Cities are exciting playgrounds.
I moved to Boston almost two years ago on July 28 — a warm, happy day, full of sunshine and possibility. I picked up my keys for an apartment I had never toured, fought the urge to sink into a jet-lagged slumber on the floor of my bedroom (still lacking a bed frame and mattress), and set out to see the city.
Boston is gorgeous that time of year. The city is just beginning to shed its humidity, allowing summer to linger in pink skies, sailboats on the Charles, and couples indulging in the lazy sunshine. The city’s brick facades emanate a charming blend of history and freshness, and it took but a week for me to feel swept up in their currents. The city, with its pretty parks and cafes spilling onto sidewalks, felt like a haven for everyone that is slightly surprised to find themselves in Boston instead of New York in their twenties. Amidst the hollowness that came with leaving familiar collegial confines, the city posed a dazzling solution in a world that felt suddenly unmoored.
Early adulthood brings a unique flavor of isolation, carrying us away from communities we have been attached to all our lives. We are all a little adrift without our classrooms, dorms, and dining halls. The comfort and sense of cohesiveness we felt within larger systems is stripped away, and we are left to chart our lives with a deeper awareness of our independence and solitude.
Functionally, cities almost amplify isolation, encouraging anonymity and self-sufficiency. And yet, they simultaneously heighten our experience of humanity, bringing thousands of people, stories, and dreams together. There is an elusive quality to cities that fosters the opposite feeling: one of shared connectedness.
In my early days, I often retraced the same paths in specific pockets of the city: around Public Garden, up Beacon Hill, and by the river were some of my favourites. I remember strolling up Beacon Hill one winter afternoon, fairly nostalgic and wistful after a college friend’s visit. Walking down the cobblestones and reading historical plaques fixed on the walls of houses, I felt strangely immersed in the city’s character. The afternoon sunlight cut through the brisk cold and buoyed me into a vision decades past, where I could almost picture a group of people dusting the snow off their coats and settling down to discuss astronomy. I felt a strange thrill at this invitation into a history that had sprung forth in my mind. Even as an outsider and temporary visitor, I felt a connection with the city’s collective consciousness: a thrumming undertone from the cars and crowds of the present extending into decades past.
There is something about the consciousness of a city that combats modern isolation. Just like the delicate balance that allows life to thrive in natural ecosystems, cities are a triumph of urban ecosystems: an equipoise of thousands of stories, hopes, dreams, public and private spaces, and historical memories, that together forge a collective identity.
"Cities are a triumph of urban ecosystems: an equipoise of thousands of stories, hopes, dreams, public and private spaces, and historical memories, that together forge a collective identity."
In an interview with the Atlantic, Turkish writer Kenan Orhan says, “The beauty of cities, unlike the beauty of nature, is a constant reminder of humanity—humanity on a grand scale… It sometimes seems like the closest we can get to an experience of higher grace.”
But it’s not just the past: a city’s true vitality comes from the casual collisions between its several thousand inhabitants. In my urban economics class junior fall, we learned about the concept of “agglomeration economies,” which describes a clustering of economic activity driven by worker productivity in dense spaces. That is to say, the flow of ideas in cities can drive innovation and efficiency — the random encounters and organic conversations between strangers, friends, and acquaintances in coffee shops, office spaces, or on sidewalks. Urban economist Jane Jacobs writes about the importance of cities as “fertile grounds” for the dynamism of thousands of people. Gatherings of people are a source of “great and exuberant richness of differences and possibilities,” lending cities a rhythm beyond their utility.
Cities are repositories and mirrors. The spectrum of human experience unfolds within their expanses. Cities evoke a communal atmosphere for us all to share, paradoxically presenting a strange balm to the individualism they partially perpetuate.
"Cities evoke a communal atmosphere for us all to share, paradoxically presenting a strange balm to the individualism they partially perpetuate."
Partaking in a city’s “consciousness” can be difficult. Jacobs herself blamed the layout of car-centric cities, advocating for a community-based approach to city building. I think another factor — particularly for college grads — is the transience of our stay, keeping us tied to existing connections and circles.
Earlier this year, I lent a friend Orhan Pamuk’s “A Strangeness In My Mind.” “The book follows a street vendor who moves to Istanbul to sell boza,” I said. “I read it around the time I first moved to Boston, and it really struck a chord with me and my experiences moving to a new city.”
A few weeks later, we were lying on a wooden pier by the Esplanade, sharing a bottle of wine in a pleasant haze as the river rushed beside us. It was springtime, and the air held the happy promise of summer. She suddenly sat up. “How in the world did you identify with Mevlut [the boza vendor]? He’s a street vendor and you are, well,” she waved her hands, “a consultant in Boston.”
She was right, of course: my life could not be more different than Mevlut’s. Mevlut wore his city like a second skin, assimilating in a way I never did. When I moved, like most graduates, I navigated the city on my terms. I sought existing connections and familiar hobbies and developed systems and routines to ground myself — workout classes, bars, and activities to frequent with my friends. Perhaps at some point, my anchors became walls, inadvertently insulating my interactions with the heart of the city.
We can never completely forgo the focal points that structure our lives and interactions. But I remained enchanted by the idea of living in sync with a city’s consciousness, with my story expanding into the spaces others leave behind. Wandering alone around the streets of Istanbul late at night, Mevlut reflects, “In a city, you can be alone in a crowd, and in fact what makes the city a city is that it lets you hide the strangeness in your mind inside its teeming multitudes.”
And on my walks, and that night on the pier, as our conversation bled into the pleasant murmur of other conversations, the waves bearing delightful witness to several strangers out enjoying a Thursday night, that feeling didn’t feel too far away.
Author’s note: Thank you for reading! Thoughts or feedback are much welcome —please drop a comment if you have some! You can also contact me here. Also, a special thank you to Jacob Payne for letting me use his beautiful photo of Beacon Hill!
Your vivid portrayal of arriving in Boston struck a chord with me, despite never having set foot in the city myself. You captured the essence of early adulthood beautifully. Can’t wait to visit the city!
I agree with the author that boston is one of the most beautiful cities .
Amazing write up. Your creativity and insights truly shines through your words. Keep shining.
Having followed a similar timeline as you, your words really struck a chord. I can’t wait to read “A Strangeness In My Mind”
Beautiful piece, once again! Moving back to a city after college, I was also surprised to find how isolating it could be and how a lot of that isolation was self-inflicted, as I refused to branch out beyond the life I’d lived in college, preferring to just move everything ~60 miles south. Boston through your eyes seems so lovely and you perfectly narrate what it’s like to grow into a city. Totally putting A Strangeness in My Mind on my to-read list!
Beautiful piece! I love your humanization of cities and relate a lot to the ways we anchor ourselves in the city while exploring new places and connections.