This is an interesting revelation. Thanks for framing it this way.
Riffing:
I think there’s a middle phrasing similar to “cities are the most efficient allocation of resources we have yet invented.”
Similar to the “democracy is the least bad system of government yet invented.”
There’s some corollary to survivorship bias at play here as well. Cities are an apparently natural consequence of human civilization so we know a lot about their flaws. But civilizations that didn’t migrate toward cities either failed or records of their existence was lost.
Riffing:
I think there’s a middle phrasing similar to “cities are the most efficient allocation of resources we have yet invented.”
Similar to the “democracy is the least bad system of government yet invented.”
There’s some corollary to survivorship bias at play here as well. Cities are an apparently natural consequence of human civilization so we know a lot about their flaws. But civilizations that didn’t migrate toward cities either failed or records of their existence was lost.