The city was seen as destroyer of social relationships, intimacy and fostered alienation and anonymity. When we go to a store in a city we do not seek a warm relationship with the sales person (very often we might not even find the same one when we visit the store again). As we saw in Louis Wirth, the Chicago School believed that living in large cities resulted in forms of social disorganization such as increase in crime, divorce, and mental illness because of the decline of close community ties.