Life in a City & Urban Mentality

Life in a City and Urban Mentality Very early on in our development, our mentalities are sculpted by our immediate environment. As we grow and venture out to new and exciting things, our mentalities are again altered by different experiences and encounters. Venturing out into a large and populous city like New York City, for example, will definitely effect one's mentality. For someone like myself who grew up in suburban Long Island where your neighbors are your friends and the mailman is addressed by his first name, life in a city has absolutely urbanized my mentality, way of life, values and beliefs. This mentality was gained not by reading books or studying the people around me but by simply living and having to adapt in order to be comfortable. What exactly is this urban mentality that is sculpted by cities? It is the idea that we are all strangers with a common goal. That common goal is “me.” The idea that everyone in a city is merely looking out for themselves and their own interests. To break down a city into a more microscopic, everyday encounter, I like to view it as a packed elevator. A group of strangers in a small and congested space who's only verbal interaction is “4th floor please” or “excuse me” all headed to different destinations and different missions and the only thing that they all have in common is the fact that they are all in the elevator. A stark contrast from my Long Island neighborhood where you have to drive to get to the nearest grocery store versus “residents who live near each other are strangers...because of the sheer number of people in geographical compass.” (Jacobs, pg. 112) To bring things back into a broader view, we (in cities) live our lives in elevators and this sort of lifestyle naturally leads to a urban mentality or a self-centered “I am the only thing that I'm worried about” mentality. This can be related to Simmel's theory, that city dwellers have a sort of “blase attitude” towards one another and are more