I have never noticed this in my life. Center City is where neighbors know each other and actually help each other out. The suburbs have always been hostile and anonymous.

I went to college in Minneapolis and I knew all my neighbors and most of the homeless people. When I visit my friends in the suburbs they have no idea who their neighbors are unless there is open hostility. Look at Senator Paul.

I just notice that their is a HUGE bias to bash cities all the time. When you live in a city you actually get to know and live with a wide diversity of people, hence the normal more liberal bias. My father inlaw almost dies inside anytime he visits us and can't ever say anything positive about the city (They live in the country in West Virginia and he is a successful contractor). He thinks everyone is on drugs and lives off of $45,000 for the Government. No one knows how much the working poor works these days and West Virginia's drug problem is 10x that of my city. It's just a anti-city bias.

Wow, yea, some of these responses are crazy! If I had those neighbors I'd GTFO and move to a sane neighborhood. Next time someone accuses me of being a NIMBY because I don't want low cost crack housing built next door to me I'm going to remember this thread.

Sounds great, I'm not being sarcastic, it really does, I'm somewhat sick of the 'big city' bs.

You ever hear Merle Haggard's "Big City"? It's a classic and the story behind its composition is almost too good to be true. The story goes, he was on tour and his bus driver just lost it at some point and said "I'm tired of this dirty old city! As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather be somewhere in the middle of Montana!" and Merle Haggard was struck with inspiration and wrote the whole song (of which the thing about the dirty old city and Montana is a motif) almost on the spot. Then he supposedly shared the songwriting royalties with the bus driver.

"The song was inspired by a remark by Dean Holloway, Haggard's lifelong friend and tour bus driver. At the end of a packed two-day recording session at Britannia Studios in Los Angeles, Haggard went to the bus to check on Holloway, who had been minding the bus, and asked him how he was doing. Holloway responded, "I hate this place. I'm tired of this dirty old city." Haggard immediately saw inspiration, and began writing the song, based on Holloway's remark, on a nearby pad of paper. "I'm tired of this dirty old city" became the song's first line. Haggard decided that the chorus should include the narrator talking about moving elsewhere, and asked Holloway where he would rather be, to which Holloway responded, "If it were up to me, it'd be somewhere in the middle of damn Montana." "Somewhere in the middle of Montana" became part of the chorus. Haggard rushed back into the studio, where the band was packing up, and told them to unpack their instruments in order to record one last song; the band recorded the song in one take, with no rehearsal.

Haggard credited Holloway as a co-writer, entitling him to half the royalties for the song, which amounted to around half a million dollars for Holloway."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_City_(Merle_Haggard_song)

I did pretty well for reciting it from memory.

Agreed!