I’ve lived in a big city for years now. Never seen anybody get mugged, or shot, or carjacked, despite doing activist work that often has me visiting poor minority neighborhoods.
The only time I ever really felt uneasy was when I had to walk alone at night through a neighborhood where all the businesses had bars on the windows. Worst thing that happened was a couple of people asking me for money, and they didn’t give me any shit when I said I didn’t carry cash.
But any time I visit the small town where I grew up there’s always someone or another acting like I came back from a fucking warzone lmao
It’s really just a personal preference. I don’t like living in crowded places. It’s not anti-social or misanthropic. I like other people. But I get agitated in crowded areas. It makes me unhappy to be constantly surrounded by people.
I don’t need a personal fief. I don’t care if I lived in a collectived area where I was close to my neighbors. That sounds fine. But it’s important to me that I have nature available to me. So if I could walk out of my collective into some trees I don’t own, that would be great. Public parks are okay, but they aren’t the same, and they’re always packed with people, too.
I’m sorry, but there’s no way to reimagine cities in a way that they won’t be crowded and noisy. People make a lot of noise just bustling about without cars. Some people like that feeling, and that’s cool. But I don’t.
I’m not trying to get you to admit living in cities is better than rural areas, if you don’t like cities that’s fine. I’m trying to make the point that your personal preference is linked to the politics of our time. So the original post is making fun of unfounded conservative fears of cities. But then the first commenter (which I realize is not you) comes in and says “oh but they have a point I hate cities too” and gets mad when people jump down his throat about it, even though many of his anti-city arguments parallel reactionary anti-city arguments (dirty, overpopulated, elitist, polluted in contrast with the pure trees and nature of the empty [another loaded characterization] salt of the earth rural areas). I’m not accusing you or him of having these beliefs, or calling your personal preferences “wrong” but trying to point out what many people hear when you say these things, and especially when you characterize your preferences in such a way and why people jumped down the original commenter’s throat.
Okay, thanks comrade.
I guess I should have been clearer and not attached my opinion to someone else’s. For the record, I agree with you that these places need to be reimagined.
This is the second time that I’ve had a similar conversation on Hexbear. From my perspective, I’m just saying I don’t enjoy cities, and I get a bunch of people telling me that, actually, I do like cities.
I understand why that’s happening now.