For cultural offerings in the way of the arts, obviously NYC.
As far as which city is the best representation of American culture, Chicago. Demographically, it’s a city of legacy European immigrants (German, Irish, Italian, Eastern European), African Americans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans. A very downtown-centric city with lots of tall, bold, and boxy skyscrapers organized on a grid, headquarters of McDonald’s, hub for United Airlines, football is the most popular sport (especially when you include NCAA D1), not car-unfriendly, home to the iconic “American Gothic” painting, quintessential-looking American suburbia and nearby farm country (architecture and landscape), world-class cultural institutions housed in grand, neoclassical-style buildings, Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” etc.
DC feels very American, but it’s too low-rise, post-war, and lacks the European heritage.
Philadelphia isn’t quite “put-together” enough and its urbanism too “fine-grained.”
Boston is too white and preppy.
__________________
“To tell a story is inescapably to take a moral stance.”
— Jerome Bruner
Last edited by Quixote; May 13, 2023 at 5:44 PM.
|