Do you love big cities?

[Stanley Edwards]

Love cities generally.

If I live in a city I want to be in the centre, in the heart, the middle of it all. Or, I want the very outskirts with a view looking in.

Cities are losing their hearts. City centres no longer have soul. The life, or reality has gone. No sense of community. You have to find the right suburb today.

Very important to me to be able to escape a city centre without going anywhere. A secret place of tranquillity and calm. More green. Less traffic.

Cities are made by people. Property prices and global economics are changing the ways we treat cities.

BIG subject. Easy to write too much.

 

[Edie]

I love cities. I love big cities. I love little cities. I love villages and hamlets and market towns and wild sprawling wildernesses with no habitation for miles.

The only thing I hate is sprawling suburbia.

Can I put a vote in for suburbia? You can get a nice 3 bed semi with a garden for less than 200k, and the kids can play out on the street, and there’s little local restaurants and takeaways, a few local shops, but you can still get a bus to town in half an hour. What’s not to like?!

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Yes.

I would like to live to be 500 years old and go to all of these for decades please:
List of largest cities - Wikipedia

That would be awesome.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I don't like big cities - the crowds do my head in. Smaller cities are much nicer places to live in.

Don't really have a view on suburbia, apart from the fact that it can be very dull.

 

[TruXta]

Can I put a vote in for suburbia? You can get a nice 3 bed semi with a garden for less than 200k, and the kids can play out on the street, and there’s little local restaurants and takeaways, a few local shops, but you can still get a bus to town in half an hour. What’s not to like?!

It's got none of the attractions of cities/city centers, nor those of proper countryside. And more often than not it just looks and feels boring. As for prices, around London most suburban areas are nearly as expensive as central bits, sometimes more expensive.

 

[weltweit]

I have lived in smaller cities.
And suburbia.
Now I live on the edge of a village with one shop, 2 pubs and a river.

 

[weltweit]

I have moved house about 16 times now, each time managing to not end up in a big city - so I have some form for that. It could be because my formative years were in the countryside that I don't feel comfortable in a big city.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I'm afraid of the countryside - all those open spaces, all that darkness and not enough buses. Shudders.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I'm afraid of the countryside - all those open spaces, all that darkness and not enough buses. Shudders.

It's great - there's hardly any people there.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

Sherlock Holmes on the countryside

 

[Edie]

It's got none of the attractions of cities/city centers, nor those of proper countryside. And more often than not it just looks and feels boring. As for prices, around London most suburban areas are nearly as expensive as central bits, sometimes more expensive.

Don’t you live in suburbia?

 

[Johnny Vodka]

i quite like small cities. so FUCK YOU

My favourite cities tend to feel quite walkable rather than having to get transport everywhere. Amsterdam, Granada and, er, Glasgow are all cities I consider quite walkable.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I'm afraid of the countryside - all those open spaces, all that darkness and not enough buses. Shudders.

No proper pavements. You turn the corner and there's a feckin cow there or something. Madness.

 

[hash tag]

Love big cities (I live in one). But there are big cities and ther eare big cities.
London and New York are very different in feel Etc. in comparison to Copenhagen or Vienna.

 

[TruXta]

Don’t you live in suburbia?

On the edge

 

[mauvais]

I like suburbia, at least, the right place in the suburbs of a big city. Calmer, more space, more green, good access to both city and country. Opt-ins and opt-outs, for the most part.

Fearing the countryside is an interesting one. I think that's how I used to feel about it when young, especially barren areas like the moors in the Lake District as seen from the M6. Now that I've both lived in the country for a while (not now), and go there of my own accord for leisure like walking, I don't really think that any more. Not sure I could live in proper isolation though.

You get to know your bits in London. Nobody knows the whole of London. But your bit is totally knowable.

Yeah, but for some undefined reason, this doesn't work for me. For example there's 20 arrondissements of Paris, each tends to have its own character or at least stereotype. With a couple of years there you could get a good idea of each, and thus you could know the entire city. It's structured and finite, and like exploring a computer game map, suits anyone with 'completionist' attitudes I suppose. I guess if I'm trying to understand somewhere I'd prefer that area to be at least mostly defined by the geography rather than setting my own vague boundaries.

 

[Edie]

On the edge

Look:


From my bedroom window right now. 1950s council houses (homes for heroes), proper well built family homes with two or three bedrooms, back gardens for growing flowers or veg, park to the right, little bit of heaven. It really is everything I ever dreamed of.

We lived in the inner city when the kids were little (up to age 6), but I found it really hard. I couldn’t let the kids play out and crime was high (when bad things were happening to neighbours like muggings, plus drug problem in the house across the road and they’d leave needles about). I found it really stressful especially with small kids.

Anyway to each their own, it’s a good job we’re all different!

 

[TruXta]

Look:
View attachment 160119

From my bedroom window right now. 1950s council houses (homes for heroes), proper well built family homes with two or three bedrooms, back gardens for growing flowers or veg, park to the right, little bit of heaven. It really is everything I ever dreamed of.

We lived in the inner city when the kids were little (up to age 6), but I found it really hard. I couldn’t let the kids play out and crime was high (when bad things were happening to neighbours like muggings, plus drug problem in the house across the road and they’d leave needles about). I found it really stressful especially with small kids.

Anyway to each their own, it’s a good job we’re all different!

I'm happy you're happy! But I grew up in the countryside and always longed for the big cities. Suburbia feels like purgatory to me.

 

[Winot]

The countryside itself is OK, the proper empty bit. It’s the little countryside towns I can’t stand, with the suspicious locals and printed tea towels.

 

[Bus Honeygun]

That thing about knowing your little bit of London or another big city is true.

I lived in Deptford for the three years I was there as a student 25 years ago. I gather it's changed a bit since, but at that time the High Street was the usual inner London mix of unwelcoming pubs, Oklahoma Fried Chicken, a Costcutter and a mix of ordinary shops. Every business had metal shutters. Once they closed for the day it was like a ghost town and the general air was a bit shabby, but it all became very familiar and comfortable and I never had any bother.

Go to some other inner London district and it all felt more dodgy somehow. Same shabby high street with the same takeaways, unwelcoming pubs and shops with metal shutters, but if it's not your little corner of the city it's somewhere to be wary of.

 

[Idaho]

Suburbia is pointless to the visitor. It's all about comfortable and convenient living. There is nothing much interesting to see - perhaps a pleasant park nearby. I don't have anything particularly interesting near my house - but inside its walls, it is comfortable and peaceful. Suburban bliss.

I don't want to live in a big city again, but I enjoy visiting them. Moscow, Hong Kong, New York, Bangalore and Rome are my favourites.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

And by happy coincidence (just throwing coals on the fire)...

Tracey Thorn: ‘We looked at suburbia and wanted to burn it down’ – extract

--// Having just read it, I have to now agree suburbia should be burned down before it spawns anymore writings of boredom in "a vague and undefined" way. It is like a long since redundant NME writer has just been reborn as a ghost writer.

 

[Leafster]

"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

Sherlock Holmes on the countryside

However Conan Doyle chose to live in the country.

I've only lived in one city (Portsmouth). It's very contained and it was easy to escape to the countryside so I quite liked it.

I guess I live on the very edge of suburbia now and that's as close to a city as I want to be.

ETA: My bit of suburbia

 

[planetgeli]

Lived in London for 20 years, could never say I loved it. Made the most of it. And left. I do, however, love the countryside.

As someone said, people make cities, and I think my tolerance of people has a threshold number. It’s around 25.

I’ve been to a lot of countries and, if flying in, that almost always involves a big city. Myself and gf invariably argue at this point and find the quickest way out of the city. We rarely argue but it’s virtually guaranteed when landing in a big city.

I do find the comments about being scared of the countryside funny. Maybe they’re meant to be. But on the day of the eclipse in 1999 I was at an outdoor free party in a farmers field in Cornwall. There were only about 25 (see) people there that the farmer had rounded up from the local campsites. But one guy was this huge 6ft plus bloke from Birmingham who looked like he really shouldn’t be scared of anything. He was genuinely scared of everything to do with the openness of where we were and complained about all the insects and nature. He was funny as fuck without trying to be. Though I was off my head at the time.

 

[Orang Utan]

The country doesn't have shops, cinemas or nightclubs or if it does you have to drive a car to get to them. Fuck that.

 

[Red Cat]

People live in suburbia because they have children don't they? We live in surburbia, it's good for the kids. It's not where I would choose to live if I didn't have kids, but it's affordable, near a park, near an urban green corridor, and there's a good co-op culture on our run down but apparently up-and-coming high street. The estate is not green itself, and the green there is is often paved over, and it's 60/70s not 50s so not as well built as earlier houses, but a big kitchen and large windows we like. It reminds me a bit of where I grew up (a more middle class suburb) which at the time symbolised everything inferior and deathlike about suburbia, my dad in particular who had come from a very poor background thought I was an unpleasant precious snob, which I was.

I liked living in Brixton but couldn't afford to live there, so we left, for Brummie suburbia. There's something to be said for being able to cultivate a life when its not all just outside your door.

 

[Thimble Queen]

I lived in London for most of my life. I live in a smaller city now. I like the fact that it's easier to get around and I can walk to a lot of places. I felt like the city was too small for me at first, in terms of there isn't as much going on. Although what I've found is there is a lot of stuff going on you just have to make a bit more effort to find stuff.

 

[mauvais]

People live in suburbia because they have children don't they?

No. No kids, not having any. In our 30s and not big fans of 24/7 noise and busy-ness, or having no space or land, or the problems that come with living in city centres. Nice to be able to opt in and out as mentioned earlier, in our case via 20 minutes on a tram.

 

[hash tag]

Betjeman wrote a lot on and explored a lot of suburbia or metroland if around London Metroland, 100 years on: what's become of England’s original vision of suburbia?

 

[weltweit]

For me the issue is shared or free access spaces. Britain is pretty small and most of it is owned by someone or other who don't want you on their land. So free to enter parks, forests, rights of way etc all matter a great deal to me, countryside or city.

I remember flying into Gatwick, in a window seat, looking down on the fields and houses and gardens, realising that each tiny plot was someone's property, onto which entry would be prohibited.