Urban Life is Bad for Brains

Many people find that city life is exhausting and now scientists know the reason. Here's how urban living is actually detrimental to the human brain:

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.

"The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations."

One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban roil.

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This research may well be illuminating but I sense that the independent variable is well defined. The 17th century European city was a different beast than 19th century London which is a far cry from a crowded Manhattan sidewalk. In fact, this research seems to be part of a long anti-urban tradition in social science. Downtown Manhattan or any downtown business district - with it's overbuilt environment that is entirely beyond human scale is a limiting case. And urban sociology pointed to the negative consequences of population size, density, and diversity nearly 80 years ago. But the modern world isn't a city sidewalk. It's a mixed environment. I wish we might move beyond this simplistic brain science.
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This is interesting, especially in light of the results of the last few national elections, with significantly higher percentages of voters in urban areas favoring Democrats.
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gatherdust brings up a very valid point.

I also question the veracity of such claims but my argument comes from the subject of Universities.

While many many American schools in rural areas are elite, it seems to me that the greatest schools I can think of are in or around cities: Columbia, Harvard, Rice, UCLA, to name a few across the country.

If city environments are indeed so poor (and if NY is indeed so taxing on the brain), then how could Columbia or NYU continue to be so productive?

This argument may seem ridiculous because it is only a tiny percentage of a city's population, and because it could easily be an anomaly, but it's what came to my mind.
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If the study is true, it seems to favor neither urban nor rural lives, but instead, suburban lives. I live in the city for I like the amount of social interaction I can get (good for brains!) while I work in the suburb where forests can clearly be seen outside my window. The best of both worlds with heavy commute! Yay!
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Oh yeah. Living in hicksville is much better for people's brains - it teaches tolerance and challenges you by having absolutely NO stimulation!

Seriously, has anyone ever done a good comparison of city vs. suburb? It is both sobering and disheartening.
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@CheeseDuck: BIOYA. Way to be a jerk. Did nobody else wonder what effects might be produced if the results of this study are correct, or are there too many urbanite readers here? Or should I have prefaced my comment with the stock "Although Neatorama isn't a political site..."? That seems to work for the primary site contributors.

As for your suggestion to take it to the forums, to put it mildly, the forums suck.
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hahaha Dave I had the same thought.... I have long wondered about this, the thought which usually comes to mind is the experiments with rats, when there are too many rats in a cage, they start to tear each other apart. The responses to your comment prove your point.
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"The mind is a limited machine," says Marc Berman

What are we ... cows? What a depressing outlook on the human mind. I've always been taught just the opposite. The mind is an unlimited machine.
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Our mind and senses are indeed limited. Can you imagine having to process all the different senses coming towards you at once while walking down a city block? How would we ever focus? Usually I find myself blocking everything out altogether and just concentrating on some personal matter one my mind.
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