I am a Cityphile.

mike3996

Legend
Location
Finland
I am, and have been a cityphile for a long time now.

I love me a big city. I am excited walk the streets of a big city. I like to read about the little neighborhoods of various cities across the world and imagine how it might be to live here and there. Walk across prestigious and expensive areas and eye the boutiques and cafés from a safe distance. Think how one's commute from the nearest metro station to a big building might go in a regular Tuesday afternoon: "there's a Dunkin' Donuts along the way. Would I stop there to get an ice coffee on a hot day?"

I like to study the various tangents of a big city: bus and tram routes, planned changes in routes, underground renovations. Housing projects and historical changes to demographics. Have opinions about parks and market squares and tourist spots and old timey market halls and metro stations and dining districts and events. Think how a local goes to the beach using public transportation. Every district has their own centrum(s) with services and groceries and everyone of these is worth an examination.

And you get a variety of people on the streets, from all walks of life. What I seriously dislike about small towns is how they're very youth-weighed in demographics. Lots of families live there for cost reasons but then you have mostly young rascals on the streets. In a big city you get a good slice of every group at once, and I love it.

I like this phrase from a 90s movie. "I like New York City. I see everybody and nobody sees me."

I especially like it when a city has a good mass transportation system in place. I can stroll anywhere I want and when I think I am done for the moment, I can whip up an app to check where's the nearest stop and when's the next bus or train. And you can usually get a ticket with unlimited travel.

I acted on my desires in 2019 when I moved to Helsinki. The rent was big but it was a fantasy land time. My expenses didn't increase because in the move I also got rid of my car. I moved away in early 2021, but would have liked to live more there. It was some financial aspects that drove me away -- wasn't the city that wore me down. :)

Does anyone else identify with what I described? Love big cities, can't get enough?
 
I actually can identify very much with what you said, even though I became quite the opposite in the last couple of years. For years I lived in the second largest city of our country: Hamburg. With over 1.8 million people living there, it might be not as impressive as some "real" metropols around the globe, but still more than enough in terms of a big city. What I enjoyed most is the quote you mentioned:
"I like New York City. I see everybody and nobody sees me."

The same is not only true for the big apple, but pretty much all big cities. One is getting anonymous there, becoming invisible within the crowds roaming the street. A solitary feeling which for me is oddly comforting, being somebody who suffers from certain levels of social anxiety. I always enjoyed just hopping on a subway or commuter train, often enough without an actual destination. Just watching the people, the stations and part of the city rushing by through the windows of the train. Walking the usually crowded streets and places weekdays at night, especially when it's raining. A calming, odd experience with a special atmosphere.

I have long moved away, but had the opportunity to move to Berlin, out largest city, a while ago - I decided against it. Living costs in metropolitan areas have exploded, as somebody with just an average income, I either have to spend a lot more per month for a decent apartment or have to settle for a tiny one in order to pay a "normal" rent - let alone the troubles just getting an apartment in the first place. In addition my social anxiety got a bit worse and now I've settled for the opposite and live in a small village. I still travel to Hamburg on a regular basis and enjoy strolling around, yet also enjoy when I leave the city and it's crowds behind when I head back home.
 
Yes it was cheaper living that drove me to move away. But Helsinki is still very accessibly an hour travel's away.

The living costs are indeed a thing. Either you afford to put a downpayment on an apartment, or you rent. I couldn't currently afford a central Helsinki apartment, nor would it even be rational in money terms. One normally wouldn't tie 90% of one's wealth to one class of assets, yet plenty of homeowners do just that.

I try to make Hyvinkää work for me and get my city fix by frequent traveling. :) Not the cheapest way either but not terribly expensive either. After all, I used to pay 850 € rent in the city (nowadays probably would be 900 €/mo) and here 60 minutes away I pay some 300 €/mo in utilities and interest. The savings I may as well use for traveling.

Luckily I don't need to attend at an office to work. Otherwise of course the long commute would eat me alive.
 
I'm a city person; the suburbs bore me to tears. I live in downtown Vancouver and greatly appreciate not having to get into a car for everything. We can walk to get groceries, there are 2 subways less than a 10 minute walk away, the movie theatre is a block away and Lost Lagoon at Stanley Park is a 15-20 minute walk or short bus ride and walk from home. My office is in the 2nd bedroom and I have several large clients that I can walk to in 10-20 minutes from home.
When we have guests from towns or other parts of Greater Vancouver, there are lots of good restaurants for us to enjoy. There are lots of bike paths and lanes plus the seawall walking and cycling path that surrounds downtown and False Creek.
The high price of housing is the major drawback to living here. We're fortunate to own our apartment so aren't having to deal with the ruinous rents. I'm hoping for a major rollback in the real estate market so younger folks and families can be my neighbors.
 
And you get a variety of people on the streets, from all walks of life. What I seriously dislike about small towns is how they're very youth-weighed in demographics. Lots of families live there for cost reasons but then you have mostly young rascals on the streets. In a big city you get a good slice of every group at once, and I love it.
Small towns in my neck of the woods (this is the case in a lot of the USA as well) are the opposite: skewed to older people, with fewer younger people and families. There's just not enough economically in many small towns.

I get what you mean about cities. I've lived in fairly rural settings all my life (well, in southern CA, it was suburban with lots of people everywhere, but we mostly stuck to the 60-acre ranch where I grew up, and lived as if we were in a rural area - which it once had been!), but I love to visit the city, and I've often thought about living inside of one for a while. Sounds like it was a major move for you but has led to some real creative energy.
 
Born and bred in a big city, or at least what is the biggest city in Norway, the capital Oslo.

Lived there from 1968 to 2006, when we moved out into semi-rural territories 45 minutes out of it with car, but however much I like a trip into town, I really cant see myself moving back, too much have changed since I lived there, and the turf I grew up and lived on the better parts of my life is just vaguely there anymore, not to mention the fact that the house prices has gone through the roof to the tune of €10-13K pr square meter, and I am not skimping on indoor space in this winter ridden country of mine, even though I thrive outdoors.
 
Absolutely. I grew up in a small city - Belfast, in Northern Ireland - and I love big cities. My first experience was visiting London on a regular basis and from there I've been fortunate enough to visit some big cities - Istanbul, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul - and live in others - Manila for a few years, and, soon, Guangzhou. I also like the less developed cities - places like Istanbul and Manila - because they still have a lot of unique characteristics, whereas a lot of more developed cities have lost some of that and can sometimes seem a little bland or even interchangeable.
 
Back
Top