Cities Whisper
The Hollywood Walk of Fame includes ~2,700 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along 18 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles, CA. The stars display the names of famous entertainers, including musicians, actors, directors, producers, and fictional characters.
Paul Graham is a British American computer scientist best known for co-founding Y Combinator, a startup accelerator in Mountain View, CA.
Y Combinator has launched > 2,000 companies, including some you’ve heard of. Like Dropbox, Reddit, Instacart, Twitch, and Airbnb.
Graham is also a thinker and writer. The tech journalist Steven Levy called him a “hacker philosopher.” Graham has published several books and ~200 online essays.
One of his most interesting essays is Cities and Ambition. In it, Graham says that cities whisper to us. In a hundred different ways, every day. Often quietly. Subtly.
New York tells us to “be rich.”
Boston says, “be smart.”
LA says, “be famous.”
Washington, DC whispers, “be powerful.”
Paris says, “do it with style.”
And those whispers shape the people who live there. We can’t tune them out or turn them off. The whispers are woven into the events we attend, the people we meet, and the conversations we overhear.
When the whispers of our city rhyme with our ambition, they encourage us. When we live somewhere that doesn’t support our goals, the whispers can distract us. Or change our ambition altogether.
When the whispers of our city rhyme with our ambition, they encourage us.
Another great philosopher, Rocky Balboa, agrees with Graham. He made the same point to his brother-in-law, Paulie.
“Ya know, they always say if you live in one place long enough, you are that place.”
- Rocky, in the 2006 film Rocky Balboa
When we’re deciding where to live. Where to start a career, raise a family, or retire. It’s worth considering the whispers we’ll hear.
And how those whispers might shape us.
