City order makes strangers identifiable enough to be tolerated

Evidence

Two major themes have permeated the foregoing pages. The first, and perhaps more obvious one, is that the social psychological conditions for urban life cannot be taken for granted; that the situation of living as a stranger in the midst of strangers has within it the logical potential for a chaotic unpredictability that no human would find tolerable. We can live in the world of strangers only because we have found a way to eliminate some of the “strangeness.” We can live in the world of strangers only because we have ordered our cities such that it is possible to identify these personally-unknown others with some degree of accuracy. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1030

Categorization

• XREF: This is Lofland’s core thesis on the ordering/categorization of strangers, which the reader is directly cross-reading against Simmel and Cole on urban anonymity and the blasé attitude.