My Year in Cities

I love cities and I am ever so fortunate to travel to many A couple of days ago, I saw that Steven Johnson  had posted a list of cities he'd visited in 2007. I liked it so much, I thought I should do my own. Well here it is.

Washington DC
Toronto
New York
Chicago
Philadelphia
Baltimore
LA, Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Laguna Beach, Long Beach, Anaheim, Santa Monica, CA
Miami, Miami Beach, and Tallahassee, FL
Tuscon and Phoenix, AZ
Savannah and Atlanta, GA
Arlington, Alexandria, McClean, Fairfax, VA
Duluth and Minneapolis, MN
Charlotte, NC
Columbus and Dayton, OH
Columbus and Indianapolis, IN
St. Michael's, Eastern Shore, Bethesda, Maryland
Columbia, SC
Des Moines and Ames, Iowa
Kona, Hawaii
Waterloo and Windsor, Ontario
Copenhagen, Denmark
Malmo, Sweden
Rome and Positano, Italy
Moscow and Krasnoyarsk, Russia
London, UK
Dublin, Ireland
Essen and Düsseldorf, Germany
Tokyo, Japan
Noosa, Brisbane, Sydney, and Hayman Island, Australia

I have at least five years of on-line calendars, maybe more. So, I'm hoping to put together a master list of the places I've been so far this decade.  I've been to lots of North American, European and Asian cities, but hardly any in South America, Africa and the Middle East. Hoping that will change as the decade moves on. I've got a book tour coming up this spring. Hope to see you in your town.

Comments

[The City Gal]

I have been fortunate enough to live in many big cities in the world (in Iran, India, Ireland and Canada). If I were going to suggest one place that you have to visit, I would recommend India. It doesn't really matter where in India you go, I believe you will find that your perspective on culture and creativity will change.

[RF]

One of the things I would most like to do is not only visit India but do a major project on India in the creative age. I think most people have India wrong seeing it as a low cost center for software and business services. India has creativity etched in its DNA. Not just software but Bollywood, music, fashion and design. More so, I believe, than China. Anybody out there see anything on this.

[Frank]

Have you ever thought about getting on facebook? There's a facebook application that lets you map out the cities you've been to.

[MPS]

I don't know if this is quite relevant to Indian vs. Chinese creativity, but James Fallows picked up on something when travelling to India after being in China for an extended period:

http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/the_first_thing_you_notice_whe.php

"In Shanghai — or Beijing, or Shenyang, or Hangzhou — children not in school are seen in the presence of one and usually more adult supervisors: parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles, people from the neighborhood. But in this one afternoon in Mumbai we came across many scenes of what can only be called roving bands of kids. They were playing cricket in dirt lots. They were throwing stones. They were playing tag. They were running around without watchful adults immediately in sight."

Something tells me that the (urban) Chinese are developing a model of child-rearing similar to what you may see in much of upper-middle-class American suburbia - highly supervised activities with adults being very involved. In India it seems it's similar to the dynamic you kind of see with, say, high school garage bands (even if it's in upper middle class suburbia) - loosely supervised children figuring stuff out on their own. This to me seems better suited for developing a creative economy.

This is intersting because it goes beyond the Kotkinist argument about cities needing to be "family friendly". This points to the question of HOW places are striving to be "family friendly", and how some ways may be more appropriate to a creative economy than others. I really don't think the global village has to all become like the glossy brochure version of Naperville, IL or Plano, TX to be truly creative.

[Michael Wells]

India is chaos. Anything you see, the opposite is also true. Sights, sounds, smells are wonderful and terrible. The country has 22 official languages, divided mainly between two very different linguistic families -- plus English. A thriving democracy with millions of illiterates in poverty. Hinduism is simultaneously the most primitive and the most sophisticated of the great religions. India's great engineering schools, the only positive results of the alliance with the Soviet Union, have trained many of the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley.

Those children may be wild and unsupervised, or they may be being watched by the whole adult neighborhood with no-one "in charge". It may be almost impossible for an outsider to know.

I don't know of academic studies of India, but the creativity is obvious. It would be a fascinating project. In contrast to the top Creative Class countries you wouldn't start out with an urban working class and service support class, but a village structure and the class/guild/clan structures we call caste.

[Ben]

Do you have any concern about carbon emissions from air travel? Do you do any offsetting?

It looks to me like your ecological footprint is up in the 40 planet Earths range.