Cities have a dark side. I think that most people who grew up in a small town and later moved to a big city have gone through a period of disillusionment.
I don't want to seem mean, but you're like a caricature of a country person. People are living things which grow to suit their environment, everyone thinks their way is the best way and that their hometown is the coolest. When you say things like "city people care more about money" and "city people are mean" you sound like a bumpkin.
I grew up going to school in the burbs, all summer in a small home-town - and have lived in several major cities.
'City people' are definitely more about the money.
Small towns are communities. Everyone knows everyone - often for multiple generations. Families have ties - not just people. You can't 'not care about' someone you've known for 40 years, even if you don't know them that well.
In cities, people are exposed to a lot more people, they have tons of 'associates' but very few friends. People come and go - and they get individualist.
I find city people, having been exposed to 'more kinds of people' tend to be more 'tolerant' in the modern sense of that word, but have absolutely no idea what community means and are far more judgemental, ideological, selective in everything. City people walk and talk with a kind of 'facade' - they are trying to project an image - almost all of them. In a small town - this would seem ridiculous.
Also in small towns - when people speak to you - they are speaking to you then are 'present'. In the city, people are usually polite - but conversations (and relationships) 'transactional'.
My brother (small town) threw a big bar-b-q for his friends birthday, and invited a bunch of people. Some really odd red-necky types showed up - and don't mean negative - just poor. They were welcome. Old guys in wheelchairs. Young partiers. It was an unbelievably mixed crowd. I don't think my brother would have preferred they came - but there is no way on earth anyone would say anything - after all 'it's joe from the corner store' - and 'Mary, Sean from across the streets Aunt'. When you go to social gatherings in urban areas - they tend to be hyper-specific in terms of social groupings.
Even the near-homeless/poor people in small towns 'know someone' and most people 'know them' by name. Down the street from where I live (urban) - there are a couple of completely 'nameless' homeless people.
Also - small town people tend to have a lot of gatherings where it's mostly family. In the city, often less so. When you hang around mostly your family and extended friends, it's a completely different world from 'people your age in your clique' etc..
The craziest thing about this - is 'city people' often have absolutely no idea what a community actually is. They make all sorts of crazy assertions, but have no clue.
You call this guy a 'bumpkin' because - no offence - you might not know what he is talking about - also - your comment might be a kind of bigotry.
In the suburb where I grew up - I don't know anyone. They've all moved. I have some contact - but the people, stores, restaurants, neighbourhood - totally unrecognizable. My 'hometown' - I still know some people, epc. through family. It's incredibly boring, and would be nary impossible to live there (it would be nice if it were a commute from a city), but if I don't go back often enough, I go crazy.
To someone from a small town, living in a city often feels like 'living in a corporation' - and to some extent they are correct.
> Some really odd red-necky types showed up - and don't mean negative - just poor. They were welcome. Old guys in wheelchairs. Young partiers. It was an unbelievably mixed crowd.
And had a trans person showed up, how would that have gone? A Latinx person? A queer couple?
Had the opposite experience moving from a suburb to a major metropolitan area.
There's a level of community here (not all communities are communities that straight white tech workers are involved with or are welcome in) that is unparalleled.
It may cause the hyper privileged to become more individualistic but for everyone else we have thriving communities with true friendships and support networks.
I believe the term is "communities of choice". In a small community there is only one community and everyone has to be in it, for good or ill. In a city you can make a much better community suited to you - but it requires active effort to maintain that link, so it's much easier to fall off and become invisibly alone.
I agree - except that 'communities of choice' are far more fleeting than otherwise. In 'communities of choice' - nobody cares about old people, for example.
'Communities of choice' work when you're young OR when you're part of a specific ethnic group (say Somalis in Philly or whatever) - which is in many ways like a 'small town' within a city.
Anyone of any ethnicity could have showed up, it would have made no difference. Small town people have less exposure to other cultures, and might have some prejudices, but the prejudices are not hateful, they're more rooted in lack of exposure.
Trans or Queer - that would have been different. You can be gay in the country, but you can't flaunt it. If you were to have introduced 'your boyfriend' that would have made people feel uncomfortable. Trans - well - you'd be treated fine, but like someone with a disability type thing. People would not accept it as your identity, but just consider it weird.
Here's the big thing: When you know people you treat them totally different than what your prejudices might incline you towards. I didn't say 'small town people' were more tolerant in the classical sense - in fact I said 'city people' were more tolerant. BUT - and here's the differentiator: if you're gay - remember that everyone has known you since you were a kid. So it's the difference between someone being 'uncomfortable with gays' to 'my brother/cousin/family friend' is gay. Which is a completely different social context.
"There's a level of community here (not all communities are communities that straight white tech workers are involved with or are welcome in) that is unparalleled."
I've lived in San Franciso - in the heart of the Castro - with gay people - and I know the micro-communities well enough. Yes - any grouping of marginalized people tends to be a little closer, and I do agree that there is 'community' in the Castro for example.
BUT - this is definitely not the norm in cities or burbs.
AND - it's not the same. Nobody will care about you when you are old, young kids will not know your name, the young gay kids will laugh at the older gay dudes to their faces and be pretty harsh etc. (although, I think this is a special feature of that community).
When my (small town) Grandfather passed away - his wake was 3 days long. 3 days of people streaming by his casket. He owned a hardware store and was a 'good community member'. He wasn't anyone really special. But you spend 94 years in one place and you literally know thousands of people - most of whom would 'pay their respects' by coming to the wake. The whole community mourned.
If you've ever seen how the Danes have their old age homes, their much smaller, familial and local, they are still in a way, a part of the community. I think that the North/West European countries have a huge social advantage on North Americans when it comes to community culture.
Finally - and more controversially: most European and Asian nations are ethnic groups - so people are surrounded by 'like people' in terms of ethnicity. A lot of culture boils down to ethnicity. When people are surrounded by other people within their ethnic group - there is no 'hatred' for others, it's just that they feel more affinity for 'their own'. If you're from a small town - it's not something you ever really think about. It's just normal. 'Multiculturalism' challenges all sorts of norms and wipes out the things that differentiate us. The burb I grew up in was the most multicultural place in the world: Mississauga, Ontario (burb of Toronto). People were friendly, we got along very well, but ironically - a complete absence of culture. We have a word for it 'living room culture' because outside the home there's nothing. In the city I live in now, almost all the local cab drivers are from Haiti. They feel alienated and often want to go home when they have enough money even though it's much less advanced. Why? Because 'it's home'. I am sympathetic to them, and not upset with them because they 'don't like my culture'. They want to 'be among their people'. Who can blame them? Again - that's another issue or urban cultural dissonance that is too uncomfortable for most people to talk about in North America, so the discussion never happens :)
FYI I should say 'large cities' - especially North American ones.
Please like Munich, Frankfurt feel pretty 'small town' relatively speaking. People tend to stay put a lot longer (like forever, even hundreds of years over generations), and the geography of those cities are completely different as well.
Berlin is not like Munich or Frankfurt - and does not fit the template of most other German cities. It's quite a bit bigger and spread out. That said - it's more like Frankfurt than it is LA. Also - 'Greater Berlin' is more than 5 million.
Also important to note: many European cities don't have 'suburbs'- what they have is 'city core' then 'dense surrounding'- which is not that much - but instead of suburbs, they have tons of 'surrounding towns'. It's really quite hard to describe.
Frankfurt - I could almost run across it in my daily run - and it has big skyscrapers. It has the busiest Airport in Europe!
Imagine taking all of Maine + Vermont - and instead of 30Km between each small township - make it 3km. So basically, you have tons of 'mini, distinct communities'.
Many of those 'mini communities' are 1000 years old type thing, and people are not very transient.
Within those communities - generally things are walkable, you have unique local restaurants, often high quality, artisans, small businesses, sometimes Universities.
Much of Europe - and to some extent Asia - is like this.
It's hard to describe but obvious when you see it.
It's the model I think we, in North America, should have used for urban planning - instead of the mega-city model.
So, it all boils down to "in a smaller community you don't have many options and you should watch out yourself not to narrow down further that pool". In a big city where one doesn't rely so heavily on others you see the people acting more as how they want it to be. (Most people, especially the ones without any kind of impairment, don't care that much for community.)
">your comment might be a kind of bigotry
The irony is so deep."
I was making generalizations about people that I think is true.
But I wasn't calling people names, or making them seem as though they are 'out of touch and stupid' because they are either from the city or a small town.
There are advantages and disadvantages of both - but city people are by far and away more 'individualist', in much the same way that 'Americans' are usually more individualist than say, Swedes. It's just a generalization, not bigotry.
I was referring to the post I originally replied to, which has since been edited. It called "city people" selfish, depressed and obsessed with money among other tired stereotypes.
