ranking cities is quite popular these days! beijing is of course no exception and decided to measure its wenming-ness by observing, for example, if people are disciplined in queuing, crossing roads, etc. But last week, during an interview, someone made an interesting comment, saying that the difference between Beijing and Paris or Berlin, is that here, you can’t just borrow a cigarette from some random people in the street. I noticed that in Scandinavian countries too, and the reason is that cigarettes are so expensive there, that you would not even think about asking! but here the reason seems quite different: you can’t  – apparantly – trust anybody. who knows, the cigarette might as well contain some drugs! it’s probably not the case, but I think this small thing says quite a lot about how people “live together” in cities. what is trust built upon? and how far is it important to make cities more urban? maybe this could be an interesting way to compare cities and think about the implications of such a small, daily fact.