To a very large extent, America has become an urban nation, of which, that relentless urbanization, continues to grow, year-by-year. This exists, despite the fact, that America is an immensely large country and could in consideration of the sheer amount of its land space, have instead, much smaller, manageable and vibrant communities, as compared to these dense, often impersonal, highly populated cities.
There are, of course, some immense advantages in the having of large cities, especially, in the sense of economies of scale, activities, infrastructure, and the like, but the thing is that bigger is not always better; along with the salient fact that the bigger the size, the more intractable corresponding problems and the solution to such, will often become. So too, part of what attracts people to big cities, is the fact that people, for better or for worse, can reinvent themselves, and further to the point, they can engage with the general public, or disengage, as per their inclination, in which those that are neighbors, have often no real justifiable reason to infringe upon the given privacy of a family or a particular person.
When it comes to a smaller community and especially of a community that has had generations of people that have lived within it, there is the knowledge that those people have of one another, which seldom is possible or even conceivable of ever existing within a large city. This thus signifies for those that live in those smaller communities, that oftentimes within those communities that there is a certain comfort in the knowing of their neighbors, and the fact that their neighbors also know them, which can serve as a meaningful balm so as to not feel corresponding anxiety and alienation, one to another, especially when each person’s relative success, and ownership of material things, seems to be about the same.
That is to say, where everybody knows your name, there is a corresponding greater sense of familial relations or its equivalency, of which, of course, it must be added, that some of the very worse arguments and discord can also come from such; but in general, the good of being known, and thereby being accorded due consideration by community members, way outweighs the bad, along with those that truly know one another, typically end up being more forgiving, as well.
It is a common trait, to desire to be respected, as well as to want to be liked and loved, and of which, in bustling cities in which everyone seemingly has something that they need to attend to, always, and oftentimes don’t feel as if they have the right in invade another person’s privacy; many a person, can feel some degree of alienation, for suffering from that lack of communication and intimacy, which may so lead these people to being more inclined to drown their sorrows and concerns in drink or drugs.
There is a huge difference in being able to easily walk down the street so as to drop in on a friend or a neighbor, that a given person has known for years, has grown up with, and has connections to, as compared to that same basic construct simply not existing. Those then, that lack community ties, and are surrounded instead by a lot of hustle and bustle, may indeed find themselves, with their anxiety levels rising, for we are social creatures, that need meaningful relationships in order to get the best out of life.