Chapter 97: Cities as Connection Regulators

Cities enable large-scale coordination when direct mutual recognition cannot scale. They trade interpersonal depth for breadth of access, using institutions, roles, and infrastructure to regulate interaction among strangers. This chapter frames common urban phenomena — anonymity, formality, neighbourhoods, weak ties, and cosmopolitan coexistence — as structural consequences of thin overlaps and mediated gluing in a social topology whose carrier set far exceeds the Dunbar threshold of the relevant chapter.