Good cities are irreplaceable
When I moved away from Canada, I explained to a friend how much I would miss it. I’ll be back someday, I said. Vancouver and Montreal had been my homes for the past six years and I felt connected to both. In my mind, they were irreplaceable.
Curiously, he responded, “Why wouldn’t you just find a comparable city in the US?” I’m American, so living in Canada might seem illogical. Why not find a city like Vancouver or Montreal in the US, where I can live without the legal hurdles required to live internationally? The answer: it doesn’t work that way. You can’t substitute one great city for another.
While all bad cities are alike, each great city is great in its own way.
In Paul Graham’s essay Cities and Ambition, he talks about how great cities speak to you. They each communicate a different message. For example, Vancouver says Get active. In summer, the city’s unique combination of mountains, ocean, and vibrant urban activity begs you to go outdoors and explore the landscape. Conversely, Montreal is so stubborn and proud that you couldn’t replicate its pigheadedness anywhere else in the world. It says Do it my way or f*** off – something I find charming, like the Italian grandmother who runs her familiar, four-table restaurant exactly like her grandmother before her.
Paul talks about how he loved living in Cambridge, but he couldn’t stand the cold winters. With that in mind, he moved to Berkeley, which, as far as he could see, was just a warmer Cambridge. Both cities boasted top universities, large tech industries, and intelligent, progressive people. But after a while, he still didn’t feel about Berkeley the way he felt about Cambridge. It spoke to him differently. As he recalled, “Cambridge with good weather, it turns out, is not Cambridge.”
For the same reasons, I won’t try to find another Vancouver or Montreal, despite how much I hate the Canadian winters. You can’t replace one city with another and hope for the same.