I grew up not far from the city of Portland, Oregon. I consider Portland my hometown, and I’ve extensively explored the area, to the point where I don’t need much navigation aid, unless it’s going to a specific business or location. I’ve seen the city life both from within, and from the outside, as the last few years, I’ve lived in fairly rural areas, with fairly low population density. There is a stark contrast between the hustle and bustle of the city, and the quiet rural life. I can safely say that I prefer a smaller community.
I grew up in the southwest area of Portland, in a little community sandwiched in between Portland, and Beaverton. The street I lived on was an insular, dead end street. Growing up, I knew every single one of my neighbors. To me, that was just a normal function of society: Neighborhoods were fairly insular, and people were friendly to each other. Moving away from Portland, to a smaller town (Corvallis, Oregon), I found encountered a rather rude awakening: Most neighbors did not know each other, nor were they friendly to their neighbors. The overall trust of within communities is actually fairly low, with people locking their doors at night, locking their car doors, and seldom ever speaking to their neighbors. If people were being loud at night, tough, because nobody cared if you couldn’t sleep due to their loud party. People overall treated each other worse because they didn’t have any buy-in, or connection to their neighbors. Recently, I’ve been living in smaller, more tight-nit communities, were I do know all of my neighbors, and the buy in is back to where it was when I was a kid; people are friendly with each other, there’s more trust, and people are overall just better people.
I don’t believe humans were meant to live in large communities such as cities, or even towns with thousands for that matter. It’s clear that human beings measurably become worse people, necessitating violent enforcement of the rules to keep people in line, in order for society to function. I certainly do not want to live in a society that is forced to beat people into submission just to ensure that they are a good person. I have come to the conclusion that the society we have is one that we ought not to tolerate. We ought to strive for people to live in smaller communities, ones were people rely on each other out of mutual respect for each other, rather through violent compulsion.