A town or neighborhood generally functions as a large village.
But a city does not function like a large town or a large neighborhood. It functions like a collection of competing and cooperating towns and neighborhoods.
I think this is a big reason why capitalism and our car dependent zoning has broken the way cities function. Urban and civil planners and franchise planners, etc. plan out development to optimize cities, not to optimize towns/neighborhoods.
For example, when Walmart plans a new store, they plan to optimize their sales based on service to the larger city, not in service of the town/neighborhood they are opening up in. When city planners plan a new highway, they plan it to optimize transportation in the whole city, not to optimize transportation in the town/neighborhood. Everything is planned to optimize on the city level and the village/town/neighborhood level is sacrificed as a result.
That's why people have to drive 30 minutes to go to a grocery store and 40 minutes to go to church, etc. this is what has killed our communities.
