One of the most insightful essays I’ve read for years:
City and Ambition
May 2008 | https://paulgraham.com/cities.html#f5n
The essay is so condensed and well organized that I dare not quote it partly — and it’s definitely worthwhile to read it in full glory.
Notably though, a comment about art is particularly interesting
Paris was once a great intellectual center. If you went there in 1300, it might have sent the message Cambridge does now. But I tried living there for a bit last year, and the ambitions of the inhabitants are not intellectual ones. The message Paris sends now is: do things with style. I liked that, actually. Paris is the only city I’ve lived in where people genuinely cared about art. In America only a few rich people buy original art, and even the more sophisticated ones rarely get past judging it by the brand name of the artist. But looking through windows at dusk in Paris you can see that people there actually care what paintings look like. Visually, Paris has the best eavesdropping I know. [5]
[5] If Paris is where people care most about art, why is New York the center of gravity of the art business? Because in the twentieth century, art as brand split apart from art as stuff. New York is where the richest buyers are, but all they demand from art is brand, and since you can base brand on anything with a sufficiently identifiable style, you may as well use the local stuff.
This essay is centered on American cities plus London and Paris — but there’s a lot more to discuss on east asia cities. And I would love to see it at some point. Any recommendations?