[goodcanadian]

Urban culture . . . tends to cut people off from physical reality.

No, it simply puts them in a different physical environment. People who grow up in a city learn to navigate in a city. People who grow up in the bush learn to navigate in the bush. We adapt to the physical environment in which we find ourselves. Studies have shown that even pigeons follow roads to the extent that if they take a wrong turn, they will backtrack to a roundabout and follow a different road rather than cut "cross country." And why not? The roads are obvious physical landmarks; why wouldn't pigeons use them?

[crispinb]

You are confusing culture and physical environment. People don't only spontaneously 'learn' about how to get around a space they happen to be dumped into. They are inculcated into a culture. There is a depth of accumulated knowledge and engagement with physical reality in rural cultures (especially, but not only, indigenous ones) that is largely absent from urban cultures. There are good reasons for this (relative differences in cultural longevity, role specialisation, population mobility, navigational complexity of environment etc).