Subscribe to RSSFrom the Editor
When the HPR selected Urban America as the summer covers topic, I immediately cautioned our Covers Editor that the section could not just be a feature on New York. Given that she is from Boston my worries were probably unfounded, but people do love talking about New York, and I can understand why. The Big Apple is home to over eight million people, some of the best museums and cultural centers in the world, and the giants of big business. Yet my relationship with New York has been a tumultuous one. I first visited on a trip to scout out colleges, but spent only a few hours at Columbia University; the combination of a severe traffic delay, pouring rain, and a West Wing marathon on Bravo prevented me from enjoying more of The City. I was unimpressed, but knew I had not given the place a fair shake. But returning to New York three times has convinced me it is just not for me.
Maybe it is a minor case of claustrophobia, but whatever the reason I find the Empire City quite unpleasant. Hailing from northern California, I am used to things being fairly spread out; even San Francisco, the third most densely populated city in America, is only 60 percent as dense as New York. The most troubling consequence of the extreme density, for me, is the frequent inability to see the horizon. San Francisco, while home to its fair share of skyscrapers, is a hilly city and thus regularly allows one to see far off into the distance. Golden Gate Heights, Telegraph Hill and many other spots afford tremendous views of the City by the Bay. In this regard New York, which is comparatively flat, cannot compete. Sure, you can see all of New York from the top of a skyscraper, but it is just not the same as viewing it from a natural part of the landscape.
Harvard is home to a lot of New Yorkers, so my distaste for the city often produces arguments. I typically contend that New York is crowded, expensive, superficial, and lacking in park space. While the first two are undeniable, advocates respond that the third is true only for the touristy parts, and that the fourth is just plain wrong (which it is, New York is actually almost 20 percent park space, the most of any densely populated American city.) But I maintain that since most of that space is a rectangle circumscribed by tall buildings, it should count for less than the parks in San Francisco, which are not geometrically shaped and run mostly along the Pacific Ocean. I always thought this was an excellent point, but it never seems to persuade New Yorkers.
After about two years of coastal feuding, I came to realize that it is virtually impossible to convince someone your city is superior to his or hers, especially if that city is New York. People love the big cities they consider their own, despite the problems Urban America examines. I still refuse to concede New York’s superiority, but am content with the uneasy truce that permits me to avoid disagreements and instead focus on what I love. I am thrilled to be living in San Francisco this summer, and while I will return to Harvard in September to write my thesis and help produce two more issues of this magazine, my efforts will almost surely be lacking in heart.
To get the HPR each quarter, Subscribe Now
Current Issue: Spring 2010
Religion in America
- Is Godless Great? A New Heyday for American Secularism
The American Way of Faith Compromise, innovation, and tradition
Read more
From the Editor
Times are tough. In just the last few weeks the Dow Jones fell to a level not seen since 1997 and the unemployment rate in the United States, now over eight percent, reached a 25-year high. The bulk of the finance industry, including our largest and formerly most successful banks, exists only because the federal government has decided it must. Yet perhaps the most alarming indicator of our economic situation is that this is all, of course, old news. By now it seems almost a given that each day when we reach for the paper, turn on the television, or log on to the Internet, we will find only more evidence of hardship.
One would think that at a time like this, with so many in so much trouble, altruism would be in vogue. Yet instead it seems a never-ending supply of Ponzi schemes and executive retreats symbolize the avarice that caused this calamity. On February 19th two articles on the front page of the New York Times website, one next to the other, epitomized this troubling state of affairs. The first article, “Newly Poor Swell Lines at Food Banks,” reported huge increases in demand at food banks across the country, while the second, “A Swiss Bank Is Set to Open Its Secret Files,” disclosed UBS “urged some American clients to destroy records and to stash watches, jewelry and artwork that they had bought with money hidden offshore in safe deposit boxes in Switzerland” in anticipation of investigation by the IRS. To say that something has gone terribly awry seems an understatement.
While the myriad of economic policies aimed at resuscitating the economy is of supreme importance, I mean to focus on something else. How have we arrived at a point where it is commonplace to watch some hide their jewelry while others starve? The answer will explain, in one-way or another, how so many today have come to believe that they are not their brother’s keeper. This is, perhaps, the most pressing issue facing our generation. It is thus not a coincidence that amid this crisis the HPR chose a covers topic, Beyond Borders, that while not directly addressing the recession, attends to problems whose solutions require international cooperation, and a belief that we all share a fate as residents of the same planet. Or in other words, that we are all each other’s keepers.
Such a fundamental psychological shift seems less a subject of politics than epochal change, and may be little more than the naïve hope of a young American. But there is reason to believe our bonds can be stronger than is suggested by simply inhabiting the same place. As humans our activity is inherently social, even the most ardent individualist cannot deny their indebtedness to family, friends, and history; our fellow humans make possible all of our individual thoughts and activities. Recognition of this fact may hold the key to overcoming the self-centeredness that is today so hard to ignore, and I hope Beyond Borders, by pointing towards cooperative solutions to the most difficult problems facing humanity, helps to demonstrate it.
To get the HPR each quarter, Subscribe Now
0 Comments
You can be the first one to leave a comment.
0 Comments
You can be the first one to leave a comment.