In 1970, geographer, cartographer and UC Santa Barbara professor emeritus Waldo Tobler said, "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." This "first law of geography," which underscores the tendency to have stronger associations and relationships with things in close proximity than with those that are farther away, is a fundamental principle in the spatially oriented discipline that is geography.

 And then we all got online. The advent of social media and the Internet has put the world at our fingertips; in cyberspace, far-flung remote places are just as accessible as neighborhoods across town. Indeed, with the rise of communications technology, it has been thought that location and distance, even geography itself, would become less relevant in modern society.

 But a survey of Twitter users suggests that as global as the world's metropolises have become, the people in them tend to remain staunchly local.