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Here at The Portly Politico, I like to roleplay as some kind of Jeffersonian country squire, overseeing my little homestead while contemplating the grape harvest. As much as I love living in a small, country town, yours portly is not immune to the allure of the big city.
Naturally, I have little desire to live in one, and most certainly not the one that is the topic of today’s post. However, there is a vibrancy and energy to large cities that is intoxicating, especially for those of an artistic bent. Cities can be cesspools of crime, homelessness, and progressive politics, but they also pulse with an electric creativity and a sense of hustle—everyone is working hard to survive and create in a sea of humanity.
Granted, I don’t want to live in an overpriced shoebox, isolated by the sheer size of that very sea. Some people thrive in that environment, while others should probably live on forty acres in the woods somewhere. The rest of us are somewhere in the middle. Most Americans don’t want to live like lab rats in an urban playground.
All that aside, cities are cool—the seats of civilization, as Milo once argued. Despite its crime-ridden reputation, I think Chicago, Illinois makes for a good illustration of cities as the centers of art and architecture—of civilization. After all, what is a civilization but the expression of its cultural achievements? Few cities exemplify achievements in architecture more than that great epicenter of nineteenth-century America, Chicago.
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The Portly Politico 
I’m not a fan of big cities either. When you’ve been to enough of them, you find they are all just as generic as the next. They may have their own historic centres – the Lincoln memorial in DC, the Colliseum in Rome – but they tend to have the same stores, the same eateries and the same forms of entertainment. Even city people have a sameness about them. We live near a small city and even that contains the characteristics of a big city. I avoid it like the plague.
Europe at one time used to be fun to travel and then they changed the currency too. That might not be an issue for some people but to me, some of the magic of travelling is lost when you find yourself using the same currency in Italy as you can in Spain and Greece. Some of the Scandinavian countries still use the Krone and we use the pound but give it time and we’ll be using the same system everywhere, most possibly without notes and coins.
I’ve never been a fan of uniformity. The city way of doing things seems to be spreading further out with each passing year. I’m glad I won’t be around when we finally turn into a version of Airstrip One.
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