[Chicago103]

There is all this talk of cities being worldly in a global economy and to a large extent I agree. It is good to have people from all over the country and the world coming to your city and adding to it's diversity. I do however think there is a danger in a city being too transplant oriented, when there is nothing to ground it, few natives to teach the transplants the traditions and history of the city. Not everything about the vibe and culture of a city can be read or learned by talking to other transplants, people often need guides, those that were born in a city and whose family has lived in a city for several generations to learn what it is truly all about.

What am I rambling about? It is the belief that I have that the most successful global cities find a balance between attracting transplants from all over the world and being grounded in native born populations and neighborhoods. New York City and Chicago for instance are always ranked near the top of global cities and attract transplants from all over the country and world, at the same time though these cities are filled with neighborhoods and populations of people that were born in the city and whose families have lived here for generations and also tend to be middle class or above and in some cases as well educated as the transplants. Sure every city, even the transplant oriented ones above have native born impoverished populations but it is rare and difficult for them to interact and relate to the educated transplants. NYC and Chicago are well known for having well established ethnic neighborhoods that have been around for generations, filled with old people that have lived in the city their entire lives and many of their descendants have moved up the economic latter, become educated and thus can relate with the more recent educated newcomers to the city.

I say this as someone who is a Chicago native with family roots in the city going back over 100 years and as much as I love transplants coming to our great city I am glad there is plenty of tradition to ground me here and my hope is that many of these newcomers will set up roots here for good. This is part of the reason I wouldn't like living in cities like Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, even Washington D.C. I can't imagine being in a city where nearly everyone (especially educated people) are from somewhere else and have no roots in the city. It is no wonder some people just see cities as places to stay a few years and move on, there is no tradition to ground them there, it is just a revolving door.

Some people will say I am nuts, that these cities could evolve over time into more traditional global and grounded cities, that Chicago of 1870 was a place filled with transplants and with attitudes like mine the city couldn't have grown. True, I do hope these cities become more grounded over time and it could happen and there are examples, for instance Los Angeles of 1950 I would classify as a transplant city but today it is mature enough and large enough to have the critical mass that I would also consider it a grounded one with established populations and traditions. However the historical examples are from pre-globalization when populations were less mobile, i.e. people did make the big move back then but it was likely the only big move of their lives, in a society that is now very mobile we need grounded places to retain people. That is what I mean by cities needing a healthy dose of provincialism in order to be a truly great city.