ESSAY
Why We Can't Touch Cities
Cities are not the buildings or the roads; they are just stories that have made us come together to cooperate.
Santiago Padilla15 Mar 20251 min read
I wanted to revisit an article I wrote when I was 20. At the time, I was reading about cognitive science while trying to understand the rapid growth of cities and the challenges it presented.
The article came from the realization that cities are not what I thought they were. I used to think of cities as physical matter that we could see and touch. Cognitive science made me realize that cities are a layer unique to us humans.
The easiest way to understand this is to change perspectives. A dog doesn't know he lives in a city. For him, everything is objective — he sees objects as they are. He doesn't see a wall with graffiti demanding human rights; he sees a group of rocks stacked with colorful strokes on them.
But we humans add a new layer, one that allows us to create stories over objective reality. For a dog, it may be land and mountains. For us, it can be the border between Mexico and the USA.
By understanding this, we can see that cities are not the buildings or the roads; they are just stories that have made us come together to cooperate.