[eesmith]

So, "urban" for you only means something like "urban core", eg, Manhattan, or the loop in Chicago, yes?

Why should we believe that "Fear of crowds is the norm for people with a rural/suburban mindset" is correct?

None of my aunts and uncles who were born and raised on a farm appear to have a fear of crowds. Most of them left the farm when they became adults ... and moved to cities.

For certain, most people from suburban areas do not have a fear of crowds. Otherwise, who goes to "crowded suburban malls" https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22crowded+suburban+mall%22&t=ffsb... ?

I read a book last night about ranchers in the mid-20th century. These are certainly rural people. Yet the ranch hands would go to the fair or rodeo, which certainly had crowds.

[burfog]

I think "urban" is a bit more, but the line is blurry. Factors include a high portion of people who are dependent on landlords and public transportation, the mixing of residential with non-residential, and of course density.

Cities wouldn't exist if there weren't people attracted to them, and of course some of those people come from outside. Clearly your aunts and uncles did not have that suburban/rural mindset despite being raised there.

Street crowds are different from other ones. Suburban malls try to keep an eye on things, ejecting people who cause trouble. The same goes for football games, the fair, the rodeo, and so on.

[eesmith]

It seems like when I try to pin you down, you add more qualifiers.

You first wrote "Fear of crowds is the norm for people with a rural/suburban mindset". Now you say it's, what, 'fear of being in insufficiently observed areas'?

I really don't understand that. So Times Square is okay because while there are crowds there are also a lot of cops?

Here's a cop van on Times Square. I literally did "Times Square" in Google Map, switch to street view, and rotated to see the van - https://www.google.com/maps/@40.758673,-73.984968,3a,75y,21....

You wrote "suburban/rural mindset" but when I point out that I know who were raised on a farm and don't have a fear of crowds, you now qualify that to "some people"?

I think your view is now the much weaker "some people from rural areas don't like being in areas where there aren't enough police or security guards or other people watching out for their safety"?

That's obviously true - white flight occurred in part as urban whites moved to areas where they felt the local government was more interested in keeping them safe from having to deal with non-whites.

I know that's not what you meant. I bring it up to point out how your statements are so general that they seem more over-generalized than insightful.