Find Myself a City to Live In
I'm tired of reading reports that value cities based on access to jobs and prices of homes. Here's a guide to why you should really choose one city versus another:
Quality of Oxygen
I believe that higher altitude cities as well as coastal cities have a different density of fresh oxygen that creates a more spacious feeling in the head that allow different kinds of thoughts and dreams.
Circle of Friends
A city embodies the aggregate personality of its citizens, yourself at the center. In a broad sense, the peope in your city are a circle of potential friends. By virtue of its origins and people, a city holds more or less inclination and skill to have fun, family, art, danger, money, religion, music, health etc.
Use of Free Time
Culture can be thought of as all the discretionary activities and modifications of a city. Beyond its functions, what does a city do with its free time? How late does it stay up at night? How much energy is put into opera vs sports? Choice of cultural activities reflect the interests of its people and the energy which they create. Especially important are non-commercial activities, because these represent gifts given freely and therefore with greater feeling.
Night Life
The point about nightlife is not to measure how much clubbing a city provides. The point is how much energy does the city have to stay up at night? Are there only bars open or can you also shop for electronics and take a horse ride in the middle of the night? Because people work during the day, nightlife is a measure of how much extra energy people have. Just enough to get through the day then go home and rest, or enough energy to work through the day and then create yourself at night? Often it is only the young (at heart) who want to spend their evening hours this way, so the amount of nightlife is really a measurement of how young (at heart) and social the city is. In Mexico, there are a lot of retired people, but these people are quite young at heart.
Live Music
Live music is an easy barometer to use, because music is the immediate accompanient to life, even say the background music in movies. This scale goes from no music > recorded predictable music > thoughtfully selected music > live but familiary music > and finally live original music. The importance of this is not just that I have a particular interest in music vs. say photography or philosophy. Live music is a shared experience and it shows that the people want to be together in public and enjoy the boogie of life.
Quality of Oxygen
I believe that higher altitude cities as well as coastal cities have a different density of fresh oxygen that creates a more spacious feeling in the head that allow different kinds of thoughts and dreams.
Circle of Friends
A city embodies the aggregate personality of its citizens, yourself at the center. In a broad sense, the peope in your city are a circle of potential friends. By virtue of its origins and people, a city holds more or less inclination and skill to have fun, family, art, danger, money, religion, music, health etc.
Use of Free Time
Culture can be thought of as all the discretionary activities and modifications of a city. Beyond its functions, what does a city do with its free time? How late does it stay up at night? How much energy is put into opera vs sports? Choice of cultural activities reflect the interests of its people and the energy which they create. Especially important are non-commercial activities, because these represent gifts given freely and therefore with greater feeling.
Night Life
The point about nightlife is not to measure how much clubbing a city provides. The point is how much energy does the city have to stay up at night? Are there only bars open or can you also shop for electronics and take a horse ride in the middle of the night? Because people work during the day, nightlife is a measure of how much extra energy people have. Just enough to get through the day then go home and rest, or enough energy to work through the day and then create yourself at night? Often it is only the young (at heart) who want to spend their evening hours this way, so the amount of nightlife is really a measurement of how young (at heart) and social the city is. In Mexico, there are a lot of retired people, but these people are quite young at heart.
Live Music
Live music is an easy barometer to use, because music is the immediate accompanient to life, even say the background music in movies. This scale goes from no music > recorded predictable music > thoughtfully selected music > live but familiary music > and finally live original music. The importance of this is not just that I have a particular interest in music vs. say photography or philosophy. Live music is a shared experience and it shows that the people want to be together in public and enjoy the boogie of life.
posted by eugene chen at 11:51 PM
1 Comments:
I think you are right about the oxygen. I could hardly freaking breathe when I worked in Stockton. I wonder if it's part of the way Silicon Valley is the way it is.
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