City of Sentiment

Sociologist Robert E. Park wrote of cities “The city is a state of mind, a body of customs and traditions, and of organized attitudes and sentiments that inhere in this tradition. The city is not, in other words, merely a physical mechanism and an artificial construction. It is involved in the vital processes of the people who compose it, it is a product of nature and particularly of human nature.” (http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/projects/centcat/centcats/fac/facch17_01.html)

Cities happen. Hundreds of years ago no one had planned that Manhattan Island would be one of the greater, richer, more important cities of the world. Hundreds of years ago no one planned out numerous skyscrapers for this particularly small plot of land. Cities evolve. A few businesses started on this island, probably because it was near water, so people came. The people then started new businesses. All these businesses brought wealth. The wealth attracted other people, even some immigrants. And then, a lot of immigrants. In the mean time, more buildings were constructed to support the businesses as well as the swelling population. A city is the ultimate product of human nature; it was created to meet human needs to make money and socialize. The city was, and still is, where everything happens. That’s why people flock to them.

Park is urging his readers to look at the sentimental value cities hold. He is saying that cities were not artificial constructions because they were developed out of human needs, both basic needs and those triggered by emotions. People originally flocked to the cities out of a strong desire to make money. The same can be said today, only now there are many people who are in cities who stay because of sentimental value, or simply because it meets their natural human instinct to be where everything is happening.