Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

An article in the New York Times notes that, according to a United Nations Population Fund report, the majority of the world’s people will live in cities and towns by 2008.  The article then goes on to explore the positive and negative effects this could have on people’s standard-of-living (especially the standard-of-living of the poor).  What it leaves out, however, is the degree to which cities are an engine for social change.

Art scenes don’t develop in urban areas simply because there are more people there.  One factor in their growth is that cities attract people from different places, with different ideas, and place them in close proximity.  Synthesis is the basis for a lot of what we call creativity.  (This factor helps account for  smaller college towns that have scenes equivalent to those in larger cities, as campuses draw people from diverse places.)  Another factor is urban anonymity, which allows people to experiment more freely.  The arts can contribute to social change (though not everyone scene will do so), and the development of communities of innovative artists presents a potential model for the development of communities dedicated to social change.

Living in a city can also help push people to desire social change enough to work for it, because, in urban areas, people of different economic classes are forced to confront each other.  Now, the truly desperate may not have the energy to do much in terms of demanding economic justice.  It’s the people who just barely miss out on making the middle class who are more likely to get fed up with watching the rich drive past them to safer neighborhoods.  And, occasionally, members of the upper echelons may be moved to work for real change after seeing too much poverty.

Really, though, what it all comes down to is that when you put a lot of people together, they tend to do things.  Sometimes they do beautiful things; sometimes they do ugly things.  As ever, change is the only certainty.

Related posts:

1. Progress, Change, Poetics
2. Hope, Change, and Disillusionment: Seven Years of War

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.