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[EJR]

Prompt: 

To understand the most important characteristics of a society, one must study its major cities.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.

Response: 

To address this statement, we must first determine what are “the most important characteristics” of a society. Do those characteristics lie in the inherent values upon which that society has been founded? Or do they, in fact, represent the objective realities of that society today? In this essay, I will consider both of these aspects—that is, moral/ aspirational values vs. objective/ pragmatic realities— in order to argue that the city (or cities) cannot serve as a macrocosm by which to understand a larger society as those cities are but isolated and singular aspects of that society or country as a whole. 

In the case of America, let us first consider the city of New York. New York City is an anomoly with respect to demographics, wealth, and infrastructure. The people are diverse and divergent and dynamic; all hues and histories mingle and coexist. Wealth is disproportionately distributed and conditional, contingent upon legacy and access. And the city itself is paved with cement and punctuated by spires that pierce the sky and reflect the light of the sun with irridescent windows; those reflections blind the naked eye and demand that its urban inhabitants look down and away. Is that the reality of America?

In San Francisco, the former bohemian vanguard, the people meander around their victorian abodes paying thousands of dollars to share an apartment with four other roommates—if they can afford it. Most often, now, they wear hoodies and belong to the burgeoning tech industry, and if they are not part of that growing majority, then they flee the city like refugees into the barely cheaper enclaves of Oakland and San Jose. Is that the reality of America?

In Washington D.C., the nexus of freedom and American ideals, African Americans live in disenfranchised neighborhoods overshadowed by the towering building of whiteness, the White House. This city is the capital, but it is singular in its existence. It is the home of governement and the consolidation of power — it is the democratic ideal. Is that the reality of America? 

And outside of those cities, where are the people and what is the land? In the country, trees outnumber the metal spires of New York; the people are more concerned with their day-to-day jobs and responsibilities to their communities rather than the tech-focused innovations of San Francisco; and the idea of democracy and an active federal government is not so prevalent or felt or enforced as it is in Washington D.C. These three cities function here solely as examples of distinct personalities which do contribute to a composite American identity, but do not define it. The nebulous countryside is what fills in the gaps and spaces between these cities, and it is the country that reflects the original ideals of the American dream—that is, land and autonomy and equality through that self-reliance. American cities, rather, reflect the pragmatic reality of America as it is today, driven by a lust for business and wealth, bedazzled by the technical forces that exist beyond and without us, and overshadowed by a government that claims to act in the people’s interest but still remains focused only on certain people of interest. 

I would argue that the most important characteristics of America are freedom, ownership, and self-reliance, and through the burgeoning of these cities, those ideals have been eclipsed. If we were to look only at America’s major cities, we would see dreams unfulfilled, wealth concentrated in the 1%, and a veiled truth.