The medium city

With the pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I live. In lots of ways I feel validated: when my partner had to stop working the decision to get a place that we knew we could afford on one person’s wages paid off and the proximity of multiple parks was a godsend. I’ve also been relieved we live somewhere that’s still big enough for things to stay open to a degree– lots of local restaurants, a bit of entertainment and so on. I’m not alone in this reflection.

Living in Calgary, Jen Gerson writes In Praise of Second-Tier Cities that, “I discovered that I don’t need very much from a city to be happy in it. I need a good coffee shop; a bookstore to browse; a few fun streets to wander around once in a while.”

And in London, Ontario, Sameer Vasta writes,

“In many ways, quarantine living has put our cities on an equal level. When we spend most of our days in our home, when we cook instead of going out to eat, when we interact with people through the screen instead of in shops, when poetry readings are done online instead of in a bookshop, it almost doesn’t matter what city you call home. What matters, instead, is the space (big or small) you’ve created for yourself…

“Look around you—what kind of town have you built for yourself?”