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big difference between small town life and big city life, its like night and day. small towns don't have all the amenities and convenience of a big city and the pace of life is much slower. however, small town life today isn't what it was 30 or 40 years ago in most places. things like the internet, social media, cell phones, and cars have all played a small part in closing the gap. by way of the internet you have access to shopping for just about anything you can think of, social media connects you to people from around the world, and your car can take you to these places. I have everything I need in my city of 40,000 and most of what I want and anything I cant find here I can get it off line. charlotte is a few hours away, Atlanta is five hours and I can get to d.c. in six. I lived in several big cities nyc and Chicago just to name a few and I had great times in both but there was always no place like home. whenever I would leave the lights of the big city to go home for a visit I cant stop hearing the theme song from cheers. lol
What I was saying, Someone from say, Charlestown knows hardly a soul in Hyde Park, and someone from Hyde Park hardly knows a soul in Allston, they are all in the same "city", but they are separate in all ways, as most people live, work, play in their neighborhoods and hardly travel to Roslindale if they live in East Boston, they might as well be 100 miles away. In reality, cities are a collection of small, tight units, not really cohesive, because Human scale is not 8,000,000 or 3,000,000 its 15,20,25 thousand.
What I was saying, Someone from say, Charlestown knows hardly a soul in Hyde Park, and someone from Hyde Park hardly knows a soul in Allston, they are all in the same "city", but they are separate in all ways, as most people live, work, play in their neighborhoods and hardly travel to Roslindale if they live in East Boston, they might as well be 100 miles away. In reality, cities are a collection of small, tight units, not really cohesive, because Human scale is not 8,000,000 or 3,000,000 its 15,20,25 thousand.
What I was saying, Someone from say, Charlestown knows hardly a soul in Hyde Park, and someone from Hyde Park hardly knows a soul in Allston, they are all in the same "city", but they are separate in all ways, as most people live, work, play in their neighborhoods and hardly travel to Roslindale if they live in East Boston, they might as well be 100 miles away. In reality, cities are a collection of small, tight units, not really cohesive, because Human scale is not 8,000,000 or 3,000,000 its 15,20,25 thousand.
While I know exactly what you are trying to say, I think you are missing a HUGE difference and not keeping an open enough mind to acknowledge that difference. For one thing you are coming from a large city and to you a "small town" is between 15-25,000. For those of who live in small towns that are stand alone towns and not part of a larger metro, 15-25,000 is a very large town or small sized city. Where I live, if you keep drive time to under 1 hour the largest "city" has a population of just over 8000. Given a real small town and a large city there is a giant difference.
I have lived in the Dallas, TX area; the Detroit, MI area, and have spent a LOT of time in the Boston area (my wife is from there and her family still lives there). While it is true that a large city is made up of small groups that interact on a regular basis, the feel is very different to interacting with that same number of people in a true small town setting. Yes the number of people you may interact with is about the same, but small town and big city are night and day different.
I understand completely what you're saying. Many people who live in large cities pretty much stay in their communities and socialize with those in that community. When I travel to NYC to visit family, I've noticed that and when we walk around his neighborhood, he runs into people that he knows quite frequently. I personally went to high school in a pretty decent sized suburb of Atlanta and whenever I go back to that area, I always run into people that I know and when I worked for Publix in a fairly urban part of Atlanta, I saw many customers who knew each other from their neighborhoods. So with that said I can see your point because even in large cities, many people live, play, and sometimes even work in their communities.
There is no remarkable difference these days between small towns and cities. These days all are seeking for the better living and with best status in all aspects in case of houses, surviving methods and at all instances.As far as my knowledge is concerned, the only difference is in the technical advancements we used to see in hotels, vehicles and many others. Friends, Feel free for sharing some more ideas of yours on this. Thanks in advance.
People say they are so different, but really, I don't think they are.
No one really lives in New York, Boston, or San Francisco, they live in Tribeca, Mission Hill, or Nob Hill, what are the population of that neighborhood? 10,000, 15,000? How often does someone in Tribeca actually see someone from Flushings or Hyde park someone from Bunker Hill?
Except people from Flushing might visit Tribeca (or at least somewhere nearby in Lower Manhattan). It's hard to bump into people from the city and suburbs in Manhattan. Maybe not as true for Boston, but still get a lot of people passing through, the center city gets a lot of people from everywhere in the region, there are spots where people from disparate neighborhoods can cross paths. And it's easy to go from one drastically different neighborhood to another.
Less accessible variety in a small town. City neighborhoods are usually more transisent, with new people coming and leaving. Though a neighborhood like South Boston used to be was probably as closed and parochial as any small town. I remember a poster who grew up in Brooklyn said something like when he was growing other parent's would notice easily what each other's kids were up to, it sounded almost small-town like in the "everyone knows everyone".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicago60614
In dense cities you get those 15,000 people in a small fraction of land area, and people are more inclined to walk places, have corner stores everywhere and live in large buildings with a lot of units and take advantage of the millions of people and things to do that are just steps away in another neighborhood. That's a far cry from a small town with empty streets and a few blocks of spread out houses and then nothing for miles after that.
It depends. Many larger towns, at least in the Northeast, have a compact dense section. Most of the towns here have a somewhat dense main street with close together houses/multi-family surrounding it, and then getting more spread out. Of course, with a much smaller population, there's less going on and not much for a bit once you get out of town.
And eleswhere in the world, towns can be as dense as big cities. This Spanish town (12,000 people) is probably denser than almost of all of Chicago:
What I was saying, Someone from say, Charlestown knows hardly a soul in Hyde Park, and someone from Hyde Park hardly knows a soul in Allston, they are all in the same "city", but they are separate in all ways, as most people live, work, play in their neighborhoods and hardly travel to Roslindale if they live in East Boston, they might as well be 100 miles away. In reality, cities are a collection of small, tight units, not really cohesive, because Human scale is not 8,000,000 or 3,000,000 its 15,20,25 thousand.
Unless someone lives in a different neighborhood for cheaper rent/convenience to work reasons and socializes or plays elsewhere. People can do a lot of things outside their neighborhood.
one thing I most def don't miss from when I use to live in a big city is gridlock traffic. having to put up with gridlock each day just to say I live in a big city was just not for me, life is way too short to spend so much of it sitting in traffic. but I know that goes with the territory and one of the trade off of living in a large metro vs a small city or town. heck, I even complain about traffic around this town. one time you could get almost anywhere in town in about ten minutes but that's not so much the case these days. city life is great and I miss it at times but I choose to live where I am, I like the simple laid back life style of small town living . I was reminded of that when my mom died back in june of this year, lots of family and friends came by everyday, tons of great food. I had so much food I had to start giving it away and i'm talking real good downhome cooking, i had to even give away live flowers because people sent so many. people made sure we were taken care of and didn't have to do anything during this time. and when visitors come down from the big cities they are treated to a feast, my mom use to go all out cooking . we have family coming down from nyc for thanksgiving and we cant wait to show them a good time.
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