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This is a recent problem with big cities and it primarily concerns the price of real estate. New York in the 60s was a truly counterculture place because with a

by mlsu 2y ago

This is a recent problem with big cities and it primarily concerns the price of real estate. New York in the 60s was a truly counterculture place because with a little bit of money you could live downtown and afford to do your art. Now if you want to be an artist in New York City, you have 2 options: be a full time artist but completely aligned with wealthy gallery culture (i.e., be appealing to "mainstream") or work in finance and do art on the side. This is why NYC produces no actually interesting culture anymore. Same is true of Berlin, CDMX, etc. such places are maximally interesting within the constraint of "must be wealthy" which necessarily excludes lots of cultural expression. They are also riding on the interestingness that was generated decades ago when the financial situation was different.

badc0ffee 2y ago
Where is the actually interesting culture coming from? I'm in my 40s, and a parent, so I feel like (at least for now) I've lost the ability to tell and the inclination to seek it out anymore anyway. Being a seriously big city, NY must still have "home-grown" art and culture, like its hip-hop scene or the modern equivalent? Kids are still growing up in rent controlled apartments surrounded by hundreds of thousands of other kids, even if starving artists aren't arriving from the outside like they used to.
- speed_spread 2y ago
  Culture grows at boundaries, in places of uncertainty and chaos. Culture tests the limit of what is acceptable. As we start building permanent structures (such as a family) we naturally start avoiding these zones of turbulence because they are challenging to navigate and we need the energy elsewhere. It's ok.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Where is the actually interesting culture coming from Your kid's bedroom (if your a Gen X parent). Youth culture is now heavily social media or short content based, making it easier to reach out to large audiences while staying at home. You can build and manage an entire community of friends just by using Discord or other similar products, so you can develop a network effect without having to be in-person. Take a look at SoundCloud Rap, TikTok shorts, Gamer Youtube, Podcasts, ASMR, etc. Also, a lot of us younger people had some of our most formative years during the lockdowns, which turbocharged online culture.
camgunz 2y ago
I think you're right about all this. Fundamentally, world cities have just become too expensive. If you want to live in them you have to be wealthy or earn a high income, neither of which are historically associated with culture generation. When I moved to NYC my cohort was initially a lot of former SF residents, and their main reason by far for leaving was that there's more than just tech people in NYC and that's so refreshing. Some of that has to be a bubble effect, because NYC isn't tons better: you're looking at lots of people in tech and finance. None of this is conducive to creating the kinds of environments where art thrives: low cost of housing, sufficient part-time day jobs, and weird, diverse, inspiring milieus. I think the fix is really simple: build more housing and build more public transit to get there (more or less the Tokyo model, structurally). Unfortunately the US seems to be uniquely trash at both, so my guess is the big cities' loss is the middle cities' gain. And this is maybe healthy: big Emerald Cities domiciling a huge percentage of the professional/managerial class along with a similarly huge percentage of artists has created all kinds of cultural and political problems.
- zem 2y ago
  living in another insanely high rent city, people talk about the cost of housing a lot, but one thing that doesn't come up enough is the cost of commercial real estate. you simply can't afford to run a small business that caters to a minority culture because the rents will kill you, not to mention the precarity of never knowing how much they will be jacked up the next time your lease is up for renewal. that has a chilling effect on community diversity as well.
  - camgunz 2y ago
    Absolutely yeah, this is why you get loss leader prestige stores and dozens of clone businesses because that's what unimaginative banks will finance. It'll give you expensive salads, but that's about it.

by mlsu 2y ago

badc0ffee 2y ago

Where is the actually interesting culture coming from? I'm in my 40s, and a parent, so I feel like (at least for now) I've lost the ability to tell and the inclination to seek it out anymore anyway. Being a seriously big city, NY must still have "home-grown" art and culture, like its hip-hop scene or the modern equivalent? Kids are still growing up in rent controlled apartments surrounded by hundreds of thousands of other kids, even if starving artists aren't arriving from the outside like they used to.

speed_spread 2y ago
Culture grows at boundaries, in places of uncertainty and chaos. Culture tests the limit of what is acceptable. As we start building permanent structures (such as a family) we naturally start avoiding these zones of turbulence because they are challenging to navigate and we need the energy elsewhere. It's ok.
alephnerd 2y ago
> Where is the actually interesting culture coming from Your kid's bedroom (if your a Gen X parent). Youth culture is now heavily social media or short content based, making it easier to reach out to large audiences while staying at home. You can build and manage an entire community of friends just by using Discord or other similar products, so you can develop a network effect without having to be in-person. Take a look at SoundCloud Rap, TikTok shorts, Gamer Youtube, Podcasts, ASMR, etc. Also, a lot of us younger people had some of our most formative years during the lockdowns, which turbocharged online culture.

camgunz 2y ago

I think you're right about all this. Fundamentally, world cities have just become too expensive. If you want to live in them you have to be wealthy or earn a high income, neither of which are historically associated with culture generation. When I moved to NYC my cohort was initially a lot of former SF residents, and their main reason by far for leaving was that there's more than just tech people in NYC and that's so refreshing. Some of that has to be a bubble effect, because NYC isn't tons better: you're looking at lots of people in tech and finance. None of this is conducive to creating the kinds of environments where art thrives: low cost of housing, sufficient part-time day jobs, and weird, diverse, inspiring milieus. I think the fix is really simple: build more housing and build more public transit to get there (more or less the Tokyo model, structurally). Unfortunately the US seems to be uniquely trash at both, so my guess is the big cities' loss is the middle cities' gain. And this is maybe healthy: big Emerald Cities domiciling a huge percentage of the professional/managerial class along with a similarly huge percentage of artists has created all kinds of cultural and political problems.

zem 2y ago
living in another insanely high rent city, people talk about the cost of housing a lot, but one thing that doesn't come up enough is the cost of commercial real estate. you simply can't afford to run a small business that caters to a minority culture because the rents will kill you, not to mention the precarity of never knowing how much they will be jacked up the next time your lease is up for renewal. that has a chilling effect on community diversity as well.
- camgunz 2y ago
  Absolutely yeah, this is why you get loss leader prestige stores and dozens of clone businesses because that's what unimaginative banks will finance. It'll give you expensive salads, but that's about it.