A State of Mind

There are a lot of advantages of a big city like New York City. It’s multicultural with culture of any kind going on all the time. There’s a history which both tourists and life-long residents can connect to. There’s a possibility to do anything, and to be anyone.

The problem with big cities is that they can be depressing. There are too many people, and that there’s too much going on. There are too many people rushing around. The problem with cities is that to add more people they either have to expand outwards – to suburbs – or upwards to add more people. As cities expand upwards the people have very little space to live.

One thing I noticed about being in NYC recently is that there are no trees. It’s very depressing that everything is concrete. A park here or there, or a tree growing in the cemented sidewalk hardly counts as having any greenery.

My guess is that a lot of people in cities are depressed. Surrounded by concrete with little space to call their own, and little space to find privacy or alone-time hardly sounds idyllic.