Why cities are better than small towns




















Because the cost of living is so low, families who live in small towns can afford to do other fun things such as going on family vacations together. The low cost of living in a small town is one of the driving forces that draw people in. Small town life has a slower and more relaxed pace than city life. It is easy to get lost in the hustle and bustle of a big city and feel overwhelmed and lonely.

However, the slow pace of small town life allows you to stop and smell the roses to fully enjoy life. In a small town, though, personal connections are valued, and employees will ask you about your day and offer you a smile, leading to a much more enjoyable and less stressful shopping experience. Big cities like to cram as many people as possible into the smallest of areas.

Small towns, on the other hand, are much less crowded, giving you space to breathe. Unlike in a big city, if you are living in a small town, you can go out to dinner on a Friday night without having to wait an hour for a table. There is also much less traffic in a small town. In a city, traffic is so congested that it can take an hour to drive just a few miles, especially during rush hour. This means there is less road rage and traffic accidents on small town roads.

This is one of the most important factors for parents when they are trying to decide about places to live. The crime rate in a small town is significantly lower than that in a big city. Families prefer living in small towns because it is a safe environment for children to grow up in. You can let your kids play outside without having to worry that something terrible is going to happen to them. There is also less theft, so you can let your car warm up in the morning with the door unlocked without fear that it will be stolen.

As usual, escaping the city in the summertime promised to bring a whoosh of relief from heat and bustle. And while going without them for a week hardly qualifies as a tragedy, it did get me thinking about the geography of innovation, and the disparate impact of technological progress on urban centers.

More specifically, I began wondering whether, at this point, choosing to live outside a major city is tantamount to opting to live in the past. All three have their charms. The fact that many of these technologies are being developed and deployed first in densely populated urban zones, rather than in the countryside, means that in the future, cities are going to pull further away from rural and suburban areas economically, and carry a much higher quality-of-life premium than smaller towns.

The report, by Bruce Katz and Julie Wagner of the Brookings Institution, claims that while innovation used to take place in loosely packed suburban areas like Silicon Valley, innovation in the 21 st century is moving into large cities, which have several major advantages:. Physical assets. Many cities also have old-line industrial buildings that can easily be turned into trendy tech headquarters. In Boston, for example, the Seaport — once an economic drain on the city — has been repurposed as a tech hub, complete with companies like Zipcar and co-working spaces like General Assembly.

Economic assets. In cities, you often find built-in advantages for those hoping to take part in the tech economy. A good example of how these assets help create an entrepreneurial climate is St. Louis, whose tech corridor is built around St. Network effects and cross-pollination.

But Katz and Wagner write that a city that does well at creating weak ties — cultivating not just friendships, but relationships with friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends — is more important than previously thought.

Network effects also explain why tech companies tend to come in clusters. This, in turn, has led to a shift in where companies and support organizations locate. Density as a service. Namely, many of the tech start-ups that are bringing on-demand services to large cities have business models that only work in densely populated urban centers. As cities grow, their advantages of scale will grow, too. The city deli, like college, is a safe place for pajamas, robes, and experimenting with possibly dangerous meats.

And speaking of cars, you don't need one. You can leave the monthly payments, insurance, maintenance, and all the hassle of owning a vehicle to friendly cab drivers, who, for the most part, will sort of take you where you need to go if you actually do need to travel by automobile.

That's nearly nine grand a year that you can dedicate to renting a studio apartment with only five to seven roommates in a city. Such a better deal. A bicycle in the city is a commuting device, a day-trip option, and even a money-making device if you choose to be a bike messenger. Yes, country people, bike messengers are just as absolutely insane as the "talkies" what we more refined city folk call "movies" depict them to be.

So the chances of getting demolished by a garbage truck are totally not that big. In rural areas, bicycles are A classy yard decorations when stacked in rusting piles or B used by kids to go to local swimming holes inhabited by amoebas that will literally eat your brain from the inside out. That you can't afford, but that's not the point!

Instead of just housing industrial tractors or pool supplies or whatever else it is that fills rural buildings, warehouses in cities are being converted into cool artistic condos that cost millions of dollars and raise the cost of housing for everyone else Look at that cool apartment! Which, again, is totally awesome because you gotta spend money to make money.

Everyone knows this. According to the Gilmore Girls the definitive description of American small town life , everyone is always up in your business in non-urban America. People know your name, ask about your problems, and make you get involved in community activities. It's all extremely unpleasant. The anonymity of big cities guarantees that you can happily die alone in your apartment and nobody will find your decaying corpse for days, maybe years! Ethiopian, Moroccan, Mongolian, East Timorese -- if there's a kind of food you desire, a city is going to have it somewhere.

The Menupages entry for Philadelphia only the 5th largest city in the US has over 90 categories of food.



0コメント

  • 1000 / 1000