I’m not saying mid-sized towns have no amenities. I’m saying the sheer density of NYC provides many more opportunities. If you’re claiming that even mid sized towns have dozens of museums accessible by public transit… they do not.
But to provide more context to my original comment about serendipitous connections: the default path for many people living in NYC is not to move to a mid-sized town (fewer job opportunities, for one), it’s to move to the suburbs. Out in the burbs (where I’ve spent more time than I ever care to) you’re driving absolutely everywhere and people are scattered all over the place. That is what I don’t want.
Well you talked about having ice cream and going to parks, so I'd say yes pretty much everywhere in the US has that. Other places are also much more walkable than Brooklyn, tons of smaller cities have started focusing on revitalizing their downtowns and providing walkable communities.
> In my experience NYC has nothing in it that you can't find in dozens of other US cities for far cheaper.
Then you haven’t truly experienced NYC, I’m sorry. It’s simply not a true statement.
I’m not saying NYC is for everyone or that you even have to like it, but it having nothing you can’t find in dozens of other cities? To paraphrase Principal Skinner: “can it be that I simply don’t know NYC as well as I should? No, it is all of the seven million inhabitants who are wrong”
I 100% concur with afavour that regularly running into acquaintances around town is magical, and wonderful, and pro-social, and a rare privilege.
I've had that experience only once in my life, when I lived literally in the center of town in Palo Alto, and ran into coworkers very regularly on the street, because our company gave us a subsidy of hundreds of dollars every month to live within a 10-block radius of the office. And these were misanthropic pale boys who mostly had no hobbies and avoided going outside and meeting other people if they could help it.
I've lived in 200k-sized cities and I've lived in college towns and I've lived in quaint, "walkable" suburbs. And nowhere have I had the experience of serendipity as a result of density, because in all those other places I would get in a car and drive to a specific destination point and meet no one either there or en route. And even if there were some amenities I could "easily" walk to within "only" a mile or so, no one else I knew walked there with any regularity, so I'd never see any friends around town.
Objections that go "but I'm happy with my life in XYZ location, how can you say that" are missing the point. If you haven't experienced the difference, it is as stark as night and day.
The experience of serendipity of urban life is available in almost every mid-tier city. No one in this thread has offered any explanation or example of some unique thing that NYC has that other places don't that leaves their their poor, clueless denizens deprived of cultural benefits they just can't understand.
I’m not saying mid-sized towns have no amenities. I’m saying the sheer density of NYC provides many more opportunities. If you’re claiming that even mid sized towns have dozens of museums accessible by public transit… they do not.
But to provide more context to my original comment about serendipitous connections: the default path for many people living in NYC is not to move to a mid-sized town (fewer job opportunities, for one), it’s to move to the suburbs. Out in the burbs (where I’ve spent more time than I ever care to) you’re driving absolutely everywhere and people are scattered all over the place. That is what I don’t want.