Costs of Urbanization

In his social capital talk, Joseph Cabrera discusses the themes of urbanization and how it affects the value of our social connections.

The speaker defines urbanization as the concept of people moving from rural to urban settings. He notes the pace that this has been happening is staggering with over 165,000 people making the move every day. The intention of the social capital talk is to pose the question 'What have we sacrificed for urbanization's success?' The speaker believes the greatest cost is a decline in social capital, as he states social connections add value to people and their communities.

He references several studies, such as one by Robert Putnam blaming suburbanization for a decline in overall trust people have for one another. Another study examining the top regrets people had at the end of their lives found two of the top five regrets were related to a lack of social capital. The speaker also discusses the benefits of social capital over a lifetime and contrasted cavemen to modern humans.