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Yeah. I get that there are so many objective indicators out there that could be explained with a number, but there are also plenty of things about cities that can only be experienced by feel. If cities were as impersonal as just the mere numbers, then what good is there to even have a discussion about them? There is no discussion.
What makes a city a city isn't the buildings, but the people who live there. If it weren't for the people, cities or states or countries would just be land with buildings on them.
I work with data and numbers a lot myself, so I actually do find detailed demographics statistics about cities interesting. I think though what isn't useful is when people use statistics alone and not personal experience to argue how cities are. You can have the Census tracking certain people of an ethnicity at a higher level, but it doesn't say anything about how the communities actually are. Like if Metro A has more of a certain ethnic group than Metro B, that's interesting, but it doesn't tell me if that ethnic population in Metro is concentrated in one area, is assimilated, or if it's a dispersed population that's mostly second or third generation only claiming that ethnicity by ancestry(I can claim Chinese on the Census if I want being half-Chinese, but I'm basically a white Canadian in terms of everything else). The only way you know is if you actually have spent a lot of time in a given city(or research first-hand accounts).
When it's a subject as subjective as best food cities, it becomes even more annoying. And I travel a lot across the US and Canada(and I've lived in Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Boston, and Portland in my lifetime), but there's no way I'd say I'm an expert on restaurants in major cities outside of the ones I've lived in and a few others I've traveled to frequently. I don't know how some people can claim to be experts on ranking every cuisine across every major metro in the US, you'd have to be on Anthony Bourdain "The Layover"-type excursions for the entire year considering how many restaurants there are in larger cities. It doesn't even take a huge ethnic population to have some great restaurants, I've had great Japanese and Italian food in places where there's no big Japanese or Italian populations--it only takes a few people to start a great restaurant.
Last edited by CanuckInPortland; 04-06-2016 at 12:17 PM..
I work with data and numbers a lot myself, so I actually do find detailed demographics statistics about cities interesting. I think though what isn't useful is when people use statistics alone and not personal experience to argue how cities are. You can have the Census tracking certain people of an ethnicity at a higher level, but it doesn't say anything about how the communities actually are. Like if Metro A has more of a certain ethnic group than Metro B, that's interesting, but it doesn't tell me if that ethnic population in Metro is concentrated in one area, is assimilated, or if it's a dispersed population that's mostly second or third generation only claiming that ethnicity by ancestry(I can claim Chinese on the Census if I want being half-Chinese, but I'm basically a white Canadian in terms of everything else). The only way you know is if you actually have spent a lot of time in a given city(or research first-hand accounts).
When it's a subject as subjective as best food cities, it becomes even more annoying. And I travel a lot across the US and Canada(and I've lived in Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Boston, and Portland in my lifetime), but there's no way I'd say I'm an expert on restaurants in major cities outside of the ones I've lived in and a few others I've traveled to frequently. I don't know how some people can claim to be experts on ranking every cuisine across every major metro in the US, you'd have to be on Anthony Bourdain "The Layover"-type excursions for the entire year considering how many restaurants there are in larger cities. It doesn't even take a huge ethnic population to have some great restaurants, I've had great Japanese and Italian food in places where there's no big Japanese or Italian populations--it only takes a few people to start a great restaurant.
I definitely agree with everything you just said. Census tracking is pretty interesting, but without any on-the-ground experience, it just becomes numbers on a page.
I just hate how certain threads, such as FOOD, turning into a census contest. Yeah, that's great that X has this many Chinese people, but how is the food there?
Just because you could have more of something doesn't mean its any good.
It seems like Indy receives an unusually high level of hate for some reason.
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