It’s interesting how different everyone’s perspective is on this — it hadn’t crossed my mind before. My parents grew up in a town of one thousand people. There

It’s interesting how different everyone’s perspective is on this — it hadn’t crossed my mind before. My parents grew up in a town of one thousand people. There was a small bakery in the town and we had a leg up on all the other towns because we had a post office. If I ever misbehaved and did something I wasn’t supposed to, my parents knew before I even made it home because all of the residents knew each other and could call my parents to tell on me. Anything smaller than that was a village. Later, I moved to a city of about 300,000 people. There were multiple big box stores and, as you said, shops and restaurants open late into the night. That city was surrounded by suburbia. That was a big city in my eyes. Now, I live in a city of about 50,000 people and I guess that’s what a normal city looks like in my eyes. It has a few restaurants, a few somewhat culturally distinct areas, and a college and university. When I visited New York City, I would have characterized it as a metropolis, not just another city. Going back, I think the defining characteristic for a city is that it’s large enough not to keep everything in your head. You don’t know everyone or everything in the city anymore, so you’re forced to make subdivisions. It’s not “the bakery next to the Jones’s up the street” but instead it’s downtown/uptown/Westside/Eastside.