A devoted reader recently responded to my criticism of the city's unfriendliness by saying:
It seems to me that one of the major problems of urban life is that we are surrounded by strangers. We constantly interact with people we don't know, and this creates (or allows for) a little less kindness than we'd experience if we all knew our neighbors.
My response:
While I do agree that we increasingly interact with strangers in very large cities, why are the dynamics a lot different in smaller cities, but still of a decent size? For example, on a walk in the city of Charlotte, NC, I was greeted with more than one smile and 'hey'. Charlotte, of course, is no village. There, too, you run into strangers, but perhaps friendly strangers?
1 comment:
Good point. We now run into greater complexity in the problem of human behavior. The "kind strangers" in Charlotte can partially be explained by the fact that there still exist geographic cultural differences within the United States. Charlotte, though increasing rapidly in size and financial strength, is still a "southern city". As a southern city, filled by at least a plurality of people from a southern culture, manners and common courtesy are more prevalent. DC on the other hand, located on the border of North and South, is a hybrid -- a city of Southern efficiency and Northern hospitality.
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