In a small town, you almost feel the need to bond with the few other people that inhabit your same area. It is difficult to totally escape the other humans with whom you share the soil, to insulate from them. Ants are defined as an high-social animal, and so are bonobos, but there’s a difference within those two species. Standing on a roof of a downtown building in a big city, you could see lines and lines of people, very few of them would turn to speak with each other, or stop to admire the beauty of the same roof you’re sitting on. The height would make you see those people as little endless lines of ants, struggling to bring the crumbles they meticulously collected  to their anthill, to their queen. It’s funny how humans in big city usually act just like them, they struggle to get in the subway, to catch the last bus to get home, but when they arrive they discover that there was no queen waiting to be nourished on their crumbs, nothing to justify their run. In a small town mall it’s almost impossible to move from section to section without bumping in some (more or less) acquaintance’s cart and casually start a two hours long essentially pointless conversation: “How is your grandson doing?” “have you heard about what X did?”.

For those that are able to pause and contemplate the beauty of their surroundings, being thousand years old constructions or nearly finished skyscrapers, metropolis are an asset, it gives you the possibility to insulate from people and your own sociability; It gives you the amazing likelihood to feel alone in a crowded place.