Urban spatial knowledge is transmitted mostly through personal verbal instruction.

Evidence

In the communication of spatial meanings, word-of-mouth instruction, at least in the modern city and at least for some people, appears to play a crucial part. My informants, for example, reported again and again that much of their understanding of the city depended on being told about this or that location or type of location by this or that family member, friend, or acquaintance. As noted in Chapter Four, these same people exhibited a startlingly underdeveloped vocabulary for describing how people looked, but a well-developed vocabulary for describing locations and whom one might expect to find in them. To the degree that they are at all typical of modern city dwellers, we might surmise that a good deal of locational talk passes back and forth among urbanites. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 572

Categorization

• QUESTION: The informants’ underdeveloped vocabulary for describing looks but rich vocabulary for locations is striking — worth chasing why appearance-cue vocab is poorer than place-cue vocab.
• XREF: Reverses/qualifies the common assumption that city life trains people in face-reading; here the city trains locational awareness more than personal appearance-reading. — connects to: Skill-based knowledge of place is transmitted through apprenticeship, not lessons — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 1326