See Them Big Apples [tmz came up with this one] A company placed portal-shaped "sculptures" in the cities of Dublin and New York, allowing residents to essentially have a public, non-stop Zoom meeting with each other. And the marketing stunt went about as well as practically anybody could've expected. While residents initially waved innocent signs […]
What an asinine take. I choose to live in a city because I can meet many different friends in many different interesting spots, where we can e.g. eat excellent iterations of different cuisines.
All without sitting my ass in a car and driving for an hour to meet a single couple that lives in some other hamlet. Or having to plan the exact amount of drinks and food to consume before the evening starts. And I can do that multiple times per week if I please.
You like living in the countryside, I get it. Don’t pretend that’s somehow objectively better lol
Well I didn’t start my comment insulting the commenter.
When you think about city vs country living: 1) there’s not enough space, some/most people have to live in people storage systems like cities. 2) cities do not produce anything. They consume. Cities do not produce fruit, fish, meat or their vegan counterparts. Cities do not produce minerals needed for even the most basic processes. Cities do not produce any of the basic human needs such as shelter, food, water, clothing. All of those things come from agriculture, mining, fishing, manufacturing etc of the raw materials which cities do not produce and do not want to produce. 3) cities do not produce energy. Rather cities use up energy and lots of it. There’s no significant production of energy of any form coming from cities. No oil, wind, solar, hydro, thermal energy at all.
All of these things are produced away from cities for the purpose of actually being able to do it. You can’t go drilling for oil in the middle of times square or downtown Chicago. You can’t fish where there’s no water.
What cities do produce is trash. Millions and millions of cubic miles of trash all together. Along with sewage raw contaminated water. Those two things are the 100% product of cities. Cities sometimes produce processed products and also have education centers. Usually cities are were local jails are as well as population control systems such as government offices, testing clinics, hospitals, people furnaces etc. None of these things made in cities would be possible without what is made out in the country side. Think of anything made in your city and chase the raw product and you will realize that cities are people storages because they depend on the means of production of the countryside. And cities are always fighting to remove anything that is “dirty” … Usually dirty is the original reason the city was crated. For example a saw mill. I live in a city who’s name comes from a saw mill and has no such thing today. Or it could be industrial processes such a pig and cow and chicken murdering companies, plastic or oil production etc. Somehow a guy or gal found a cheap piece of land, started a business gathered people and bam a city is founded. Then later they make legislation that bans the industry and you are left with a city that produces nothing and still needs that product they used to produce.
Notice that I did not insult you personally in my description of the difference between cities and country. Notice also that it’s actually very hard to come up with things that a city makes which are tangible things that do not depend on the outside.
For those reasons cities are people storage units.
But you did insult. You asserted that living in a city isn’t a voluntary choice, therefore taking agency away from people who choose to live in a city.
You’re both pivoting (now you’re suddenly talking about production) and wrong. Cities produce cross pollination between minds. Art, science, philosophy. Cities are where the ideas for photovoltaics were seeded and developed. Cities are where most music genres emerged.
We live in a world where currently, the most popular alternative to city living is being a narrow-minded redneck who holds their gas guzzler as the ultimate expression of freedom. Anarchist communes in the countryside might be part of the solution, but I bet you that what’s going on in and around the city will also play a vital role.