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This is exactly backwards. Urbanization was driven by desire to escape oppressive togetherness of small town/village life. The primary draw of cities in history has been escaping your tribe. The idea that you might *find* your tribe is relatively new (1960s?) bonus possibility
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will the trend towards urbanization reverse post COVID? 🏡remote work and distancing for years makes me think suburban populations will rise 🏬on the other hand, maybe we can’t reverse a 200 year trend, and the desire for togetherness
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I mean, the author asserts this but doesn't really give evidence? Shouldn't one point to, e.g., examples of unusually unrepressive towns that people didn't leave despite high wages in cities?
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There’s evidence if you want to keep digging. It’s a deep field with a lot of literature. But the basic idea in the OP that people migrated to big cities for togetherness is just wildly wrong. The people who wanted that stated in or returned to towns/villages after baking some $
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Can you summarize the nature of the evidence? Like, what is the basic way you would empirically distinguish the economic from community-escaping motivations? (The OP argument doesn't make sense to me either, so we can put that aside.)
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