What message does your city send?

[cos]

Reading The Rise of the Creative Class crystallized for me the idea, which I already had, that our new age of easy communications actually makes physical, geographic locations more significant, not less. Paul Graham's new essay, Cities and Ambition, presents another view of how cities matter - one that also seems familiar, but that I hadn't thought about in quite that way.

Some cities are centers for particular kinds of activity. Such a city subtly sends you a message related to that activity - by the things you see walking down the street, by the snippets of conversation you overhear, and many other ways. A city's message, he argues, comes from the fact that there is something people in that city tend to consistently view as more important than other things, and this attitude is catching. It's a three-way cycle:

• People move to that city because they value what it values above other things, and because it is a center for that activity
• People in that city value that thing because the city is a center for it, and because a lot of them moved there because it was the thing they already valued more
• It is a center for its activity because it is known for it so people move there to do that thing, and because people living there are encouraged to value that thing, which in turn encourages the activity itself

To really know a city's message, Graham says, you probably have to live there for a while. As examples, he gives the paces he has lived, and the messages they send:

New York City: You should make more money!

Silicon Valley: Be powerful. And start companies.

Berkeley: Live better. Enjoy life.

Boston, especially Cambridge: You could be smarter. Read more, learn more. Develop ideas.

He also gives a stab at interpreting the messages of some places he's been to but hasn't lived in, while acknowledging that he's not sure and that a local might interpret it more accurately. For example, he thinks the message Paris was sending him was "do things in style; appreciate art and beauty". And not all cities send a coherent message, because not all cities are focused in that way.

Where do live? What message is your city sending you?

Have you lived somewhere else that sent a clear message? What was it?

Edit: To clarify, in case you don't click through to read Graham's essay, in his formulation a city's message is both the thing it suggest you should aspire to, and the thing that people generally respect and honor most, and think is cool. So the coolest, most honored & respectable thing you can be in Silicon Valley is someone who started a now-influential company; in Boston, it's a smart person who had a great idea or created something new; in New York, it's being rich.

Comments

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

So, if I understand the author's premise it's something like:

1. Some cities out put a message which is sort of like a pheremone to what the author labels as "ambitious" people.
   
2. Some cities don't put out any such message. The author seems to feel that this makes them, well...really quite nice I'm sure, but not all that interesting.
   
3. The "ambitious" people named in the first point have different aspirations, and are attracted to places where those who succeed at their particular flavor of aspiration are valued.
   

To which my response would be:

1. "Cities" don't put out anything, don't be ridiculous.
   
2. Whatever, dude.
   
3. So, people who are likely to be successful at x (or who think they can be) tend to gravitate to wherever x is valued. Stop the presses.
   

The whole article, I must say, has a tooth-grating air of self-satisfaction to it. Clearly the author is proud to live in the Athens of America, or at least as filtered through his perceptions, and to be contributing his "ambitions" to what makes us all read Proust on the Green Line. Likewise, he seems to be unable to value people or environments whose primary approach is not driven by "ambition". It's good, I suppose, to know what you value; it's unfortunate if you project your values and assume them to be universal rather than subjective. The distinction between ambition and aspiration is one that probably escapes the author, but I suspect there are a good many people who, while not at all ambitious (and therefore dismissed by the author as "quite nice really", nevertheless aspire to a great deal.

[feuervogel]

This. Very much.