Cities are places and centers of meaning par excellence. The
assertion is obvious and yet may sound surprising, for many welleducated
and vocal people of urban background have come to
believe that meaning in a place gains almost in proportion to its
lack of people. In this view, sparsely settled farmlands are somehow
more meaningful than cities, and wilderness areas more
meaningful than farmlands. How can such a belief, so contrary to
common sense, be maintained? One reason is the available means
for making private feelings public. To people of urban background,
farms and wildernesses are aesthetic and religious objects.
A special verbal and pictorial syntax, the creation of many
talented artists, exists to articulate rural and wilderness experiences
from the visitor's viewpoint. Nature and countryside offer
the visitor peak experiences that can be captured in colored slides
and popular verse. Such experiences stay at the forefront of consciousness. As pictorial and verbal cliches they become objects
suitable for public display and social exchange. To the millions
who live in the city, however, it would seem that frustrations and
other negative experiences tend to rise to the surface of consciousness.
The satisfactions lead a more ghostly existence. Chatting
with neighbors on the stoop, going to the drugstore for a milk
shake, emerging into the glare of sunlight from the dark cavern
of a movie house or bar, fresh neon color in a wet night, and the
thick Sunday newspaper - these experiences are too commonplace
to sit for portraits. Nonetheless, people seem to know the
central significance of the city, in their bones if not in their minds.
The city is the one environment created exclusively for human
use: it is kind to the thief as well as the burgher. By common
consent, cities are places, worthy of proper names and prominent
labeling in school atlases; whereas the neutral terms of space and
area apply to the emptier lands.