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Study Links Urbanization to Poor Ecological Knowledge, Less Environmental Action [nist.gov]:

A new study by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators highlights a sharp contrast between urban and suburban ways of thinking about coastal ecosystems.

The authors of the study used statistical and cognitive science techniques to analyze data from a survey of 1,400 residents across the U.S. East Coast. Their results, published in the journal npj Urban Sustainability [nature.com], showed that surveyed residents of urban centers often held a more simplistic, and less realistic, understanding of coastal ecosystems than residents in suburban areas. The research also uncovered a lower propensity to take pro-environmental actions among urban populations. The study provides evidence for an issue the authors refer to as urbanized knowledge syndrome, which may be detrimental to natural ecosystems and hamper community resilience to natural disasters.

[...] The survey was targeted at coastal counties in metropolitan areas across eight states, each of which featured shorelines with varying densities of roads, sea walls, ditches and other “gray” infrastructure. On the National Center for Health Statistics’ six-level urban-rural classification scheme [cdc.gov], surveyed residents largely resided in the three most urban levels, ranging from city centers to suburbs.

[...] As the authors of the study searched for patterns among the crowd of maps, two distinct types emerged.

In the maps of some respondents, relationships tended to run in one direction, exhibiting a way of thinking, or mental model, called linear thinking. In a linear thought process, a person might view sea walls as shoreline fortifications that prevent erosion at no cost. [...]

The maps of other residents displayed more complex, two-way relationships, which indicated that these respondents thought about the environment as a system. With this line of thinking, known as systems thinking, someone might recognize that although sea walls provide structural integrity to a shoreline, they alter the way that water flows along the shore and could potentially accelerate erosion. [...]

[...]. “We explored the association of these two distinct clusters of mental models with many different aspects including education, age, political affiliation, homeownership,” Aminpour said. “We found that, among those factors, urbanization and the percentage of shorelines armored with gray infrastructure had strong positive associations with the mental models of residents that showed more linear thinking.”

[...]An important behavioral difference between the two was in the self-reporting of behaviors that favored the environment. Linear thinking, a trait largely manifested by urbanites, was linked closely to less pro-environmental action.

[...]“We can’t yet say which comes first. Do you have systems thinking so you prefer to live in areas with more natural ecosystems, or does living in less urbanized areas make you develop systems thinking? We need more rigorous experiments to find out,” Aminpour said.

Journal Reference:
Aminpour, P., Gray, S.A., Beck, M.W. et al. Urbanized knowledge syndrome—erosion of diversity and systems thinking in urbanites’ mental models. [open] npj Urban Sustain 2, 11 (2022).
DOI: 10.1038/s42949-022-00054-0 [doi.org]

Original Submission