Philosophy of Imagination*Twenty One
Why do we live in cities? Why do we pack and stack ourselves into small parcels of land that are dirty and polluted? Why do we pay exorbitant rents to live like a caged animal? There is plenty of land and opportunity other places. Look at fucking Montana! Wide open. I think they may still be giving land away free there. Sure, there is a lot more to do in New York City or Chicago or Boston. A lot more to see, but you can always travel there and see and do in chunks. Then return home to your beautiful, unadulterated, clean land, where the only thing crowding you is the trees. Why do millions stay crammed in the vacuum of the metropolis?
The better your Imagination you have, the more you use it to create beauty and art, the more gravity you will create. When you pack all those Imaginative, creative, charismatic people into a geographically small place, then the place will also have more gravity. As the gravity of a city grows, it pulls in more Imaginative/creative people, until you have a place filled with culture and beauty the these amazing people have created. And more come to bask.
Sure there are many other factors. People are born there. A lot of them. Their families are there, so they stick around. A lot of people means a lot of jobs, so you have opportunity (despite popular belief, job pay is not commiserate with the cost of living for most professions, because there is a glut of talented workforce, drawn in by the Imagination gravity). There are a lot of things to do (but no one but the very rich (or kids of the very rich) move somewhere based solely on the fact that there's lots of things to do). It's cool to say you live in a big city, so it's a status symbol, mostly for people stuck back in hometowns across the country.
Cities are where things are happening, but most of this is predicated on art and culture and Imagination. It's where the Collective Imagination is thickest and you can feel the ideas swirling and dancing through the air if stop to feel them. But since there is so much other shit going on, people often get lost or overwhelmed or begin to feel inferior, as they were the only interesting creative outsider weirdo in their town and these cities are filled with people much like them from all over the World. Competition is high. If you can manage to not get sidetracked by drugs, alcohol and beautiful people, as well as not getting squished by the pressure or lack of money (which happens to most people first--and then they are ejected back him or to seedier livelihoods or they find themselves living on Long Island selling carpet).
Cities are some of the most Imaginative places in the Universe. They are great places to be for the Imagineer, but the distractions are immense. Stay focused, tap into the Collective Imagination that is everywhere, pluck it from the sky and carve a place for yourself in the zeitgeist. Otherwise, you may as well move to Montana.
