In 2021-2, you couldn't escape Pretend It's a City. Or, at least, when I opened Netflix, I couldn't escape its auto-playing trailer. (Netflix autoplay! My kids still recognize Michael Scott as the guy who says, "Please say, I'm the best..." from the autoplay before they switched to kids mode.) Fran Lebowitz's titular joke tries to get people to behave like they're in a city, like not stopping in the middle of a busy sidewalk to take a picture. It's funny, like much of her humor, because it's obvious: the people she's yelling about are literally in NYC. "Pretend" does an interesting job, asking us to think about what is obviously all around us. I think about the joke whenever I encounter the common bits of antisocial behavior in suburban life. Examples abound. What if the guy running a video call without headphones on the commuter rail would pretend it's a train? What if the the guy complaining about all the other cars on the road, holding up his progress, would pretend it's a busy street? What if the guy who's lost patience with his kids (it's me) would pretend they're little kids? Pretend is a lot more playful than my impulse, which is to yell at the trivially antisocial that they are terrible.If "pretend" does interesting work, asking us to observe the obvious, the joke's "city" is that which we observe. What does Lebowitz mean by city? It's a place where we have to be a little more aware of the people around us and a little more mindful of how our behavior might affect them. Stopping to take a picture on a wilderness trail has a different effect on those around you than that of taking a picture on the sidewalk in front of a train station. The noise you make in a hotel or apartment is different from the noise you make in a detached house. Lebowitz's city asks us to behave a little less anti-socially. Or, at least it should.
Next week, I head to San Francisco. The peopleI talk to about this trip have two responses: one set earnestly explains to me that despite the headlines, it's really a nice, clean city and I have nothing to worry about; the other response is not stepping in the poop. The first response perhaps is more worrisome: if it's all so a-ok, then why does one have to go to such great lengths to let me know? (Why does the corporate travel advice page let me know that there are handy SF volunteers to accompany me on the walk between the convention center and the hotel?) The city perhaps isn't a place where everyone monitors themselves for anti-social behavior. Chris Arnade, linked to below (and previously in "About Albany"), theorizes that the US is a low-trust society: we mostly don't enforce very high standards of behavior in public. Our cities seem to collect the worst of our antisocial behaviors and our individualism mostly goes against confronting it.
I don't really mean this to be a rant about all that ails us. We can make fun of SF or be concerned about NYC, but the accusatory fingers always point back in our own direction. Take Beverly: why have 16 federally-owned single family homes been empty for almost two years? Why are so many of our neighbors opposing the plan to turn a local church into a resource center for the poor? Why do I know more about NYC's mayoral election than ours? Pretend it's a city.
For the reading this week: three pieces about cities. The first two directly address the questions above; the third is a story about how people like me came to think about cities in the first place.
Uh, I don't know, but it's worth asking and trying
This is an edited version of Chuck Marohn's opening remarks at the 2025 Strong Towns National Gathering.
The community continues to evolve the game.