City stupid

Fort Wayne isn't that big, so maybe we're only half-stupid:

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.

The story notes that the lack of nature in cities is one big factor -- apparently, we need trees and fields and rivers as much as the "pave over paradise" critics have always said. I always said I wanted more house and less yard. But my house is mostly given over to storing my clutter, so maybe I've had it backwards.

Oh, and we have reached a milestone: For the first time in history, a majority of the world's people live in cities. Explains a lot, huh?