I think what R.T. says is as often true as not. I come from a small town
rural area and live in the city. While I am first generation, my dad
after moving to the US, was raised in Brooklyn. He loved moving to a small
town. My sibs live in Milwaukee -1 suburban, and Chicago - 2 urban. I
couldn't wait to leave home and move to the city - but I tried NY and it was
too much for me. I love being urban - I live a mile and a half from
downtown and I can literally walk. I know ALOT of other people who grew up
in rural areas, (or even in the suburbs, if you can imagine!) who feel the
same - and they're not just
in Kenwood - they're in Seward, the Wedge. Loring Park and downtown.
There are also alot of corporate transferees coming from Chicago, Detroit,
St. Louis, etc. who are living in Woodbury and Eden Prairie. Maybe they
lived in the suburbs in those places too and that's what they feel
comfortable with.
What I am bumbling towards saying is that people live where they are
comfortable, a place feeds their soul or heart or chi or whatever. After
the splendors of the bucolic countryside, I needed traffic, restaurants art
and people, (in a more user friendly venue than Manhattan). My dad needed
ducks, creeks and woods. So, while I get urban, I get rural, I don't get
suburban.
The people who drive me crazy are the ones I meet traveling who tell me they
are from Minneapolis, and later admit they've from the suburbs, and they've
never been downtown - never been to the Guthrie, Institute, IDS or even
the city lakes for god's sake, and consider themselves as being from the
city. In my judgmental and draconian opinion, I don't think they are from
Minneapolis. I think they are from Mendota Heights or Maple Grove or
Rogers, etc. and they might as well be living in Wilmar. (Not that Wilmar
isn't a very fine place, you understand.) Maybe, just maybe they live in
the Minn/Wis in and outstate duo-metropolitan-area. But they don't live in
the Twin Cities. And don't even get me started on what I think is going to
happen to those suburban mini-mansions in 20 to 30 years.
----- Original Message -----
From: "R.T.Rybak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2000 10:55 AM
Subject: WhoRWe/was:bradys,mobys,subfright,etc
> Wizard and I were chatting offline about this thread and came up with a
> question I wanted to ask the class:
>
> Do you think people in this region are less likely to really embrace city
> life because so many people are from rural areas?
>
> Here's where I'm going with this:
>
> Look at a map. You can go for hundreds of miles in any direction....esp.
> north and west...and not find another big city. Teenagers who want to
leave
> their small towns in northern Minnesota, or Iowa, or South Dakota or even
> Montana end up coming to the Twin Cities. (It's not like, say, Milwaukee:
A
> kid growing up in smalltown Wisconsin picks between Chicago, Minneapolis,
> Madison or Milwaukee...so they really don't get as many people from small
> towns. We're the main draw for hundreds of miles.)
>
> We're kind of like a lake with a massive watershed, draining people from a
> huge range of rural areas.
>
> When you talk to urban geographers about this they talk about this pattern
> of rural kids moving to the Twin Cities, settling down in the suburbs and
> creating this region with a city surrounded by burbs made up of a huge
> percentage of people who have never lived in an urban area. It's not like
> New York, or Chicago or a lot of other cities where there are generations
of
> people. We are really only now raising our first couple generations of
city
> people....(My dad's from New Prague, I was raised in the city, my kids are
> raised in the city and each generation you get more and more city and less
> and less rural.)
>
> I never really paid too much attention to this until I got on the rubber
> chicken circuit for the Downtown Council. I'd speak at all these Kiwanis
> and Rotary lunches in the suburbs and in the end was really amazed how
> little so many people really knew about the city. There was a lot of
crime
> talk, and some veiled talk about race, but it was really mostly just
> generally not being very comfortable with being in a city.
>
> So I do think that when we get into our reverse urban snobbism...I'm an
> offender...it's important to remember that part of this comes from who we
> are.
>
> R.T. Rybak
>
>
