What if New York City is just a really good optical illusion?

Life in New York City can feel artificial. I don’t mean that in the stereotypical sense — that its residents are vapid, self-interested snobs. No, for me, it’s the opposite. The city’s unease stems from its density of humanity.
On a simple walk to work, you will pass beneath hundreds of lumbering buildings full of thousands of strangers. The amount of life is so unfathomably compressed, that your brain refuses to recognize the very real fact that you share a few square mi