A city asks a lot of you. It calls for you to enjoy its vistas. Its soil demands that you take great care to produce the finest quality foods – so that savoring the gastronomical delights of this specific patch of earth allows you to marry the food and the land together in your memory. The sweet corn of a small town in Iowa. The acidity of ceviche in Lima. The salty jamon of Barcelona. The lardo di Colonnata.
A city allows you to come and it allows you to leave. The city has a special power so that you often leave with regret and enter with great joy.
The buildings of cities can be incredibly familiar and mysteriously unknown. You know the naves, crevices, nooks and crannies of your local church yet you enter the majestic Notre Dame with awe and trepidation – not knowing what mysteries and stories have taken place within her walls in your absence.
Running through the many alleys and pathways of a small town can take years – in larger cities, you will never know all of the roads that lead to homes, restaurants, and places of work.
A city can be an extension of your identity and a city’s identity can be an extension of the persona of its inhabitants. The authors, composers, artists, architects, and athletes all defining the existence of a place that could otherwise have been left empty.
Can you imagine a London without Shakespeare? Can you imagine a Vienna without Mozart? What about a Florence without Da Vinci? A modern Paris without the Eiffel Tower...surely not. Or what would Chicago now be without Michael Jordan or Oprah?
So the city continues to exist because we continue to live collectively. Our life intertwining with other lives in many different places.
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