My thought

[oakfarm]

When I was 16 I really fell in love with London and I thought I should spend my life in cities with millions of inhabitants. The reason I write about it here is that I recently read the claim that creative people move to large cities, because large cities offer unexpected meetings and that breed creativity. Now, I didn’t move to such a city - my town has around 137000 inhabitants and the goal is 200 000 - but nor do I buy that claim. Those cities don’t offer unexpected meetings. Tokyo is one of the largest, if not the largest, city in the world and if one travels by Tokyo subway you will see lots of people, but you won’t meet anyone. Everyone is a stranger, sure it’s the same on the masstransit system in my home town, everyone is a stranger. What I’m saying is that a larger quantity of strangers doesn’t lead to more unexpected meetings. So that idea doesn’t make any sense to me, even if it would let me think I’m a very creative person.

Comments

[wantedonvoyage]

It's interesting because theoretically there are more opportunities to meet people in a planned way, e.g. you are more likely to find programs or groups that suit your interests. But when it comes to unexpected meetings, I think people in most places are too reluctant to engage strangers--either out of fear or self-absorbtion--for many chance encounters to happen. Particularly now that people have their faces in a screen and earbuds in.

[oakfarm]

Good point!

[tarasacon]

How much strangers interact in public varies a lot from place to place. Even in the U.S., different regions can have very different expectations for what sort of exchanges happen. Here in Kentucky people are very likely to chat while waiting in line, but in parts of California, for example, that doesn’t happen. In New York City, people will comment to each other but not necessarily converse.

In Japan, where cities and housing can be incredibly crowded, and historically the housing was made from materials that transmit sound, society evolved norms to deal with that. So it’s polite there to ignore other people. It’s a way of giving them privacy, or at least pretending there’s privacy.

[oakfarm]

So creative people should go to Kentucky for unpland meetings.