This series looks at some of the ways that people organize themselves to live alongside each other in cities. Part 1 looks at inherent problems with top-down planning, and Part 2 looks at the costs of local governments sanctioning collective choice. From this negative start, I’d like to turn to some of the advantages that make humans well-adapted to living in the urban environment, starting with some of Adam Smith’s insight in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Economists are often criticized, sometimes rightly so, for viewing people as perfectly rational and narrowly self-interested. Of course we are not. We all have unique motivators and preferences, which is what allows for the division of labor that we see in cities. One of the most important motivations, or “moral sentiments,” that we have comes in our desire for others to fare well and be happy. As Smith puts it: Upon these two different efforts, upon that of the spectator to enter into the sentiments of the person principally concerned, and upon that of the person principally concerned, to bring down his emotions to what the spectator can go along with, are founded two different sets of virtues. The soft, the gentle, the amiable virtues, the virtues of candid condescension and indulgent humanity, are founded upon the one: the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-government, of that command of the passions which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct require, take their origin from the other. This innate desire that most people have to relate to and be respected by those in their community makes people well-suited to city living. As Smith describes it, we generally seek approval from the “man within the breast,” […]
