What happened to living in a city?

By listening to Downtown from the voice of Petula Clark, you just wondered what kind of downtown she is referring… Maybe that clarify the point, when years later, when a TV series was about to end, a group of friends summarize that by commenting on the desire of one of them, to live in a place where “kids could ride their bikes in the street”: So you want to buy a house in the 50's?

The truth is that cities are less and less livable. Or you could say they are OK to live, but the quality of your life won’t be that great. You probably have to commute much more and stay less and less in your own place.

But one day they were a symbol of status and good life, and a high quality of life. Safety, prosperity and welfare were a synonym of living in a city; the bigger, the better.

What happened?

First, there are the visible facts of cars and more cars, of pollution in many places, the increasing population taking people to feel more insecure. After all, paradoxically the normal consequence of granting good quality to others is that gradually the numbers increase and quality decreases.

But there is something more: the disconnection of people with earth and the natural vocation of human beings as rural people. It happened slowly along the centuries, starting from our fascination for the cities – which were, in the beginning, rural outposts for selling and exchanging – attracting us to live there and to adapt our lives and customs to that. And losing some of it…

Probably if you live in a city you will think it is impossible to come back to those old values and way of life when you trusted completely in your neighbor and simplicity was a rule. Probably it is very difficult to go back there and if for some reason you are able to rebuild your city, probably it will attract so many people those values will get lost eventually again.

There is however something you can do, and it is related to your own values. Maybe you can’t avoid one-hour traffic but you can have a smile in your face and do something useful for yourself during that time. Perhaps you cannot prevent the noise and pollution, but you can make your mind silent and clean.

I tell you, it works. You start to love your time in the city, or wherever you are living. You start to love who you are, no matter your situation. You can see the quality of your life increases too. Externally, we can do little, but internally, we can do it all.