...and I need a particular city now. A particular type of city.

Well, we're sort of building(theoretically(spelling?), of course) a dilated city. A city composed of, as people here like to say, of 1001 towns.

The problems that comes to mind with this is that of Identity, how to make an identity global to all the territory so that when an outsider ask one of the inhabitants of this "Valle Central city" where they're from, they actually refer to the whole of the valle central(central valley) and not to their specific town.
Yet the idea of specifical identities throughout the "compact" spaces of this dilated city remains. We're not to mogenize the territory.

So basically, I'm looking for a "compact" city that sort of has strong local identities INSIDE its global identity, but whose inhabitants still refer to it as their city, when speaking with outsiders.

What first came to my mind was New York, because as far as I know, you can really tell apart the identity of the different... districts?? I dunno what they are, but well Manhattan & brookly and all that stuff. Though I really don't know to what extent is that so.

Anyone else has a better example? I'd thank you a lot

esso.

--------------------------------------------
Quiero hacer contigo
lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.

Estërion, La Rata Feliz.

...of what you're talking about. We all call ourselves "New Yorkers" when talking to outsiders, but if two people in the metro area (including parts of NJ, Long Island, Westchester, and CT) ask each other where they're from, they'll answer with a neighborhood or town. There are whole swaths of the outer boroughs and NJ where you could walk all day and hear and see almost no English. Yet, something defines us as New Yorkers, and somehow, we're all proud of it, crazy as that may seem.

"We all call ourselves "New Yorkers" when talking to outsiders"

Maybe so but I was born and raised in manhattan so whenever someone tells me they're from New York, I ask them to be more specific and more often than not they'll say "Long Island" or more generally "just outside the city."


"There are whole swaths of the outer boroughs and NJ where you could walk all day and hear and see almost no English."

This is so much bullshit.


"Yet, something defines us as New Yorkers, and somehow, we're all proud of it, crazy as that may seem."

Pfft. Don't trust anyone who speaks in the collective.

Great post on Dolly, inferior one here.

Even here in the Bronx, where I live now, paying less for a four story, five bedroom house on the water than most people pay for a hovel in Yorkville, there are at least two neighborhoods in the Bronx, Italian and Irish, that fit my initial description perfectly. Want great dosa but don't speak Pail or Tamil? Well, I know a couple of places in Queens...

I'm guessing from your post that you're a Manhattanite or from one of the neighborhoods in Brooklyn pretending to be Manhattan without the Starbucks. Get out of "the city" and an entirely new world will open up.

And, for the record, I was born in Yonkers and have lived in NYC (including the Upper East side and Hells' Kitchen) since '98. Oh, and from '91-98 I was in Amsterdam and London and traveling nearly every month on business to Manhattan and stayed with friends on 10th avenue and the lower east side, *before* they cleaned them up and way before poseurs like you ever found it.

"pfft...?" don't trust people who never leave Manhattan.

"And, for the record, I was born in Yonkers and have lived in NYC (including the Upper East side and Hells' Kitchen) since '98."

Yeah great so you've been a New Yorker for 4 or 5 years, not including the time you spent here on business trips.


"stayed with friends on 10th avenue and the lower east side, *before* they cleaned them up and way before poseurs like you ever found it."

Wow that's def triff man, like you know, no money.

New York has no authenticity, no nailed down identity, no legitimacy. A gentrified neighborhood full of turists and moneymen is no less authentic than a rundown warzone inhabited by rabble and scum. Of course for some people poverty+urban decay=authenticity^cool. I might even be one of them. But only during daylight hours (because I have this morbid fear of death.)

Adresses don't make people cool. You outer burroughers don't need the cachet of the New York name--have a little confidence! You admitted as much in your first post by saying that you identify yourself as a new yorker to impress yokels and foreigners. Don't tell me this isn't the case. The burroughs have an urban rusticity that I sometimes find refreshing.

They're nice but everyone knows that when people think New York City, they mean Manhattan. And since Manhattan is an island it will always be a vertical city, a proper city, with a sky line and good mass transit, not the tricked out sprawl of the outer burroughs and burbs. That sounds bad but I really do love the burroughs. They depress me sometimes but I don't blame the burroughs themselves or the people that live there. It's the legacy of Robert Moses. Know what I mean?

Aren't all big cities like that? Sydney is a city made up of smaller "official cities" and suburbs, but ask someone where they're from and they'll say they're from a particular suburb, or location (north shore, northern beaches, inner city etc)... and each place has its own connotations as to what that person will be like, demographically speaking...

Wow. I thought I was an arrogant uber-elitist.

Polo, your last post was so insular, I don't even know where to start. With your juvenile mocking of the accents of people from Jersey or Long Island? The use of the terms "rabble," "scum" and "rustic" to describe some of our neighbors and neighborhoods? With the general derision heaped upon the outer boroughs and those neighborhoods you wouldn't wander at night? At least you recognize that urban blight doesn't equal interesting, although you somehow think my posts would indicate that.

Perhaps I should start with your personal affronts to someone about whom you know nothing - and obviously you aren't too good at reading between the lines. Few people who have jobs that take them on monthly transatlantic business trips, who live in Amsterdam and London and who own 5 bedroom houses in NYC have money problems. Ever stop to think that, being born and raised in Yonkers, I might have spent more than just the last 4 or 5 years in this town? Oh yeah, and I'm insecure and feel the need to "impress" people by telling them I live in New York. How else would you tell someone in an internet thread where you live if that's the topic of conversation? Think they know what Nolita is? Where City Island is? Yeah, I suppose all the people reading this board think you and I must be the coolest people in the planet to live here (or maybe just the biggest assholes for kidnapping this thread).

Then there's my favorite statement: "New York has no authenticity, no nailed down identity, no legitimacy." It's difficult to imagine a context in which this statement would have any meaning, but I'll try to rise to your defense. Maybe you mean that New York is a diverse place and that it defies simplifications?

You did write one thing with which I'll gladly agree - that addresses don't make people cool. Too bad you obviously don't believe it.

Again, apologies to all for this flame-like and tedious little exchange. I hope at least a few people got a chuckle out of our pettiness. Just wanted to make sure the folks out there know we're not all like that in NYC. Some of us don't think the world outside Manhattan is infested with barbarians.

I promise, no more responses from me about this no matter how severely baited (so fire away Polo... it's all you baby).

The city of neighborhoods. Or as the local media lump the whole area, "Chicagoland". When in Chicago if you ask someone where they're from, they'll tell you their neighborhood. When outside of Chicago, people from Schaumberg (a somewhat distant suburb) will tell you they're from Chicago.

And the North and South sides of the city, might as well be different cities, they're so different in culture and feel.

I was born in Oak Park, a suburb, but spent my formative years in Rogers Park, and Lincoln Square.

http://www.dreamtown.com/services/chicago-neighborhood-map.htm

I'd like to thank digitalprimate and polo McDonald for, all at once, reminding me about everything I don't miss about the city and graphically demonstrating Estërion's point.

...had that one coming. ZYirAH, thanks for voicing it with delicacy. Again, sorry for the distraction in what might still be a very interesting thread.

You are in New York now! Hable Espanol!
PS Two dollar subway fare soon. Damn.

Oh, I didn't mean to complain at all. I meant what I said about demonstrating the thread topic. I thought it was cool.

digitalprimate sez..

> Wow. I thought I was an arrogant uber-elitist.

FYI the proper response is "east coast. fuck u."

dirty east is a state of mind.. and thats pretty much the gist of it.

..
alias

Have to agree with Chicago. Used to be able to tell the ancestry a person has by what neighborhood they were in. Still can to some extent. Languages spoken still vary by what part of the city you are in. On parts of the South Side for example the grocery stores have their adds posted in spanish. Depending on which side of town you live on shows income and baseball team. Then, at the city level, people are Chicagoans and root for the same basketball, hockey, and football teams.

If it may be more fractured than New York because the divisions are much smaller. Instead of five buroughs you have a bunch of neighborhoods. People outside the Chicagoland area have no idea what you're talking about, so you live in Chicago to them even if it is actually the suburbs.

Let me say that after having lived in both the country and the city (around the world), that there's a certain inner harmony that is lost with the concrete landscapes.

A strong personal identity doesn't need that collective feeling...

Having lived in both cities, I can say few people with having lived in Chicago will have any idea about Lincon Park, Wrigleyville, or Printer's Row, but if you tell someone Harlem, Greenwich Village, or Bronx people will have an idea about what you are talking about. The reason why is that Chicago has almost always been one city, but New York City is made up of a union of smaller cities, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Long Island, and even some of these cities are made up even smaller cities.

Besides Chicago is still hung up on being the second city, although it is really the 3rd city, L.A. haves more people than Chicago.

OK, the anti-city.
I grew up in the city, yet when I meet people, the fearsome reputation takes over. 'You're from the city ITSELF?' It was and remains a good and livable place in parts, but like Chicago, surrounded by hostile suburbs.

Yes. You see, at the bottom of my post, where it says location chicago. It should probably say chicagoland, but I'm not real tight on definitions.

As for chicago being hung up as being the second city, I don't really think that's the case, anymore. I hate new york, honestly, mainly because they think so much of themselves. it's who you are, not where you're from. post-geography, all that. anyway...

I find that Seattleites are comically very much in this frame of mind. I say comically because Seattle is such a small city, relatively speaking. Yet its residents have reified what outsiders would call "neighborhoods" into what they themselves seem to consider boroughs. Probably due to the extreme differences in "hip factor" and flavor associated with certain neighborhoods. When at gatherings anywhere in the Puget Sound region, Seattleites will typically answer the question "where do you live?" with the name of their neighborhood, and discuss it like it is an independent city, especially people from Fremont and Green Lake. Folks from Queen Anne are the only notable exception. If they're decent people they usually won't cop to living on Queen Anne, due to the connotations of extreme wealth. I know one fellow who ended up with a house on QA almost by accident--his place is falling apart and he keeps a run-down pickup on the street out front. Local equivalent of a Beverly Hillbilly.

But I think virtually any city will be like that, to a lesser or greater extent. People use language contextually. If you're from San Diego speaking to another city resident, you'll likely identify yourselves as living in La Jolla or National City, because it will make sense in the context of that conversation. An outsider wouldn't know what the hell you're talking about, though, so you use the metro name.

We New Yorkers also think kind thoughts towards people from major European cities who wear a lot of black and also suffer from ADD...oh, and young Japanese if they spend money...no, really, we're not a bunch of high strung small dogs here...really...hey, you talking to ME...?

The Seattle post was interesting; I lived there only couple of months, but I completely fell in love the city; when I repatriated from Amsterdam, Seattle was a very close second to NYC. But I would have thought that, given how geographically spread out Seattle is, that there would be less not more attention paid to one's 'hood. From your post this seems to not be the case. So, one question then: how does West Seattle rank? Please tell me "low" so I can tease a friend of mine there without mercy...