Big
cities, better lifestyle
“If I can’t make it there, I can’t make it anywhere”
sang Frank Sinatra’s deep voice in the fifties making reference to the American
city of New York. The song conveys that there is no other place that provides
one with more opportunities to strive and succeed in life than New York.
Sinatra goes on: “These little town blues are melting away, I’ll make a brand
new start of it in New York”. As opposed to the little towns, New York City,
the most populous city in the United States, is significantly influent in the
global commerce, culture, finance, media, art, education, entertainment and
politics. Is the idea suggested by the nineteen fifties song obsolete? Facts
indicate that the cliché is still valid: living in big cities is preferable to
living in small cities because access to entertainment, education and above
all, healthcare is higher in big cities if compared to towns.
In big cities more options regarding entertainment,
shopping and such are more easily found.
Sure entertainment can be found in Cedar Grove, Victorville or Pinehurst,
small towns in the states of New York, California and Massachusetts
respectively. But, to such a minor scale that we cannot compare it to the
diverseness with which it can be verified in major cities in the same states.
New York, Los Angeles and Chicago supply its people with entertainment, which
not only can be found with better ease and speed, but also to a much larger
extent and which are internationally acknowledged. The Four Seasons and Lutece
in the Big Apple, Brighton Coffee Shop
and Dan Tana’s in the City of Angels
as well as Capriccio and Blue Ginger in the City on a Hill are
famous restaurants, which exemplify such assortment. Other examples are the Manhattan, the Grove and the Copley Place,
famous shopping malls in the cities of New York, Los Angeles and Boston
respectively, which offer its dwellers much more options in fashion, price and
trend.
More important than variety in entertainment is that,
in big cities, access to education and, thus, job opportunities is more
available. When you think of good education, is Antigua and Barbuda
International Institute of Technology the first thing that comes to your mind?
Or is it New York University or maybe Columbia University? If we go to the
western coast, would you rather enroll your son or daughter in Victorville
International University or in UCLA? Now, as an employer in the northeastern
America would you rather give a job to a person that has majored from the
Methodist University in Pinehurst or from Harvard or MIT? By all means,
education in these minor cities is unsatisfactory, but one cannot deny the
imposingness and acknowledgement that lies within the universities in the major
cities of these states. One would rather choose to study in the latter
universities and employ those with such education in contrast to those educated
in small town universities.
In addition to that, beyond all considerations, health
is the main reason why living in big cities is preferable. Numbers speak for
themselves. Current stocktaking of healthcare service in big and small cities
depicts considerable difference in number between these two sites. Other than
the famous HHC (Health and Hospitals Corporation); which operates the public
hospitals and clinics in New York City; controlling over eleven hospitals, four
nursing homes, six diagnostic and treatment centers and, 80 community-based
primary care sites; the city is equipped with over 52 hospitals among other
facilities. Against those numbers, we have six hospitals in the New York
state’s small city representative, Cedar Grove. In the Golden State, the survey
gives evidence of 81 acute care hospitals containing emergencies located in the
big city of Los Angeles against ten in the small town of Victorville. In the
state of Massachusetts, 31 hospitals were found in Boston, while in the state’s
small city representative, Pinehurst, a couple of emergency rooms and zero
hospitals were listed. It is true that if there are more healthcare facilities
in major cities rather than in small cities, the likelihood that you will find
aid in a quicker period of time within a shorter distance from your
neighborhoods in a big city in contrast with small cities is perceptible. It is also true that a better sense of safety
is provided in a place where more options are more accessible in time and
space, when you know that health care is only a drive away.
All and all, in agreement with the implications in the
famous lines of New York New York,
living in big cities still proves to be more advantageous than living in small
cities due to the verification of more entertainment, education and, healthcare
in the firsts. As it has been stated, both big and small cities are supplied
with some of the most essential institutions for the contemporaneous life.
However, not only access to them is higher in big cities, but they constitute
more acknowledged and assorted instances. If one can have at one’s disposal
diversity in restaurants and shopping malls that present more alternatives,
variety in options for education that brings more opportunity and vastness in
healthcare that produces a better sense of safety, why would one seek for a
reduced degree of all those necessary institutions? Having the chance to live
in cities that don’t sleep provides its dwellers with more advantages than any
little towns with melting away blues do.
