I have dreams to travel around America and have been wanting to visit big cities like Seattle, New York City, Portland, Chicago, and Washington D.C. for the longest time. Diverse cultures all meshed together, lots of different foods to sample, plus famous sites and national landmarks to explore and cross off my bucket list. But LIVE in a big city? That may be appealing to some folks who adore crowds and want to "make it big," but it's not ideal for me. Now I'm no country mouse. I grew up in Santa Barbara, which is home to about 90,000 people, with tourism being one of its top industries. But Santa Barbara isn't "big," though I wouldn't complain if I moved somewhere just a little smaller. But anyway, these are the reasons why I do not want to live in a big city:
- Where the heck is the sun? I want to live in a place where the sunshine isn't obstructed by buildings that tickle God's toes. I know this is an exaggeration, however, back in April 2009 I spent a week in the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco on a missions trip with my youth group. If I was outside, the direct sunlight could only be seen if the sun was straight above and shining through the cracks of the ridiculously tall hotels, commercial edifices, and skyscrapers serving as headquarters to banks and business moguls and their nation wide chain stores. So only for an hour or two if I was lucky. I felt isolated from Mother Nature.
- Too many people live in a city, so there is little obligation to get to know anybody. I've never lived in a town smaller than Santa Barbara, which is home to around ninety thousand people, so I really cannot say I know all the cashiers at the stores I shop most at or the baristas at the Starbucks down my street, but nonetheless I still think my awareness of the people in my community would diminish even further if I lived in a place like New York city. And you know what? Even though this sounds backwards, I think people who don't like people are the ones who live in big cities, since there are so many people nobody bothers to be friendly with anyone. Nobody acknowledges anyone when you pass by on the sidewalk (that's true in Santa Barbara, too). In my experience in big cities like L.A. or San Francisco, no one wanted to acknowledge my existence unless I was in their way. Even if it is a big community, there isn't much community in a big city. I dream about knowing the name of the guy behind the deli counter at the market, the number of children the town librarian has, and the birthplace of the person who delivers my mail. I want to live there!
- An article on Buzzfeed reminded me of one of the downsides to living in a big city that I would greatly resent, and that is not being able to see any stars at night. Light pollution is a sworn enemy to a person like me who loves staring at those glittering dots in the sky. If I rewrote the song "My Favorite Things" according to my personal favorites, the lyric "Starry night skies and sweet pumpkin pies" would be in the first stanza. What is a night without stars? It better be a cloudy and rainy one. L.A. smog clouds wouldn't count.
- I find it hard to imagine myself raising a family in a big city, though I know it is done all the time. Riding a subway to take the children to school, forcing them to play in the apartment instead of riding their bikes or playing kickball in the street, and having no backyard . . . it just doesn't make sense to me. Again, people do it all the time, but to me I wouldn't want to raise a family in a place like that. As Claire Diaz-Ortiz put it in her article on Babble.com I Don't Like Big Cities, you don't think of families when you visit big cities, all you think of is tourism and people busy working.
- The perception of time is more hustled in a big city than in a smaller city. Even in Santa Barbara it is plan by the hour or by the half hour, but I imagine in a bigger city it is plan by the minute. There seems to be very little flexibility, not to mention patience (which I could use a little more of) in a larger city, and I would prefer to live in a city that was more relaxed about time management.
- And finally, traffic is crazy in a big city. This is not good for me because I am a timid driver and I prefer to not deal with so many cars and lane changes. In a big city I am sure to get lost, hit something, or somebody, and lose my sanity in traffic jams or dense freeways.
My hope is to live in a town where I have a place of my own, with a nice sized yard for my future children to play in and I can play fetch with my dog, where I'm not sharing paper-thin walls with my neighbors, I'm not constantly hearing the sound of car horns in front of my house, the citizens are friendly and I actually know my neighbors and the people whom I buy my groceries from, and there are plenty of trees and open skies and you can see lots of stars at night. A place where life is savored, not rushed. A place with a real sense of community, but also enough privacy for myself when I want it. But of course also a place where you can get Greek, Japanese, Italian, German, Thai, Mexican, Chinese, and BBQ food within the same city limit.
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