Marloes Hoogerbrugge (p), Martijn Burger

Rodrigo Cardoso

See extended abstract

Michiel Daams (p), Paolo Veneri

Marloes Hoogerbrugge

See extended abstract

Rodrigo Cardoso (p), Evert Meijers, Maarten Van Ham, Martijn Burger, Duco De Vos

Michiel Daams

Despite the many uncertainties and negative aspects of life in cities, promises of economic prosperity, social mobility and happiness have fuelled the imagination of generations of urban migrants, who have flocked to cities in search of a better life, quite often exaggerating the potential opportunities and neglecting the potential disadvantages of their choice. Access to better jobs, housing, amenities and infrastructures, as well as proximity to many different people and fewer social constraints limiting personal paths, are some of the perceived advantages of cities, which we characterize together as 'urban promises'. In an increasingly urbanized world, discourses celebrating the economic triumph of cities and their power to make us wealthier, smarter and happier became common in policy and media.

However, bright city lights can dazzle as well as illuminate: their rewards are neither available everywhere nor for everyone, and cities also offer inequality, poverty and conflict. Indeed, both the actual socioeconomic outcomes and the subjective experience of urban life tend to compare poorly to the overoptimistic expectations of many urban migrants. Considering that millions still come (and stay) regardless, the question is why people have such strong, positive and apparently exaggerated expectations about cities, even in the face of opposing facts and experiences. The attractiveness of big cities has remained persistent in different geographical and historical contexts, making it likely that some of its explanatory factors are embedded in the human psyche. The question this paper aims to discuss is, then, what makes us follow urban promises?

This paper uses insights from psychological literature to better understand how people build their expectations about cities, outlining a ‘behavioural turn’ that breaks with debates dominated by rational choice assumptions about migration processes. We dwell into concepts of bounded rationality to describe the cognitive biases and heuristics affecting decision-making under uncertainty and apply them to the way individuals perceive, experience and act upon the promises of urban life.

Bringing this literature to the attention of urban research helps understand how and why people decide about moving to cities and judge their urban life stories, offering an alternative explanation to the remarkable attractive force of cities throughout human history. Furthermore, the paper helps to expose the ways in which our biases in favour of city narratives and bright urban futures can be exploited by ‘triumphalist’ and rationalist accounts in policy and media, which neglect the embedded injustices and power struggles of urban life.