What does one of the big 3 cities in the US (NYC, LA, Chicago) offer that is not available in one of the other big cities (Phoenix, Houston, San Diego, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Seattle, etc) or cities with 250k+ people?
I assume the art culture (music, theater) in NYC and LA is not available anywhere else. Aside from that though, aren’t all big cities more or less the same with regards to options for entertainment, sports, food, shopping, etc?
It’s not just the “art” culture–it’s the overall atmosphere and mind-set of the people. At least, that would explain the difference between L.A. and San Diego for me. For me, going to San Diego is like a trip to Mayberry RFD, even though materially it’s place with a lot of “big-city” concerns.
The real difference is not in what the “big three” have in terms of shopping, food, etc., but what negative attributes the other cities don’t have, i.e., traffic, etc.
Well, Atlanta traffic sucks.
It might be better now but public transportation in Phoenix sucked big time, whereas NYC has a great subway system.
I"ve never been to LA or NYC, only Chicago. I don’t see ‘that’ much difference between Chicago and Indianapolis or Cincinnati but the smaller cities have a much lower cost of living and traffic is better. But I didn’t really explore Chicago when I was there.
As far as what negative attributes those smaller cities do not have I"d say terrible traffic, long work commutes, high cost of living, large dangerous ghettos.
The megalopolitan cities also evolve more of a collection of sub-cities – e.g. LA is old LA plus Hollywood plus the port plus various different communities in the Valley plus etc. etc. AND on top of that scores of intertwined/enclaved/exclaved other urban entities. So for a lot of practical purposes, one megalopolitan city is really a couple of dozen regular large cities made contiguous – so, say, whatever Houston has that San Diego doesn’t and what San Diego has and Cincinatti doesn’t but Cincinatti has something else that Houston doesn’t, a Chicago or a NYC probably has all of those (and maybe multiples of them) within reasonable (by local standards) commuting distance.
Places like Chicago, LA, NY, got their cultural/economic center status by having become hubs of economic/industrial activity first and then that turned into a self-feeding cycle for expansion/attraction – but that also has meant they accrued enough economic/social/political capital to continue to maintain vitality rather than doing a Detroit as the economy changed.
I think above a certain size (my guess is a metro area above 5 million or so), there’s not anything you can’t realistically get.
What may differ is the relative abundance of said items based on geography, culture, etc…
For example, Dallas has an Italian food store called “Jimmy’s” which is pretty good as those places go, and Houston has Antone’s and Nundini’s. However, Boston, NYC and Chicago probably have places as good or better by the dozens.
On the other hand, finding a good Mexican grocery isn’t an issue around here or in Houston; the question is WHICH one out of probably a couple hundred in either city. While I’m sure NYC and Boston both have Mexican grocers, I’m also sure the number is probably in the high single digits or low double digits. Same goes for restaurants, arts, and culture.
The only thing I can think of that you can get in NYC that you can’t really get elsewhere in the US is the Broadway-style theater. I mean, you do get the traveling companies doing Broadway shows, but there aren’t full-time theaters like there are in NYC or London.
Not only that, but there’s a 24/7 lifestyle in the biggest cities that simply doesn’t exist in other places.
Once when I was in NYC, my boss and I found ourselves on 6th Avenue somewhere around 2 a.m. He decided the hotel was too far away to walk, and stuck out his arm to hail a cab. One stopped for us literally within 30 seconds. That’s not going to happen in just any big city.
If I blindfolded you and set you down at a random spot in any metropolitan city, could you guess the population of that city within 2-3 million? Most of the people living in New York have never been inside an art museum, nor to the opera or a Broadway show. There is MLB baseball and/or NFL football in more than 30 cities. (By the way, there is no major college football in New York or Chicago, nor half of the other top 30 cities, like Detroit, Houston, Washington, Philadelphia.) No movie release opens in NY or LA more than a day before it opens in Kalamazoo.
Some of the top-30 cities do not have non-stop trans-oceanic flight departures, but how often do you need to rush to Barcelona from Cincinnati and can’t afford to waste a couple of hours in a flight change?
I think a lot of it is just elitism. There’s probably no objective line that separates “ordinary” cities like Houston and Philadelphia from “extraordinary” cites like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. I’m sure the residents of Houston and Philadelphia consider their cities to have something intangible that lesser cities like San Antonio or Pittsburgh or Phoenix lack. And I have enough experience with New York City to know they’d laugh at the idea of Chicago and Los Angeles being at the same level as New York.
Art culture exists outside of NYC and LA. Even many med and small cities have a vibrant Arts culture. To me, it’s simply the sheer volume of opportunities in the Arts in NYC and LA that set them apart.
Houston offers the 60mph Parking Lot, sometimes referred to as Freeways. We called it that when I lived there because those freeways were always crowded, even outside of rush hour. Merging is an Art of its own in Houston! Imagine cars piled so close to each other you could engage in carnal acts with passengers in adjoining vehicles, yet still moving at regular freeway speeds (outside of rush hours in certain locations).
People think you’re a total maniac if you learned to drive in Houston and move somewhere with more sedate drivers. It took me a long time to understand that people actually intentionally drive UNDER the speed limits elsewhere.
My family has discussed the issue of whether traffic in Houston has objectively gotten worse or if it just subjectively seems worse because we’ve all gotten older.
Yes, if it’s NYC. There’s a level of energy that I haven’t experienced anywhere else. And having lived there for 25 years, I will always miss it.
There’s a level of specialization that you only get in super-cities. A bookshop that stocks nothing but mysteries or architecture guides, museums of particular periods of art, not just an Italian restaurant but a Neapolitan restaurant. A store that sells rocks and lapidary stuff; another one that has nothing but sex toys for lesbians. Bagels aren’t donut-shaped white bread at the supermarket, and the bagel bakery is open around the clock. Down the street is the German apothecary, the Caribbean bakery with four types of spicy meat pies, or the Syrian chocolatier who studied his craft in Belgium.
Along with the specialization, there’s profusion. If you like Art Deco buildings, there’s not four in town worth photographing—there are 40 of them. If you like experimental theater, it’s not a student production spring semester at the local state university, but a dozen storefront theaters whose casts will next year be on Saturday Night Live or in films screened at Sundance. You get to see not just the Hollywood blockbusters, but the obscure foreign films you only hear of on Oscar night—or Lawrence of Arabia or Patton in 70mm, or an evening of selected industrial shorts or adult animation. TV commercials for films, you notice, say “now open in select cities, opening everywhere July 26th.”
Wha? Yeah, a lot of them do. Not the big budget blockbuster films in wide release, but many smaller films play in NY and LA for a while before opening elsewhere and sometimes *only *play in NY/LA.
As someone who grew up there & lived there until the age of 26, and who’s lived elsewhere for the past 15 years, I think the overall traffic seems better- the big construction projects are mostly over, and the beltway is complete, neither of which was the case from what seems like 1982-1999. Something on 59, 610 or the Beltway was being built or under construction during that stretch.
However, the drivers themselves have become considerably more insane since 1999, although that may just be my perspective, living somewhere that people drive relatively sedately.
New York has Broadway, while Cleveland has Playhouse Square. Yes, Broadway is bigger. But even in Bozeman, MT (population 30k), you could go see a play every weekend, continually, without ever repeating: How much bigger than that do you realistically need?
The only thing I ever found in New York City that couldn’t be found in Cleveland was an abundance of people saying how many things you could find in New York City but not elsewhere.
There are a number of neighborhoods in Indianapolis you can comfortably live in for weeks at a time without leaving, but they’re nothing like the microcosm neighborhoods you’re going to find in Chicago or New York. 10-block areas where you can, without a car, live, work, eat at a different restaurant on a regular basis, shop for food, clothes and other retail options - and have access to reliable mass transit? Nope - not unless you live right downtown in Indy.
Oh, no, you’re not going to fool me. I’ve been visiting Houston for decades and I know the truth: the construction is never over.
That may be true, but I don’t really see the appeal of that personally (have everything in walking distance). Indy public transit is terrible, and Chicago’s public transit is a lot better. You need a car to get around in Indy unless you like waiting for a bus that only comes once every 30+ minutes. Indy doesn’t even have a public transit train system, just buses. In Chicago I was always able to get where I needed to go (it sucks that they jacked up the rates of one day passes recently. Bastards).
Having said that, I don’t know if the higher cost of living in the kinds of neighborhoods you are describing is worth the convenience. A car is a lot cheaper than the rent differential between living in the edge city areas of a large town vs living in a central location in Chicago or NYC.
Plus there are a lot of areas that are far from commercial sectors. When I went to visit family in Chicago, they had to make long trips to the outskirts of town to do their shopping.
One thing that sucks is most large cities do not, I don’t think, have various ethnic enclaves. Chicago and NYC have all these different cultural and ethnic enclaves. I could visit the Jewish part of town, China town, Greektown, I think other large cities are divided more by income (yuppies, ghetto, etc).