I finally get it (living, cost, comparison, life)

[goofy328]

I'll preface this by stating that this probably belongs to either the New York forum or the Urban Planning forum, or some other forum I do not know of, but I wanted to open it up to everyone on C-D so I could get a larger perspective as I know that a lot of people in cool cities often post and answer in City vs. City. Plus it is not really about NYC, but what NYC represents to most people.

I think I finally get it, after years of being on C-D; the devotion and undying love of the city is not about skyscrapers, or the urban jungle, or twenty million people, or a melting pot or anything else. It is about the sacrifices people make to live there, and the difficulties people endure just to stay there.

I watched a documentary about the 11 men in the famous photograph perched 800 feet above the ground during the construction of what is now known as "30 Rock". I believe this is also the RCA building. What impressed me is the sacrifice that iron workers, and those that work on any other construction project, such as subways, made, simply by showing up to work everyday because they could lose their life at any moment. The photographers that took the photographs understood it because they took those same risks, but so often on C-D we often complain because our city does not have as many skyscrapers, or our city is not as urban, or it costs so much to live in New York, or whatever.

Well the privilege of living in a major city, no matter how expensive your rent is, pales in comparison to the sacrifice those that built your city made when they died on construction and infrastructure projects, or they first arrived into your city knowing nothing but rural environs, with no other skill but a desire to work and improve their lot in life. That is priceless, but we often take it for granted because we think our lot in life can afford an easy existence simply because we enough money to afford it.

I have always been impressed by the energy and the overreaching scale of the city, but no tourist can ever gain an appreciation for an area without living there for months, if not years, and truly experiencing what people experience on a day to day basis. Truly sticking it out, not leaving and running away from said city because they run along some speed bumps along the way. It is so easy for those of us with the resources to do so to just get up and move to some other city and reinvent ourselves.

A common issue that I see with a lot of threads on C-D, not just about New York, but of any city, is that people expect to be impressed and overwhelmed every single day, and to have this experience to write home about at all times and no one values time sitting still, reflecting upon what is important in life, how the city has changed them, how they have changed the city (if, at all), how insignificant life can make you feel at times, how humbling and humiliating it is when you have a bad day. One does not need to move to New York City to experience these things. All they need is a lack of skills, a job that does not pay a living wage, and an insecurity in how they are going to rise above the challenges they experience on a day to day basis.

I can see why an individual would hate hipsters or feel that some suburbanite trust fund child should just move back home because it is what you bring to a situation that makes you feel alive, that is the true adventure, not something external you try to struggle through just to have something to write about. Some people are cool, just because of who they are, and cool things will happen to them because of the environment they create around them, because they would not accept anything less from their existence. Other people just like the idea of being cool, but they have to reach for something that truly is not them, and they should just be themselves. If people want something different, they should create it where they're at, and then actually bring the talent that comes with having accomplished something to wherever they're moving as an asset, rather than allow their ignorance and naivete be a liability.