It’s a tale as old as time: small town girl moves to the big city. Trades wide open spaces for a shoebox apartment; one set of traffic lights for a triple-lane freeway; friendly neighbors for the promise of a million strangers. I’m certainly not alone in my migration from sleepy coastal town to buzzing urban metropolis. The magnetic pull of a city is hard to resist, especially for the young and aspirational. But what happens when the stuff that makes a city a city, goes away?<\/p>\n
I never really considered this until COVID-19 shut down cities around the world, mine included. All of a sudden there were no bars, no restaurants, no dance parties or brunches with friends. No shopping or working in high-rise buildings. No overpriced gyms or galleries to wander. Expensive housing aside, cities aren’t really cities anymore. They are after all, the summation of their parts. Without the stuff, the people and the dynamism, they’re no different to a plot of earth in the middle of nowhere inhabited by no one. Right?<\/p>\n
Now, suspended between isolation and pockets of normalcy, I’m wondering about city living – the kind of living that’s fast and hard and sometimes stressful. That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable, it absolutely is, but now without the daily commuter crush, with bluer skies and crisper air, will “city living” still have that magnetic pull when life goes back? I’m not so sure.<\/p>\n
It almost feels as if my distancing (literally and figuratively) from an urban lifestyle started on my Instagram feed. People and brands I followed (@thecut<\/a>, @manrepeller<\/a>, @intothegloss<\/a>) started posting soothing pastoral imagery: a baby lamb, a duckling, a loaf of sourdough, a fuzzy calf, the perfect head of home-grown radicchio. I double-tapped. I saved. And like the self-sabotaging idealist I am, I looked for more. I turned on push notifications for @hillshousevintage<\/a> and @julieannmarr<\/a>, desperate for a slice of their rural depictions of heaven.<\/p>\n\n