Urban life requires extracting maximum reliable knowledge from minimum information.

Evidence

What the city dweller required then, was some kind of arrangement whereby the amount and reliability of his knowledge of his fellow residents could be maximized with a minimum of information. He required an arrangement whereby simple categoric knowing of others would be enough to enable him to make his way among them. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 133

Categorization

• XREF: Directly frames the ‘categoric knowing’ Lofland contrasts with interpersonal knowing elsewhere; connects to Simmel’s blasé attitude as another minimum-information cognitive strategy.
• DEEPTHINKING: Sets up cost/benefit epistemic framing that runs through the whole urban-order thesis.