Where would you rather live: the city, the suburbs, or the country? Read on as Lauren Gaston-Hawkins, Sharifa Love, and Kate Brubacher defend their respective locales, and you’ll be better prepared to decide.

Representing…the City

Nothing can compare to city life: the fast pace of the familiar hustle, the beams of light in the sky that compete with stars, and the soft hum and whine of traffic and sirens that lull you to sleep. My childhood danced to the beat of the city. The chimes of the subway whisked me away into tunnels of wonder; the assorted faces wove an international story. The smells emitted from a cultural mixing pot and the colors of flea markets and racing cars tell the story of my life. No two days are ever the same in the city. One can listen to articulated university lectures or smooth and sporadic jazz; one can look down onto political hearings or peer upward at the stained glass of a cathedral, all in one weekend.

I must admit that city life is not for everyone; living on the pulse, dancing to the rhythm of time is a hard-won skill. There are numerous things happening at once, all vying for your attention. Some may prefer the quiet, unhurried country life. But while pastures are beautiful, they are endlessly green. If you want predictability, you want the country. Some may argue that the suburbs offer the best of both worlds. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. While the suburbs are known for their manicured lawns and looming houses, they are often a homogenous “mix” of doctors, lawyers and other “educated” types. Meanwhile, the city educates its children about life, the kind one leads outside of a classroom. “The suburbs are safer but still offer the entertainment of a nearby city,” many suburbanites often argue, repeating the same rhetoric that lured them there. Interestingly, they fail to mention the hours lost in traffic and the crimes that plague them too. Like many city dwellers, I enjoy a respite to the country and have many suburban friends. However, talk of new houses in the neighborhood becomes tedious, and there are only so many possible configurations of cow spots.

I will always be a city girl. There is no greater feeling than your heart pulsating to the tempo of the city. A wise woman once told me, “Variety is the spice of life.” If this is true, the city contains every seasoning imaginable.

–LAUREN GASTON-HAWKINS

Representing…the Suburbs

Where is the best place to live? The desire to live in close proximity with many others takes the country off the list. With only two choices left, where is the best place to live? While initially one might be drawn to the city because of all its resources, upon closer examination the suburbs move into the forefront.

The suburbs offer an incredible selling point, access, which has also been termed location, location, location. Suburbanites have access to what might be called the best of both worlds, the ability either to head to the countryside for some fresh air, green space, and large trees, or to venture into the city and experience music, art, museums, and other activities that add spice to life. The choices are nearly endless.

Although they have access to both the country and the city, suburbanites do not have to deal with the problems of either. With every positive cultural aspect of the city comes an opposite drawback. Cities have very real problems such as economic depression, poor education, street violence, impoverished populations, under-funded projects, failing governments, and hard-to-access healthcare. The suburban community does not have to face these issues. The suburbanite does not pay taxes for the resources of the city, and in turn he or she can cast a blind eye to the problems in the municipality. The suburbanite also avoids the utter isolation of the rural area through constant access to careers, commerce, education, and entertainment.

With one-stop shopping in malls and conglomerate superstores, well-established youth leagues to provide hours of entertainment fueled by orange slices and Capri Suns, Booster programs, local movie theater hang-outs, and chain restaurants side by side with local digs, the suburbs hold their ground as the best place to live. The suburbanite is blessed with the privilege to occupy himself or herself with trivial concerns and live in quiet and self-righteous dispassion.

–SHARIFA LOVE

Representing…the Country

When I was a child I thought that crops demarcated municipalities. Upon leaving a town, a new one could not begin until you passed a sufficient number of wheat fields. Agriculture gave shape and substance to my world. It didn’t just frame borders geographically; it literally and figuratively defined communities. The people of Newton, Kansas were enveloped in corn and alfalfa, wheat and sorghum. There was no question where we ended and began.

This had practical implications. Just as there was no ambiguity what was “in town” or “out of town,” there was likewise no doubt about where one physically belonged. You shopped at the same grocery store as everyone else. You went to the only high school. Whether your family rested on generations of wealth or made a weekly trip to the welfare office, you all sat by each other in homeroom. You also attended the same parties on Friday night, because there was only one. Skaters, drop-outs, daddy’s girls and quarterbacks convened on common—and equal—ground when the thrill of underage drinking was at hand.

Newton’s smallness and isolation necessitated that people become woven into each other’s lives. This is not to say that we didn’t face the same divisions and problems as the rest of America. It’s just that people different from you could not be avoided. There was no opting out. No gourmet grocer, no upscale restaurants, none of the economic partitioning that keeps the classes out of each other’s hair.

I sometimes laugh, then, when people speak of cities as diverse compared to the necessarily provincial small town. The urban economy allows for largely homogeneous, self-contained sub-communities to live and shop and socialize with only their own kind. Specialty delis, boutiques, square miles of nothing but sprawling homes and antiseptic strip-malls—places where the poor or immigrants or just those of certain taste may never have cause to enter. In small towns, limited options mean increased interaction. Maybe we were all at the same Mexican restaurant on Main Street because we had to be, but at least we were all eating together.

Make no mistake; I was dying to leave. But I’ll spend the rest of my life dying to go back. I don’t think I could ever return to Newton for my life and career, but I’ll always long for that place where there were great differences among us and little distance between us.

–KATE BRUBACHER

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 6:18 am and is filed under Question/Debate, Urbane. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.