft aspect of the city–policing
is just one way in which the Gemeinschaft is disturbed, but as this book argues, it must be disturbed by definition, because it is the city.
170 Note that Wirth (1938) considers heterogeneity as a defining feature of city. Incidentally, classic sociological scholars emphasized and lamented deviance

and normlessness as a notorious feature of city life–e.g., Wirth (1938), Park et al. ([1925] 1984). Contemporary urbanists, on the other hand, seem to like it.
171 But even at an early stage, when a place is still gritty and authentic and uncommercialized yet–if there are many hipsters or creative types, then the place

is homogeneous and conformist–everyone in an area is a hipster. Google dictionary defines a hipster as a “a person who follows the latest trends and fashions,
especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream” https://www.google.com/search?q=define+hipster. There is a also a longer definition
by urban dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hipster. But as observed early in one blog post (http://www.huffingtonpost.
com/julia-plevin/whos-a-hipster_b_117383.html), and explored further in a mathematical model (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.8001v1.pdf), and
briefly summarized for instance at http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-math-behind-the-hipster-effect, if everyone always wants to look different
than everybody else, everybody starts looking the same.

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 172 Then there are so called “urban explorers” specifically looking for grit and coolness–see for instance: http://www.urbanexplorers.net/, http://www.
reddit.com/r/urbanexploration, http://www.uer.ca
173 Respondents were asked questions such as ”In general, do you think things in the nation are headed in the right direction, or have they gotten off on

the wrong track?” ”In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?”–and majority, usually two
thirds say that things are going in the wrong direction, and this is much more pessimistic point of view in recent several years than earlier http://www.
pollingreport.com/right.htm or http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/two-thirds-new-poll-government-stinks-article-1.1565111
174 See Zukin (2009, p. 27). And suburbs are not a solution either as equally aptly shown by Duany et al. (2001).
175 There is more discussion of city size in chapter 2.3.
176 For more elaboration see chapter 3.1.
177 Again, one good reason for that is overpopulation–more about that later.
178 We know something about rats, though, and they’re not happy when crowded (Calhoun 1962).
179 As mentioned in the introduction, this chapter, as any other chapter is meant to be illustrative as opposed to extensive. But if a reader would like to read

more about city life observations, here are few more studies. Wirth and Park are great classics: Wirth (1938), Park (1915), Park et al. ([1925] 1984). Fischer
is less classic, but equally great: Fischer (2012), Fischer and Boer (2011), Fischer (2010), Fischer and Mattson (2009), Fischer (1999, 1995, 1982), Fischer
and Merton (1976), Fischer (1975, 1973, 1972)
180 This paragraph is a mix of Simmel’s (1903) and my personal observations, but they can be arguably generalized to many people. Others, notably (Wirth

1938), had similar observations.

181 Simmel (1903, p. 329).
182 Simmel: Simmel (p. 325-331 1971); Neurological evidence: Lederbogen et al. (2011). Also see Park et al. ([1925] 1984), who argued similarly to Simmel

that city life is stimulating or adventurous.

183 Engels ([1845] 1987). Another quite historical, albeit less classic, description of urban poverty has been shown well in a movie based on Prus (2012), where

Mr Wokulski (a main character) walked around in a city and observed poverty–he already became rich and was walking around in a poor neighborhood–and
commented extensively about state of poverty in a city.
184 This is what Zukin (2009, p52) wrote–I decided to quote since it conveys very well the idea.
185 I have seen permutations of all of the above items except a baby and a pet in the same cart, but I have seen a man in his 30s or maybe 40s pushing a

stroller with a fake toddler inside (a huge rubber doll). Of course, what I mean, is that I have seen those things in Camden, not that I see them everyday–even
Camden is not that bad.
186 Camden is arguably one of the most defeated and destroyed cities in America–it has top crime rates, very high unemployment and poverty and in addition

to that, there is corruption among its leaders–three of the last five mayors were convicted of corruption (http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/nyregion/
camden-s-mayor-is-guilty-of-14-corruption-counts.html).
187 When I observed city life in Camden or in Philadelphia, I thought to myself, wait a minute, someone else has seen what I am seeing and already wrote

about it–and what flashed in my mind was the famous paragraph by Engels about Manchester cited above. How can you not turn Marxist when you see
Camden NJ? To elaborate: You see a lot of poverty and human misery in a rich country where there are many rich people–clearly capitalists are taking
advantage of the system and many common people are being taken advantage of–such realization is very much Marxist, I think.
188 Now renamed to Jefferson station–as if Jefferson liked cities; that station should have been better called Glaeser station.
189 To be fair, a huge downside in the Netherlands and in Germany is that they pay high taxes, and taking that into account, perhaps, its better to have

PATCO and low taxes after all. Also, it is not just public transportation–Dutch or German or even Polish cities look much better than those in America, at
least those cities in the Rust Belt. And this may be actually worth extra taxes–if we could make Philadelphia as hospitable as, for instance, Rotterdam. In
any case, people making over $200k should pay at least 80% in income taxes as elaborated elsewhere in this book and in Piketty et al. (2011), Diamond and
Saez (2011), who calculated that taxing the rich at 80% would not discourage them from working hard.
190 I do not mean to be demeaning in any way or culturally insensitive. On the contrary, the goal of the above is to describe human misery so that we are

aware of it and it motivates us to do something about it. In short, I mean to promote compassion, not disgust.
191 I have several hypotheses. First, it may be exciting in some way–I guess disgusting areas may result in some form of excitement. Second, and related–you

may impress some people by saying that you are tough enough to live in bad place. Third, it may be an opportunity to gain political or economic capital by
showing that you care about broken place. Fourth, people get used to just about anything, and so if you stick in a worst place possible, then nothing else can
upset you.
192 See http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48000.html and http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/34000.html.
193 For instance see Glaeser (2011), and indeed, the poor are flocking to urban Camden from suburban or rural South Jersey–for instance see http://articles.

philly.com/2012-07-11/news/32619903_1_homeless-people-emergency-shelter-atlantic-city-rescue-mission, http://www.courierpostonline.
com/story/news/local/south-jersey/2014/06/09/new-jerseyhomeless-count-rises/10264531/.
194 By “visually” I mean that they are more noticed, by “superficially” I mean that social relations is city are superficial as argued throughout this book.
195 Badger (2013)
196 In fact social capital is one of the most important ingredients for broadly understood human wellbeing, not only happiness. For instance, “socially isolated

people die at two or three times the rate of people with a network of social relationships and sources of emotional and instrumental support” (Kawachi and
Kennedy 1997).
197 Fischer (1975). Again, a defining feature of the city is heterogeneity, but also homogeneity within its neighborhoods–it is a mosaic of little worlds, or

set of subcultures (Fischer 1995). This makes heterogeneity less likely to be a major force behind urban malaise. Indeed, Fischer (1982) specifically calls his
“subcultural theory of urbanism” a counterthesis to the thesis of urban malaise as stated by the Chicago school (Park 1915, Park et al. [1925] 1984, Wirth
1938).
198 Interaction in city is transitory and shallow.(Wirth 1938). Trust is described in greater detail in section 3.4.

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 199 The analysis is cross-sectional, that is, it takes a snapshot at one point in time. Timespan, unless indicated otherwise, is now or few past years, in few
cases it goes back to 70s–GSS goes back to that time, or in yet fewer cases even earlier–impressions of other authors. This study does not use person-level
panel data, that is, it does not tackle over-time changes, e.g. what happens to a person when she moves to a city; which is very interesting. For instance,
in China it has been shown that movers to cities are less happy than people born there (Knight and Gunatilaka 2010). And one size does not fit all–that is,
some people may actually be happier in cities, even in developed countries.
200 For my earlier research see Okulicz-Kozaryn (2014b), ?, 2015b), Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011, 2009).
201 Tönnies ([1887] 2002)–e.g. see p. 233. My papers include: Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011, 2009), Okulicz-Kozaryn (2015b)–these differences persist

when controlling for other variables. Yes, I am suggesting causation, but I am not testing it, which is left for future research. Also, as per statements that non-
metro counties are losing population–City Lab recently argues that it is not really city v suburb that differentiates Millenials from Boomers, which is surprisingly
about the same! But it is about rural v metro–which is very different for Boomers v Millenials: 14 v 26 percent ! Almost twice as many Boomers lived in non-
metropolitan areas as compared to Millenials. See http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/11/the-10-biggest-factors-changing-millennial-driving-habits/
382763/.
202 See Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2009).
203 Again, for my earlier research see Okulicz-Kozaryn (2014b), ?, 2015b), Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011, 2009).
204 It may be generational change–maybe Millenials are responsible for recent uptick in city happiness and trust.
205 Again, the U.S. was only 5 percent urban in 1790, and in 2010 it was 80 percent urban (U.S. Census Bureau 2012, 2005). Furthermore, urban land will

more than double by 2050 from 3 percent in 2000 to 8 percent in 2050 (Nowak and Walton 2005).
206 Using Wirth (1938) definition.
207 For a detailed description of the two rankings see Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011a).
208 Two other highly ranked cities are excluded: Washington DC, which is not a typical city–it is a capital and not as large as the three other cities, but its

happiness is still only 3.37 (lower than the average for non-cities), and San Francisco CA, which was not in 2005 BRFSS. As reported in Senior (2006)–University
of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center has nonrepresentative data about happiness across zip codes, and per that data also New York appears to be
one of the most miserable places and rural areas appear happiest.
209 There is a moderate correlation between quality of life and happiness (e.g., Okulicz-Kozaryn 2011a).
210 Of course, Manhattan is not a badge of success to some, but it is to most–in order to live there, one has to be rich, and what defines success better in

capitalism than being rich? Yes, there are poets and sociologists, who do not care about money but most people do care, and even poets and sociologists
need to buy food, shelter, and other necessities.
211 For instance Wirth (1938) in his influential article said that what defines city is size, density and heterogeneity. Claude S Fischer famously wondered

(1973) whether:
(1) Such preferences [for rural living] may be a function of idealized images founded on popular conceptions of urban and rural life. (2) They may
indicate utopian hopes of maintaining urban opportunities in small communities. [...] (3) These evaluations may result from the contemporary
state of American cities rather than from the nature of cities per se.
. City itself makes people unhappy (?), and heterogeneity may also make us unhappy (Okulicz-Kozaryn 2011b, 2015a).
212 This idea comes from a personal contact, who works for one of the “Big Four” business consulting firms in a big city; she has observed this among her

colleagues.
213 Too much choice often results in misery (Schwartz 2004). For a great discussion of relative deprivation see an in-depth treatment in Frank (2012), and

for a quick overview see Senior (2006).

214 Kahneman et al. (1997)
215 Stadtluft macht frei (“urban air makes you free”). Again, it originated in the Middle Ages, and it meant freedom from feudalism, non-feudal islands in a

sea of feudalism.
216 Indeed, Wirth (1938) argued that deviance would be higher in cities; Fischer (1995) referred to this as unconventionality, a more positive framing, but

with the same notion that people with unusual interests or members of subcultures would be more common in cities.
217 Doderer (2011).
218 E.g. see Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011).
219 E.g., see Fischer (1982, p. 256)
220 Indeed, “To say that self-selection explains some of the differences between town and city is not to say that urbanism is irrelevant to those very same

differences. It remains an indirect cause by stimulating selective migration. Although, part of urban/nonurban self-selection is coincidental, most of it results
from processes originating in the nature of urbanism itself”(Fischer 1982, p. 256).
221 There is recently a trend to green the city-for instance through city gardens and retrofitting vacant space. It may appear as a step in the right direction,

but cities either have high density or they decline, as described above in terms of tax base and population loss–and there cannot be high density and an
abundance of nature; even the largest public parks, such as Central Park in New York and Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, comprise a small share of urban
space. Suburbs aim for more nature in the form of green space, but suburbs are not cities, and people are not happy there either.
Indeed, there are two quite distinct cultures–urban and rural, where people clearly make a distinction–for instance one study quotes villagers calling
themselves “country cousins, country bumpkins, locals, a country girl, a countryman bred and born, Hampshire hogs, salt of the earth, a real countryman,
and village people,” while urbanites are “bloddy townies, Londoners, Yuppies, city slickers, city-ites, outsiders, foreigners, day-trippers” (Bell 1992, p. 72).
222 The “biophilia” term was coined by Fromm (1964). This idea makes sense–think about it–do you feel better in a forest, by the lake, or in a parking lot

or on the sidewalk? It also makes evolutionary sense–for almost all of human species history there were no sidewalks nor parking lots–there is no reason for a
human being to feel good there. The good thing about sidewalk and parking lot is that there are some living organisms–people, birds, and so forth; but the
setting is fundamentally unnatural.
223 For an elaborate academic treatment see Pretty (2012). Frumkin (2001) or Maller et al. (2006) are good overviews, as well; and for quick popular press

overview of how health recovery benefits from nature see Alter (2013). Abrams (2013) is also popular press of the effect of trees on health. Nature is beneficial

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to humans in general (White et al. 2013b). Pollution makes us less happy (Gandelman et al. 2012, e.g,); Exposure to nature has good effect on health (e.g.
Mitchell and Popham 2008). Nature buffers children against stress (Wells and Evans 2003). There is recent additional evidence that living close to the coast
improves mental and physical health (Wheeler et al. 2012, White et al. 2013a), and even if you stay in an urban area, it helps if it is green (White et al. 2013b).
In general, human wellbeing or happiness is closely connected to wellbeing of ecosystem and dependent on it–for a recent review see King et al. (2014).
224 I define fake nature in section 4.3.1.
225 For instance see recent “How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter” by Susan Pinker.
226 Yes, there are also parks, and green areas, but they are rather rare and mostly for decoration.
227 That there is more stress put on visual recognition in cities than elsewhere is based on more classical literature. Using a postmaterialist index from WVS

data, it appears that cities are more postmaterialist, that is, they place more value on non-materialistic values such as autonomy and self-expression. Yet
visual recognition does not necessarily conflict with postmaterialism. More research is needed, and it is an excellent topic for future research.
228 Pretty (2012)
229 Berman et al. (2008, 2012).
230 Smelser and Alexander (1999, p. 40) list “bounties of Nature” as one of the three major factors that helped Americans to cope with vast heterogeneity:

“The English mainland colonies were uniquely endowed with seemingly limitless fertile lands, with numerous rivers that penetrated the interior, with rich forests
[...] The whole scale of life, the spaciousness, the scatterdness, the relative emptiness never failed to impress European travelers[...]”
231 Martinson (2000).
232 The sometimes swampy coniferous forest of high northern latitudes, esp. that between the tundra and steppes of Siberia and North America.
233 Already Simmel observed that old cities had a character of today’s small town–for instance see Simmel (1903, p. 333). Per ancient history, for

instance, see encyclopedia Britannica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/277071/hunting-and-gathering-culture, Wikipedia http://en.

wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history, and also see Maryanski and Turner (1992). For post medieval history see White and
White (1977). World population percent living in cities larger than 100k is from Davis (1955), table 1.
234 But see an opposing argument by Meyer (2013) arguing that many other species do live in colonies like bees. Right, interesting point, but we are humans,

not bees, ad for almost all of our evolutionary history we lived in small bands of few dozens of people. And it was really only industrialization that forced us
into megalopolises of today–so rather than us humans choosing to live in cities, it was economy that forced us in there. Indeed, as Thoreau wrote, we became
tools of our tools!
235 See http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2011/02/whole-foods-adopts-animal-welfare-rating-system/.
236 For discussion see Brickman et al. (1978) and Duhigg (2012).
237 See http://7online.com/realestate/couple-squeezes-into-one-of-manhattans-tiniest-apartments/371661/,http://inhabitat.com/nyc/womans-imp

90-square-foot-apartment/,http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/uptown/smallest-apartment-nyc-article-1.1459066.
238 For chicken weight see https://sites.google.com/a/poultrypedia.com/poultrypedia/poultry-body-weights, and space per chicken varies: http:

//www.citygirlfarming.com/Chickens/HowMuchSpaceDoesAChickenTake.html, http://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/industry-issues/animal-welfare-
http://naturalchickenkeeping.blogspot.com/2013/04/how-much-coop-and-run-space-do-i-need.html.
239 For instance see first section “Economy” in Thoreau (1995 [1854]).
240 The best, too–”The city, in short, shows the good and evil in human nature in excess” (Park et al. [1925] 1984, p. 46).
241 Indeed, Simmel wrote “he is reduced to a negligible quantity. He becomes a single cog as over against the vast overwhelming organization of things and

forces which gradually take out of his hands everything connected with progress spirituality and value” (Simmel 1903, p. 337).
242 Fromm ([1941] 1994), Maryanski and Turner (1992).
243 E.g. Pretty (2012, 2013).
244 See Van den Bergh (2011), Daly (2013), Kallis (2011), Kallis et al. (2012).
245 Veblen (2005a,b). Most economists would tell you the opposite: growth in consumption = progress (e.g., Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014, p. 8). Yet,

even conservative economists can be pragmatic–Milton Friedman has noted that if government needed additional revenue,a progressive consumption tax would
be the best way to raise it (Frank 2010). Also, consumption has been seen as an environmental problem–for a quick overview see for instance Knight and
Rosa (2011).
246 As pointed out by Martinson (2000), American suburbs are diverse, and probably should not be all thrown into one category. What I mean by suburb here

is a postwar suburb, sprawling and often leapfrogging, Sun-Belt-style, say, like that north of Dallas, Plano TX, and unlike, say , that of Boston, Brookline MA.
Furthermore, it seems that the fakest are over-designed and pedigreed Gentry suburbs like Plano TX and unlike cozier and poorer (Yeoman?) Richardson TX.
247 See Smith (2008).
248 Duany et al. (2001) is an excellent overview of the dark side of suburbanization. For a closely related criticism of cars, see Kay (1997). Interestingly, there

is actually a book defending suburbs: Martinson (2000). A balanced overview of goods and bads of sprawl is Frumkin (2002).
249 Again, masses aren’t bright–they eat fastfoods, watch television, and buy McMansions with fake ponds, fountains, and fake shrubs around them.
250 Limestone is natural, of course, and it only looks ugly when it is unmaintained in man-made environment; if it is left in natural setting, it does not require

any attention, and hence Thoreau did wisely by throwing it out of the window.
251 Cited in Martinson (2000, p. 127).
252 Terminal A, SEPTA train stop, November 2014. I do not believe this nature is more useful or beautiful in Summer or in daylight.
253 I am grateful for this point to Jules Pretty. For more discussion see Barton and Pretty (2010).
254 Cited in Martinson (2000, p. 23). While it all worked fine maybe as long as until the World Wars, that is longer than prewar suburbs, then, in the post-war

era, housing has been commercialized just like food are resulted in ugly suburbia. So the problem is capitalists taking advantage of people preferences for
peace, freedom, fat and sugar and serving people McDonalds and McMansions. Again, masses aren’t very bright and they buy these products.
255 There is a wonderful and informative little book: White and White (1977) that explains this traditional American city distrust very well. For some

interesting discussion of disadvantages of suburbia and ideas for improvement see Jones (2010), Kunstler (2004). For equally, if not more interesting, discussion
of advantages of suburbia and yeomen preference for it see Martinson (2000). Yet, America is by no means suburban exception–World is suburbanizing too–in

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fact most cities in the World are becoming less dense (Economist 2013). Yet, when suburbs become denser, they’ll become more city-like, and maybe at some
point suburbanites in other countries will rediscover city, like Millenials are rediscovering now in the US.
256 For a compelling critique of it, see “Suburban nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American Dream” (Duany et al. 2001).
257 Tursi (2014), Bishu (2014)–I do not blame them–it is probably my fault–I did not really explain what I mean.
258 Pollution comes from production of energy used to do landscaping, usually and mostly fossil fuels, which are also non-renewable–we use them today to

trim shrubs and our kids won’t be able to use them for hopefully better purposes.
259 Medford lakes is possibly more remote in a sense, although it is actually closer to Philadelphia (22 miles)–distance from Woodlands to Houston is 30

miles.
260 I speculate that Thoreau was quite happy there based on his writing in the book–the comparison group–the millionaires living in McMansions is wealthy

people that I know and sometimes talk to–and they seem quite unhappy–and even more curiously they continuously complain about...lack of money. And there
is evidence in this respect, too–Pennsylvania Amish are no less happy than Forbes 500 rich people–e.g. see http://www.technologyreview.com/review/
403558/technology-and-happiness/ or http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-and-the-amish/.
261 As I have explained elsewhere (Okulicz-Kozaryn and Tursi 2015): such items are typically overpriced, because the price is not paid for use value or utility

or “quality,” but for a conspicous demonstration of superiority over others.

262 See for instance http://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/?sid=US&CFID=17129276&CFTOKEN=13bb196f64873ad-5BA112D7-237D-DA68-244A212ECB2DE3B2&jsess

84301244f6de7a1e915269216561f6d2d2c6.
263 For instance see http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/opinion/sunday/a-formula-for-happiness.html?pagewanted=all.
264 For instance see World population to 2300 at http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf.
265 Bettencourt et al. (2010), Bettencourt and West (2010), Bettencourt et al. (2007), West (2011). West said that “What we found are the constants that

describe every city” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.html?_r=0

266 Brickman et al. (1978)
267 This idea was directly inspired by Kapoor (2014), who described this mechanism for capitalism. And, no, the point is not to get rid of desires completely,

neither to find complete satsfaction in wilderness. The point is that there is too much stimulation, too many desires, and not enough satiation and happiness
in the city.
268 Well, to be honest, I am just thinking aloud, and really not sure at all whether taxing having children is the best idea! Most of Population increase will come

from developing countries-see http://www.economist.com/news/international/21579817-lot-more-people-faces-future. Population projections for

2100 come from http://www.economist.com/node/21533409 and http://www.economist.com/news/international/21619986-un-study-sparks-fears-populat
269 For Paul Krugman’s point of no return see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/opinion/krugman-points-of-no-return.html.
270 Also see popular media coverage, for instance http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21630639-most-comprehensive-climate-report-y
271 See http://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-the-living-space-per-person-has-doub
272 Yet, there may be light at the end of the tunnel–seems that we may be realizing now that we do not need bigger houses, more driving and so forth–on

the other hand, it may just be a temporary hangover after the 2008 great recession.
273 A notable exception to city efficiency fallacy is public transportation. Yes, public transportation is more efficiently provided in cities. But small towns or

villages can be walkable, too, especially if houses and lots are much smaller; and there can still be quite efficient public transportation. Price comparisons
come from http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/09/the-increasingly-bloated-american-dream/379459/, and it is not clear if they are adjusted for
inflation, probably not. Further, Richard Florida argues in this citylab article that we should live in smaller dwelling and in city and refers to his recent book
“Reset”–but why city, why we cannot live in smaller houses in villages and towns?
274 People often overconsume smaller items that can fit into scarce space in cities, but are still conspicuous and wasteful. Luxury shoes and handbags are

two examples. Place is so scarce, that urban universities sometimes build office buildings (commercial, university unrelated) on their campuses (Jonathan
Alan King and Salvucci 2014).
275 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/ronaldreag183979.html
276 So what? What is the point of this remark? It is, that too often, especially recently, we fall in a trap of dogma, that is, lack of thinking but simply

identifying with one political stance for the sake of doing it. I try not to, because, it is simply against science. For more elaboration see Wildavsky (1987)
and, in general, Berger and Luckman (1966).
277 Again, masses aren’t very bright despite what Surowiecki (2005) would tell you.
278 Gentry-Yeomen dichotomy and point about elites telling common people what to do comes from Martinson (2000). The point is well taken and I have

been observing something similar. The key problem is that we do not realize that common people simply cannot afford gentry lifestyle that we take for granted
in the city. Another paradox, is that we academics decry gentrification, but at the same time we are gentry ourselves and by giving a good examples of living
in cities as opposed to contributing to suburban flight, we gentrify cities, and displace people there! What I have observed is that common people do not trust
us academics–they realize that we mostly just use them to publish our research and they have little benefit from it–someone has aptly called it “parachute
research”–like helicopter moms–we parachute into common people’s area, gather data, and take off to publish our research to advance our career and forget
about subjects of our research.
279 Residential preferences are shown in Fuguitt and Zuiches (1975), Fuguitt and Brown (1990). More recent data (and also community satisfaction) are

at http://today.yougov.com/news/2012/07/05/suburban-dream-suburbs-are-most-popular-place-live/. Happiness levels are discussed in Berry and

Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011, 2009).
280 I mean mainstream discourse. If you go to a website of a rural county, they will sometimes promote it, but still tell you that even though rural, it is

located close to urban ! For instance, see http://www.co.cumberland.nj.us/content/159/3747.aspx.

281 O’Sullivan (e.g., 2009). As always there are some outliers, even among economists–”The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New

York, London or Tokyo”(John Kenneth Galbraith).

282 Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014)
283 For more about biological diversity see Hough (2004).

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 284 For instance see http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house, http://notbuyinganything.blogspot.com/2012/03/average-house-size-by-co
html.
285 Per rats see Calhoun (1962) and more elaboration as it can relate to humans as well is in Hall and Hall (1969)–it was controversial and even refuted by

some, but I think it deserves reconsideration–for some more recent discussion see Ramsden (2009). But see a good point made by Meyer (2013, p. 138) that
high density is not the same as crowding. Per humans and crime see, for instance, Bettencourt et al. (2010), Bettencourt and West (2010), Bettencourt et al.
(2007).
286 Freud et al. (1930).
287 Tönnies ([1887] 2002)
288 Again, a great reason to do that is environmental–there are too many people and we have to squeeze them in somewhere, hence cities. But if we had

fewer people on the planet, then this reason would not exist. There are actually more similarities between cities and Walmart. Both grow without limits. Both
are in a way addictive–start shopping at Walmart one day and you will continue–you gotta love everyday low prices! Same with city–it will draw you in with
an alluring promise of a good deal.
289 Cited in Brynjolfsson and McAfee (p.233 2014). Also see similar ideas by Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, and others (p.233 Brynjolfsson and McAfee

2014). I argue essentially the same: solving poverty by heavy redistribution + strings attached (a person has to work; and if unable to find a job, has to
accept one provided by the government, say public works, etc. Interestingly, Nixon tried to enact basic income into law but it was opposed by welfare program
administrators, some labor leaders, and many Americans who just do not like redistribution (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014, p. 233). The key reason that
Americans are against redistribution is, I speculate, that they do not understand that money is only in small part due to hard work, that is, they believe in
“work hard and make it” nonsense that I wrote about in Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011c).
290 Indeed, income inequality can often be considered the root of social problems. For instance, residential segregation would not be much of a problem if

there was less inequality–everyone could then segregate as they wish, and people would not have been stuck in bad places. If people were more equal, then
there would be no gentry displacing the poor–and hence gentrification would be solved as well. Arguably, there would also be less crime–arguably many people
are forced to commit crime because they cannot make a living. And so forth, a list continues. For elaboration, for instance, see Wilkinson and Pickett (2010),
but also see critique of Wilkinson by Snowdon (2010).
291 We should get rid of cities if we can decrease overpopulation; otherwise, we are forced to stay with cities for environmental reasons at least given current

consumption levels and technology.

292 See Van den Bergh (2011), Daly (2013), Kallis (2011), Kallis et al. (2012). Another way to degrow economy and also protect environment better by

polluting less is to limit working hours in developed countries (Knight et al. 2013) or simply decrease consumption as argued throughout this book.
293 But often it doesn’t. There is much rent-seeking and speculation in capitalism that make people rich, but that are not useful for the society–much of the

financial sector doesn’t produce anything, doesn’t even provide a useful service. For instance, much of stock market or real estate market is pure speculation or
gambling–and millions of people do it–they waste their psychic energy buying at low price and selling at high price, and they usually get rich in the process–but
what is the social value of all that? Just waste.
294 Solnick (e.g., 1999), Wedel (e.g., 1998).
295 More precisely what I mean is this: if we think that free market and capitalism is a good solution, then let’s stick with it as opposed to trying to counteract

it with big government. There are many advantages and disadvantages to free market and capitalism, and perhaps we can come up with a better system,
but for the time being, it seems like a reasonable system if fixed with heavy redistribution. At the same time, to paraphrase, and counter, Brynjolfsson and
McAfee (2014, p. 231), I am not skeptical of efforts to come up with fundamental alternatives to capitalism. For instance, libertarian socialism seems like
having some good ideas. Maybe that’s the best system for humans? Maybe it’s better than capitalism?
296 Sen (e.g., 2000, 1992).
297 I have this dilemma always in grading–we reward knowledge in exam, but not hours and effort student spends on learning.
298 Also we should get rid of international aid, because neither welfare nor international aid seem to work (Oswald 2014, Deaton 2013), or more precisely I

should say, we should keep and vastly expand forms of welfare and international aid with strings attached like EITC (you have to work) and like some of the
World Bank loans (where a country has to reform). This is similar to idea of basic or guaranteed income as advocated by Martin Luther King, Thomas Paine,
Bertrand Russell, and others (e.g., Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014, p. 233) + strings attached (have to work) as discussed above. Expanding EITC is also
advocated by Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014), although to lesser degree–they still want to retain other welfare programs, while I would retain EITC only. And
I would also consider taxing having children as explained earlier. The idea is to discourage having kids for people who do not have resources to bring them
up. Also, as explained earlier, the idea is to tax ecological footprint.
299 Sen (1992)
300 Even Marx himself has recognized that labor productivity differs and accordingly pay rate should differ (as cited by Tönnies ([1887] 2002)). Yet, US wages

have been flat over past 40 years despite GDP and productivity growth–simply, capitalists are extracting more and more profit from workers and inequality is
growing.
301 The problem in the US is that redistribution is not a popular idea and there is not much political will to implement it, and hence community organizations,

foundations, NGOs, etc, may appear as necessary to provide for the poor. But they are neither necessary nor sufficient–they aren’t necessary because it can be
done with redistribution (provided there is political will to expand it vastly). And such political will was there during the New Deal and Great Society. They
aren’t sufficient, because there is poverty. Furthermore, EITC or in other words, redistribution with strings attached, is actually, a rather popular idea, and
was happily supported by both Democrats and Republicans. Again, why not just expand it, and indeed make it a single welfare program and get rid of all the
other programs. Wouldn’t there be a political will to do that? Perhaps, it would be opposed by Democrats who would just want more welfare for the sake of
welfare, not to get rid of poverty but to get the votes. It could be also opposed by Republicans–they would not like the idea of taxing income >200k at 80%,
but Democrats also do not seem to like it–Americans, in general, just do not seem to like redistribution. But why would anybody need >200k, and taxing it
at 80% and redistributing that income could remove poverty completely, I presume (I did not do the calculations).
And there is a related theme of basic or guaranteed income as in the opening quote to this section by Martin Luther King. According to Brynjolfsson and
McAfee (2014, p. 233) some form of income guarantees was supported by liberals Tobin, Samuelson, Galbraith and even conservatives Friedman and Hayek.

65
Again, Nixon tried to enact it into law but it was opposed by welfare program administrators, some labor leaders, and many Americans who just do not like
redistribution (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014, p. 233).
302 I have written about this topic elsewhere–for instance see Okulicz-Kozaryn (2014b), Okulicz-Kozaryn and Tursi (2015).

66
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index

78
Index
car, 14, 24, 56
China, 61
consumption, 6, 7, 38, 39, 46, 48
creativity, 19

fake nature, 35, 38–40, 42, 45

freedom, 7, 18

General Social Survey, 31

housing, 5, 12, 15, 22

inequality, 22, 33, 50, 51

Karl Marx, 5, 21, 23, 51

Millenials, 13, 57, 58, 61

New Jersey, 31, 46

overpopulation, 17, 47

pastoral idyll, 10
Poland, 30, 59
policy, 48–50
psychoanalysis, 50, 57
public transportation, 17, 30

statistics, 9, 31

Texas, 31, 41, 42

World Values Survey, 32

79